Masterpiece Sweepstakes Winner Writes About His English Adventures

Greg Sieminski and his wife, Ginny

As the lucky winner of the Masterpiece 40th Anniversary Sweepstakes, Greg Sieminski and his wife, Ginny, visited England in September 2011 for a VIP tour of Highclere Castle—the “real” setting for “Downton Abbey,” the popular Masterpiece miniseries now showing on the Community Idea Stations. The Sieminskis also visited Agatha Christie’s Greenway and Blenheim Palace, site of the “Lost Prince.”

Sieminski, a longtime Masterpiece fan who watches the series with his wife on WHTJ PBS, decided the prize would be the perfect celebration for the couple’s anniversary, which fell on April 26, the last day of the sweepstakes. “We love looking at the beautiful locations on Masterpiece, so the opportunity to visit them was impossible to resist,” says Sieminski, who entered the sweepstakes every morning before he left for work. “I was thrilled to tell my wife I won the Masterpiece 40th Anniversary Sweepstakes. How am I going to top this next year?”

Greg decided to write about his experiences and documented them in a travel blog, which will be introduced as a fourteen-part series called the Masterpiece Travel Journal, beginning Christmas Day. He takes us into Christie’s Greenway and gardens, visits with the Duke of Marlborough, and is escorted around Highclere Castle by the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, who opens up his ancesteral home for a private tour.

A collaboration between Masterpiece and VisitBritain, Britain’s national tourism agency, the Masterpiece 40th Anniversary Sweepstakes was an enormous success, with almost 730,000 entries collected during the three-month eligibility period.

Coming up next: The adventure begins!

Don’t forget to watch the highly anticipated Season 2 of “Downton Abbey” premiering January 8, 2012 at 9:00 p.m. on WCVE PBS and WHTJ PBS.