King Charles and Queen Camilla enjoy a few days off in Sandringham to recover from a weekend of coronation celebrations
The King and Queen are taking a break in Sandringham this week to recover from the festive weekend.
Charles, 74, has one engagement today before joining his wife for some well-deserved rest and relaxation at their private estate in Norfolk.
They take the rest of the week off and possibly a few days early next week.
But aides are already busy planning a packed program ahead of their summer holidays, including the annual Order of the Garter ceremony and visits the length and breadth of Britain.
A short state visit abroad is also expected in the fall – possibly their rescheduled trip to France, which had to be canceled at 11 a.m. in March due to civil unrest there.
The King and Queen are taking a break in Sandringham this week to recover from the festive weekend
The King and Queen pictured in the Sandringham grounds in December 2019
A long-distance foreign visit is also scheduled, with the king confirming he will travel to Samoa in the South Pacific next year for the meeting of Commonwealth heads of government.
Located halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii – nearly 10,000 miles away – it will be a grueling journey for Charles, who will be 75 by then. The Queen turns 76.
It is therefore likely that he will try to fit in stops in Australia and New Zealand, both countries where he is still head of state and where it has been a long time since a senior royal would visit him. More immediately, the king has planned several major public engagements, but details cannot yet be revealed.
The Queen is also planning her first Reading Room Festival at West London’s Hampton Court Palace next month, now that her Instagram book club has become a literacy charity.
Sources have said the pair are delighted that their CoronaFANtion went so well, despite the inclement weather on Saturday, and were “thrilled” to see so many people enjoying the weekend’s celebrations.
But reportedly they are ready for a few days ‘out of the spotlight’.
While the King, like his late mother, never stops working – dealing with the state’s ‘red boxes’ on a daily basis – he considers Sandringham a ‘tonic’.
Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales told a helper at a Big Help Out event in Slough yesterday that his children were “so tired” after the coronation weekend that he feared he would “have trouble getting them to school today.”
Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis stole the show at many public events over the holiday weekend.