Princess Kate planning top-secret family getaway

The Princess of Wales and her family could be about to pack up and head off for a secret overseas holiday, the likes of which we haven’t seen for years.

In 1914, Germany’s Kaiser ‘Willy’ wrote to his cousin, Tsar ‘Nicky’ of Russia, “We poor rulers it seems are not entitled to holidays like other simple mortals.” (Imagine – having to do a jot of paperwork while Willy sunned his sausagey limbs as he was doing in Corfu at the time. Horror!)

Throne-sitters might not think they get breaks but I’m pleased to report that heirs to the throne and their better halves do.

The northern summer is here and with the season’s major tent pole royal events done, dusted and the horses put away neatly – Trooping the Colour, Garter day, and Royal Ascot – it’s time for the House of Windsor to tootle off on hols.

Even better news – this year could see Prince William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, break from the tradition of recent years and be planning a major holiday far, far away from the UK.

A whole lot of sunshine, the sound of lapping waves and a Colleen Hoover paperback crumbed with sand, you say? That sounds like just what a princess battling cancer might need right about now.

Charles’s vision of having the public wandering through the rooms that William’s children, including Louis, sleep in, was met with an icy response. Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage

Those Windsors of ours are as predictable as a Swiss railway timetable and often about as exciting. Every year King Charles and his extended family of nieces, nephews, cousins, second cousins, third cousins and everyone’s dogs, process north to Scotland in various waves for some low level legally enforceable bonding amid the heather.

The Waleses are not exempt, even though ‘Grandpa Wales’ has opened up Balmoral to mouth-breaking tourists, much to the prince’s reported chagrin. (In June, friends of William’s told the Sunday Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah that he “did not instantly warm to Charles’s vision of the public wandering through the rooms that his children, George, Charlotte and Louis, have the run of each summer.”)

Anmer Hall, at Anmer in Norfolk on the Sandringham estate. Picture: Alamy

Which is to say that at some stage in the next couple of months Louis will be worryingly close to a lot of fly fishing kit, a situation that all but guarantees hijinks.

Also on the holiday agenda for the Wales family will be spending time at their Norfolk home, Anmer Hall, where they tend to retreat outside of term time or when the urge to build architecturally significant sandcastles becomes too great. (Twice in June alone, the Waleses’ Kensington Palace office released official photos of William and the kids taken on beaches in that part of the world.)

But wait, there’s more! More possible holidaying to be done by the first family of the Lambrook set that is.

Prince William with the kids in Instagram post celebrating his birthday in Norfolk. Picture: Instagram/ princeandprincessofwales

A photo also taken in Norfolk shows Prince William and children Luis, Charlotte and George, for Fathers Day. Credit: The Princess of Wales

According to Vanity Fair’s Katie Nicholl William and Kate could be planning another, third destination. Nicholl has now reported that: “Sources say … [that] if Princess Kate is well enough, they may escape to Mustique … Kate’s favourite holiday destination – for some sunshine.”

Hear that? That’s the Waleses’ local King’s Lynn Boots chemist running out of SPF 50.

The private Caribbean island of Mustique was once a regular haunt for the prince and princess and her kids. (It was the destination of baby George’s first overseas trip in August 2014.)

For years before the pandemic, William and Kate would pack up their family, longtime nanny Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, and as much mosquito repellent as would fit in an Asprey steamer trunk and jet off to enjoy a beachy break.

Clearly Mustique it’s somewhere where the family can let their hair down. Picture: https://www.mustique-island.com/villa/indigo/

Birthday boy George, who turned 11-years-old on Monday, is no stranger to the island, having spent his fifth and sixth birthdays there too.

Clearly it’s somewhere where the family can let their hair down.

“They love it here; they can be natural,” Elizabeth Saint, who runs the island’s equestrian centre, has previously told Nicholl. “Mustique is a haven and sanctuary for them because no one ever talks about what goes on here.”

They are looking for that SPF 50 right now. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

(The exception came in 2013 when a pregnant Kate was controversially papped on the beach with William. The UK press refused to publish the photos.)

Nicholl, writing in Kate: The Future Queen, says that while on Mustique, those crazy Wales kids get up to activities including tennis, volleyball and drinks at the famed Basil’s Bar.

(Supposedly the prince drinks vodka cranberries while Kate has ordered piña coladas. Clearly the last of the great partiers.)

Mustique is stunning. Picture: iStock

But 2024 has been anything but normal for William and Kate and their family. In the current climate, if the Waleses were to head off to bob around in the balmy waters and to try to reinflate Louis’ inflatable polo pony, it would be a particularly positive sign about the princess.

In the last five weeks, Kate has appeared in public twice, in a year that has seen her otherwise completely and utterly withdraw from view.

Still, as Kate herself made clear in her highly personal June statement, “I am making good progress, but as anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and bad days”.

Even if la famille Wales are getting ready for an international trip, and George is currently packing his carry on with the collected letters of Willy and Nicky for some light poolside reading, what comes next is uncertain. After Kate attended the men’s finals at Wimbledon

last week, the Telegraph reported that the princess will now be off until “later this year at the earliest”.

For now though, let’s hope it’s going to be piña colada o’clock for the princess very soon and that someone has remembered that their security detail needs to slip, slop, slap too.

Nobody wants a burnt bodyguard now do they?

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Princess Kate planning top-secret family getaway