Balmoral Castle was Queen’s happy place in the Highlands
The Balmoral estate in the windswept Scottish Highlands was Queen Elizabeth’s happy place, one that offered privacy and endless space for the monarch to drop her guard and be herself.
The Balmoral estate in the windswept Scottish Highlands was Queen Elizabeth’s happy place, one that offered privacy and endless space for the monarch to drop her guard and be herself.
The Queen was a regular visitor to the vast 20,000ha estate, an hour outside Aberdeen, where she would go tramping across the moors with her dogs, horseriding, shooting, and eating alfresco with her family.
Her husband, the late Prince Philip, would man the barbecue, while the family would eat lunch from plates balanced on their knees, the Queen often dressed in tartan skirts and a headscarf tied under her chin.
It was at Balmoral Estate that the pint-sized monarch famously terrorised the future King of Saudi Arabia when she took him on a personal tour in her Land Rover.
Women were not permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia when then-Crown Prince Abdullah visited Balmoral in 2003, and the Queen didn’t have a driver’s licence.
So Crown Prince Abdullah was surprised when he settled into the front passenger seat of the Land Rover, only to see the Queen climbing into the driver’s seat.
The former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, revealed years later that the Queen had taken the Saudi royal on a fast lap around the estate’s winding roads. Abdullah had no experience of being driven by a woman, let alone a Queen.
“His nervousness only increased as the Queen, an army driver in wartime, accelerated the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time. Through his interpreter, the crown prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead,’’ Sir Sherard wrote in his biography. His source was apparently the Queen herself, who recounted the anecdote gleefully during a private audience.
Her Majesty’s granddaughter Princess Eugenie said in 2016 that the Queen “really, really loves the Highlands’’, and that Balmoral was her favourite residence.
“I think she is most happy there,’’ Princess Eugenie said. “Walks, picnics, dogs – a lot of dogs, there’s always dogs – and people coming in and out all the time. It’s a lovely base for Granny and Grandpa, for us to come and see them up there, where you just have room to breathe and run.’’
While the estate dates back to about 1390, the British royal family’s connection to it began in 1852 when Prince Albert bought it as a gift for his wife, Queen Victoria. It was expanded and new buildings added, the original castle torn down, and in 1856, the Balmoral Castle, which became the Queen’s summer home, was completed.
An enormous structure built in the Scottish baronial style with turrets and towers, it is constructed from granite quarried from the estate, and offered privacy and solitude for a family used to living in the public eye.
Princes William and Harry were staying at Balmoral when they were told their mother, Princess Diana, had died in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
While Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are owned by the British taxpayer-funded Crown Estate, two royal residences, Balmoral, and Sandringham in Norfolk, are privately owed. The Queen’s father, father King George VI, purchased Balmoral and Sandringham while trying to untangle the family’s complicated finances in 1936, when his brother King Edward VIII abdicated to marry his American lover, Wallis Simpson.
The Queen regularly visited Balmoral as a child, and as an adult travelled there every summer, spending several months there each year, where she was regularly visited by family, and occasionally by foreign dignitaries, royals and prime ministers.
Outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson and his replacement, Liz Truss, were her final two official visitors, each spending less than an hour with her on Tuesday. In years past, political leaders would join the royals for dinner. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, who visited Balmoral several times, revealed the Queen would do the dishes herself after dinner.
Balmoral is a working estate supporting cattle, sheep, ponies and deer, and is also open to the public for tours.
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