Every year, Queen Elizabeth leaves London for her annual holiday at Balmoral. She and Prince Philip pack it up (well, we assume someone else does the actual packing) at Buckingham Palace and spend the next two months at her favorite residence in the Scottish Highlands. This year, however, her vacation has been delayed a bit, because even royals have to deal with fickle travel issues.
The Queen usually departs on July 20, but a political turn of events means she won’t be leaving until a few days later. Theresa May officially announced her resignation from her position as Prime Minister at the end of May, but the new PM, who will be chosen by a postal ballot of around 160,000 dues-paying Conservative Party members, will be announced on July 23, just after the Queen planned on being settled into Balmoral. As such, Queen Elizabeth won’t be making the trek to her Scotland country home until after she meets the newly selected Prime Minister, reports the Daily Mail. To be honest, we thought she would just helicopter around, but perhaps she just didn’t feel all the travel was worth it.
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Queen Elizabeth is typically already out of Buckingham Palace by the time it opens to the public during the summer (from July 20 through September 29), so she doesn’t have to deal with loads of tourists coming in and out of her palatial abode. But don’t get too excited if you thought that buying a ticket to see the Palace this year means you’ll get a peek of the Queen of England—instead, Queen Elizabeth is reportedly staying at Windsor Castle, her official country residence.
So even though she has to postpone her favorite holiday by a few days, at least she’ll have some fun neighbors for the time being, as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are in residence at Frogmore Cottage with Archie. All the royals are essentially getting ready for summer break right now, including Prince William and Kate Middleton, but perhaps the Cambridges, Sussexes and the Queen will all get together for Prince George’s birthday on July 22. Now that Prince George is turning six, maybe he’ll retire the knee socks.
Even if they can’t make it work at Windsor, the whole fam will be back together soon enough—all the royals go to Balmoral at some point during the summer. Hopefully, Prince Philip gets to barbecue this time around, though the impending heatwave isn’t boding well for his grill time.
