The Queen’s annual welcome to Balmoral Castle for her summer holidays will look a little different this year, with a smaller, more intimate ceremony on the cards.
The monarch will do away with the usual pomp of the occasion, which includes a greeting by a guard of honour, grouse shooting, deer stalking and the receiving of government ministers.
But in aid of the Queen’s “comfort”, this year’s event will be held inside the grounds of Balmoral, according to a royal source. Neither the public nor the media will be invited to the ceremony.
In keeping with usual practice, the Queen arrived in Scotland on 21 July and had been staying Craigowan Lodge on her estate and will move to her main Balmoral home on Tuesday.
Her stay at the castle is expected to also be “business as usual” and will include visits from members of the royal family, a palace source said.
The Queen, 96, has faced episodic mobility issues since last autumn and now regularly uses a walking stick. She has also been forced to shorten the legnth of a number of official engagements this year.
She missed much of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June, but did make two separate brief appearances on the Buckingham Palace balcony.
She is also expected to cut short her summer holiday and travel back to England to hold audiences with the outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson and his successor in early September.
