Mail Online

Stuck for hols ideas? What about a break at Camilla’s place...

PERHAPS you missed out on an invitation to the Coronation, or long ago abandoned hope of being asked to a Buckingham Palace garden party — or of being bidden there to receive an MBE or other gong?

But don’t despair: very soon indeed, you’ll be able to holiday with Queen Camilla — not, quite, in an adjoining room, but a yard or two from the country house to which she retreats for a respite from the relentless toll of life in the public eye.

For I can reveal that her neighbour, who shares a private drive with Camilla, has just been given permission to use one of his outbuildings as a holiday cottage.

This is, I fear, likely to dismay the Queen, who has always seen handsome, Grade II-listed Ray Mill House, which has enviable views of the River Avon in Wiltshire, as a place of complete sanctuary.

Indeed, on a previous occasion, when her neighbour applied to build a ‘granny flat’, she enlisted assistance from Charlie Craven, the estate manager at Highgrove, King Charles’s Gloucestershire residence, in her battle against the proposal.

Craven wrote to Wiltshire Council, saying that the proposed flat would ‘have a negative effect on the flow of water from the river during periods of flooding’. Explaining that he had, by then, been ‘involved with’ Camilla’s property for six years, he added that, during that time, the river had repeatedly flooded. ‘Anything that hinders or alters the natural flow of the river to the detriment of other properties is clearly unacceptable.’

On that occasion, Craven’s objections did the trick — only for Camilla’s neighbour to modify his proposals and subsequently secure permission for the granny flat.

The prospect of holidaymakers — perhaps even Airbnb weekenders — tootling along her drive or whooping it up within coronet throwing distance of her house, which she bought for £850,000 in 1996, following her divorce from Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, seems likely to be just as ‘unacceptable’.

Ray Mill House is where, a friend once remarked, Camilla can ‘sit down with a big G&T, kick off her shoes and watch TV’. Perhaps Airbnb guests can stump up extra to join her on her sofa?

Fighting Cancel Culture

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2023-05-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-05-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://mailonline.pressreader.com/article/282067691308398

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