Queen gives up own bed to save £3 million

ALMOST two weeks after the Queen headed to Balmoral, she will finally be able to sleep in her own bed. For Her Majesty has had to spend the past 11 nights staying in a house in the grounds of her Scottish retreat.

The reason is that the castle was open to paying members of the public until Sunday as part of a drive to help pay the £3 million annual running costs of the 50,000 acre estate. ‘The Queen is prepared to make sacrifices in order to keep costs down,’ a courtier tells me.

She and Prince Philip have been staying at Craigowan Lodge, a seven-bedroom stone house a mile from the castle which is normally used for guests.

Balmoral, which was bought by Queen Victoria’s consort Prince Albert for £32,000 in 1852, is said to be the Queen’s favourite home, where she relaxes by going for walks on the Aberdeenshire estate, eating picnics and cooking barbecues.

It offers her and her family the sort of privacy and seclusion they are denied in the royal palaces, something they only get when they stay there or at Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate.

‘It’s the most beautiful place on earth,’ Princess Eugenie said earlier this year. ‘I think Granny is the most happy there. She really, really loves the Highlands. Walks, picnics, dogs — a lot of 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.’

In her book The Final Curtsey, the Queen’s cousin and childhood playmate Margaret Rhodes describes a telling conversation with HM. While the pair were out riding at Balmoral one day the Queen suddenly turned in the saddle and asked Mrs Rhodes: ‘Could you bear to live in suburbia?’