The King is doing extremely well, says Camilla
THE Queen last night reassured well-wishers that King Charles was ‘doing extremely well under the circumstances’.
It was Camilla’s first official engagement since the monarch’s cancer diagnosis was made public.
She made the assurance after she travelled more than 200 miles from Sandringham, Norfolk to Salisbury, Wiltshire for a charity event.
Ben Abbott, 40, of Wiltshire Air Ambulance, asked Camilla: ‘I do hope His Majesty is doing well Ma’am.’
She replied: ‘He is doing extremely well under the circumstances. We are very touched by all of the letters and messages the public have been sending from everywhere. That’s very cheering.’
The Queen, 76, had already been scheduled to attend the musical evening at Salisbury Cathedral to celebrate the work of three local charities.
She has long supported the Wiltshire Bobby Van Trust, the Wiltshire Air Ambulance and Community First, as well as the regimental charities of the Grenadier Guards and The Rifles.
Camilla has been with her husband at their Sandringham Estate all week as he recuperates. Staff had arranged for her to take the monarch’s official helicopter from Norfolk to Wiltshire, but heavy rain meant her local helipad was flooded.
Aides feared having to cancel, but Queen Camilla was determined not to let anyone down and set her sights on finding a way. The 76-year- old insisted on driving the 205 miles, a fivehour journey.
A source said: ‘It’s been a tough week but Her Majesty was determined not to let people down. She knows the organisers personally and the charities are three she is very much involved in. Plus she was concerned that if she cancelled at the last minute it would spark all sorts of alarm about His Majesty, who is actually doing well.
‘She’s always been a trouper and decided that if a 400-odd mile, ten-hour round trip was the only way to do it, then that’s what she would do.’
Camilla stayed overnight at Ray Mill, her private home nearby, and will drive back to Sandringham to be reunited with her husband today. Meanwhile, the King’s sister was also out on her fourth consecutive day of public engagements and was inundated with good wishes for him as she visited a pony centre.
Anne, 73, thanked well-wishers as she undertook an engagement at the Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre in west London in her role as vice-patron of the British Horse Society.
It came as a cancer charity revealed it has seen a ‘King Charles effect’ with a surge in visits to its website. Macmillan Cancer Support said Charles’s openness about his diagnosis meant its information and support pages saw 48,304 hits on Monday, when the news broke.
This is a 42 per cent increase on the same day last year and is the highest daily figure since at least March 2020. Charles has been patron of Macmillan for more than 25 years, having taken up the role in 1997.
Last month, NHS England saw a massive surge in people looking for information on melanoma skin cancer after Sarah, Duchess of York, was diagnosed with the disease. The page received one visit every 13 seconds.
‘Public has been very cheering’