This is how the British Royals spend their holidays at Balmoral Castle

It’s widely acknowledged that Balmoral is the Queen’s favourite of her many homes–with the monarch decamping to the Aberdeenshire castle in high summer every year. “It’s the most beautiful place on earth,” Princess Eugenie said in an ITV documentary released to coincide with Her Majesty’s 90th birthday. “I think Granny is the most happy there. I think she really, really loves the Highlands.” It’s a feeling shared by Balmoral’s first royal owner, Queen Victoria, who famously called the estate her “heaven on earth”.

How do the royal family spend their holidays at Balmoral?

According to Princess Eugenie, the royals’ favourite activities during their summer holidays are wonderfully normal. “Walks, picnics, dogs—a lot of dogs, there’s always 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.” Fishing and stalking are also on the itinerary—as are parlour games and regular barbecues, with Prince Philip acting as grillmaster.

In fact, over the decades, numerous visiting Prime Ministers have been surprised by how down-to-earth the royal family’s lifestyle is at Balmoral. Tony Blair wrote incredulously about Her Majesty doing the washing up in his autobiography: “The Queen asks if you’ve finished, she stacks the plates up and goes off to the sink.” (He also noted that the Windsors served cocktails with the strength of “true rocket fuel”.) Margaret Thatcher, meanwhile, is said to have presented the Queen with some Marigolds after noticing that she did the dishes without gloves.

Of course, there are still certain royal holiday traditions considered sacrosanct. Not only is the Queen greeted each morning by a bagpiper under her window, but she hosts the annual Ghillies’ Ball in the Balmoral ballroom and oversees the Braemar Gathering as Chieftain of the Highland Games each year. (Her Majesty particularly enjoys the tug-of-war, and is frequently captured laughing hysterically with the Duke of Edinburgh during the sack race.) The royals and any visiting guests also attend services on Crathie Kirk, a small parish on the Balmoral estate, every Sunday.

Who is invited to Balmoral Castle?

Virtually every member of the royal family has visited the Balmoral estate through the years. Notably, Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, spent part of their honeymoon at Balmoral–with the pair returning frequently with their sons throughout their marriage. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have regularly visited Balmoral together since their university days at St Andrews, staying at the three-bedroom Tam-na-Ghar cottage–and now regularly make the trip up from Anmer Hall with Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Princess Louis during the summer. Meanwhile, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were also due to join the Queen in Scotland this year with baby Archie in tow, but have had to postpone their trip in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to family members, the Queen has also welcomed a number of key politicians to her Scottish home. Every sitting Prime Minister is expected to visit once a year—with varying degrees of success. Harold Wilson reportedly adored his trips to Balmoral, helping with the barbecue and joining in a number of parlour games created by the royals, while John Major’s Scottish excursions were less tranquil. According to The Guardian, he found the near-constant music fairly distracting while speaking to the Italian Prime Minister on the phone. “After a while, he said, ‘What on earth is wrong with this line, I can’t hear a thing?’” Major explained. “It was the bagpipes. I had been there a few days and utterly forgotten that they were being played, but they were. I’d shut them out, but he couldn’t. [It was] a very difficult conversation with him.”

Perhaps the most notorious visit to Balmoral, however? That of the then Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 1998, at which point no female Saudi Arabian citizen was permitted to drive. After offering her guest a tour of Balmoral, Her Majesty proceeded to get behind the wheel—much to the Crown Prince’s chagrin—and drive off at top speed. “Abdullah was not used to being driven by a woman, let alone a Queen,” Saudi ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles later recalled in his memoir. “His nervousness only increased as the Queen, an Army driver in wartime, accelerated the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time. Through his interpreter, the Crown Prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead.”

What is the history of Balmoral Castle?

As you might expect, the private residence has a long history. Prince Albert first purchased the estate for Queen Victoria in 1952. The royal couple had previously spent a holiday in Scotland on Loch Laggan in the west Highlands, but a bout of terrible weather convinced them that Aberdeenshire might be a more suitable location for them. (“Alas! A very wet morning & day,” Victoria wrote in her diary on August 21, 1847—one of countless mentions of the less-than-ideal weather.)

After purchasing Balmoral, Prince Albert set about overseeing renovations—building a fresh castle in the Scottish Baronial style using pale granite from the nearby Glen Gelder quarries. Through the years, certain descendants of Queen Victoria have left their mark on the estate in various ways—from Queen Mary planting elaborate flower gardens on the south lawn to the Duke of Edinburgh establishing a vegetable patch, which is harvested each summer during the royal family’s visit.

In addition to Balmoral itself, there are a number of other properties on the grounds of the 50,000-acre estate—including the seven-bedroom Craigowan Lodge, where the Queen usually lives while the main castle is open to tourists at the beginning of the season, and Birkhall, the Scottish residence of Prince Charles. Queen Victoria additionally had a number of cottages built in the grounds—most notably, Garden Cottage, where she used to write her diaries.

This article originally appeared on Vogue.co.uk

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