Queen cancels trip to rest up for busy, ‘grueling’ autumn

Concerns about the health of Queen Elizabeth II grew Wednesday after Buckingham Palace announced she was “reluctantly” canceling a planned trip to Northern Ireland on doctor’s “advice.”

The news came after the 95-year-old monarch was seen using a walking stick during two engagements last week, and after Vanity Fair reported that doctors had told her to give up alcohol, including her beloved evening martini.

Royal sources have told the U.K. media that “there is no cause for concern” about the queen’s health, and that the trip cancellation is not related to the coronavirus.

“The Queen has reluctantly accepted medical advice to rest for the next few days,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement, the Daily Mail reported. “Her Majesty is in good spirits and is disappointed that she will no longer be able to visit Northern Ireland, where she had been due to undertake a series of engagements today and tomorrow. The Queen sends her warmest good wishes to the people of Northern Ireland, and looks forward to visiting in the future.”

The queen is still expected to host world leaders at the COP26 UN climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland at the end of October. It therefore appears that doctors aren’t overly worried about her health — they just want her to slow down for a bit.

As the Daily Mail and Vanity Fair reported, the queen, five years shy of her 100th birthday, has a busy, “grueling” schedule ahead of her this autumn and in the months leading up to her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June.

Now resting at Windsor Castle, she just ended a packed two weeks of official engagements, according to the Daily Mail. The queen attended 10 major events in 14 days, including a visit to the Ascot Racecourse; a visit to Wales to address the Welsh Parliament; virtual and in-person audiences with the new governor-general of New Zealand and the ambassadors of Japan and the EU; and hosted a reception Tuesday evening at Windsor Castle for delegates at the Global Investment Conference, who included Prime Minister Boris Johnson, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Vanity Fair’s royal reporter Katie Nicholl said that the queen is still “in good physical health.” But she also faces “one of the most important periods in her reign — reaching a milestone 70 years on the throne.” For that reason, Nicholl reported, doctors advised her to forgo alcohol except for special occasions “to ensure she is as healthy as possible for her busy autumn schedule.”

“The queen has been told to give up her evening drink, which is usually a martini,” a family friend told Vanity Fair. “It’s not really a big deal for her, she is not a big drinker but it seems a trifle unfair that at this stage in her life she’s having to give up one of very few pleasures.”

Nicholl also noted that the queen had resumed “a string of engagements” after enduring the loss in April of Prince Philip, her husband of 73 years. She also spent most of 2020 and the early part of 2021 in lockdown at Windsor Castle due to the COVID-19 pandemic.