The car photos in this post are from Sunday, April 21. King Charles drove to and from Crathie Kirk for a Sunday church service. Camilla rode shotgun. As Beyonce said: Pedal so heavy, like the two most wanted, and I/Don’t know what you’re doin’ tonight, but I/I’ll be your shotgun rider ’til the day I die. People didn’t understand that Beyonce and Miley were singing about Charles and Camilla, but it’s true! Charles and Camilla have been staying at Birkhall for (I think) about two weeks. I guess Camilla flew down to London last week specifically for her one Buckingham Palace event, then she flew back to Scotland?

Anyway, April has been a weird month for royal gossip and royal sightings. While the weeks on either side of Easter Sunday are usually quieter for the Windsors, I really didn’t think that both Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace would go so silent for weeks on end. It looks like BP is steadily making plans for Charles to make a “return to public life” in June. Not only with Trooping the Colour (scheduled for June 15th) but with Royal Ascot as well:

The King is understood to be keen to attend Royal Ascot this summer to “honour the late Queen’s memory”. King Charles, 75, plans to spend “at least” one day at the summer racing festival, which was a highlight in the late monarch’s calendar every year.

A racing source told the Mail on Sunday: “Racing is an important part of the legacy that he inherited from his mother and one that he treasures. That’s why he will be so keen to go.”

The newspaper reported that he will host a lunch for a select “bubble” of friends and family while there.

It comes as the monarch has taken a step back from his public engagements since early February while he has been receiving treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer. He has continued to conduct state business behind closed doors, including his daily red boxes and weekly meetings with the Prime Minister, but has scaled down his public appearances on medical advice from his doctors.

However, aides have spoken of hopes that the King will continue to take “gentle steps” back into public life after he attended an Easter Service in Windsor and undertook an unexpected walkabout to meet members of the public.

His treatment has not caused him serious side effects and the source has added that “the road ahead is looking very positive” as diary plans evolve. Adjusted guidance from his doctors allowed him to undertake the public walkabout over Easter and it is thought that this would also allow him to see members of the public in the open air at Ascot in a few months.

[From The Telegraph]

To hear many royal experts talk about the Windsors’ annus horribilis, there’s definitely a movement to make Charles’s condition sound quietly dire, like he probably won’t be around this time next year. It does feel like that’s a factor in the absolute panic we’ve seen from Kensington Palace and Prince William too, although I would argue that Charles seems to be handling all of this better than KP. All of which to say, Charles is projecting a tone of cautious optimism and I sort of buy it. I believe we’ll see him at Trooping and Ascot and he’ll probably host some garden parties too. The real question is: will we see the Princess of Wales at all in the coming months?

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.