Carrie Symonds will become the first unmarried partner of a sitting Prime Minister to stay the night at Balmoral when she visits the Queen at her Scottish estate with Boris Johnson
- Carrie Symonds, 31, will join Boris Johnson for the weekend where they will enjoy an informal barbecue
- The public relations expert is expected to meet the Queen at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire
- Margaret Thatcher and Cherie Blair have also stayed at the famous estate
Carrie Symonds is expected to meet the Queen as she accompanies Boris Johnson when he stays at Balmoral next month.
Sources said the Prime Minister’s girlfriend, 31, will join him on the traditional weekend stay at the monarch’s Scottish estate, where they will enjoy an informal barbecue.
Every year, the Queen spends the summer at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, where she is joined by other members of the Royal Family, and traditionally hosts the Prime Minister for a weekend in September.
It is thought that Miss Symonds will be the first unmarried partner of a sitting Prime Minister to stay at Balmoral.
Carrie Symonds (pictured), girlfriend of Boris Johnson, attended a bird fair at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve this week. She is expected to meet the Queen as she accompanies Boris Johnson when he stays at Balmoral next month
Former prime minister David Cameron once said that there was not much ‘chillaxing’ – chilling out and relaxing – at the castle, with the royals spending their time taking part in outdoor pursuits.
And eco-campaigner Miss Symonds – who last week gave a speech about protecting the environment – may find herself at odds with the royals, whose pastimes famously include blood sports.
The public relations expert, who lives in Downing Street with Mr Johnson, 55, resigned as director of communications for the Conservatives last year and is now a senior adviser at Oceana, a US-based environmental campaign group.
Every year, the Queen (pictured) spends the summer at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, where she is joined by other members of the Royal Family
Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly found her stay at Balmoral painful, with an observer writing that a ‘weekend in the country with aristocrats who enjoy riding, shooting, sports and games is Thatcher’s idea of torture’.
While Cherie Blair revealed in her autobiography how her son Leo was conceived at Balmoral when she left her contraception at home out of embarrassment during her stay there with then-PM husband Tony.
At royal residences, servants meticulously unpack luggage for guests and Mrs Blair wrote: ‘In 1998 – I had been extremely disconcerted to discover that everything of mine had been unpacked.
‘Not only my clothes, but the entire contents of my distinctly ancient toilet bag with its range of unmentionables.
‘This year I had been a little more circumspect, and had not packed my contraceptive equipment out of sheer embarrassment. As usual up there, it had been bitterly cold, and what with one thing and another.’