The Royal Autumn Escape: Why the Court Always Leaves London When the Leaves Turn
Queen Victoria bought Balmoral in 1852 and the court has left town every autumn since. The case for following them, and for the British boot-maker who understands the country weekend.
There is a moment, usually somewhere in the third week of August, when London stops being charming. The pavements hold the heat. The parks look tired. And the light starts arriving at that low, slanted angle that makes even Marylebone feel like it is quietly asking you to leave.
The royal family worked this out roughly a century and a half ago.
The oldest rhythm in the royal year
Queen Victoria bought the Balmoral estate in 1852, and ever since, the family has decamped north each summer and stayed put well past the point where the rest of us go back to our desks. King Charles and Queen Camilla spend August on the Aberdeenshire estate, joined in shifts by different branches of the family. The King is traditionally there into September: fishing, walking the estate, hosting the Ghillies Ball for the staff, ground staff and locals before the season closes.
Then the year turns again and the whole thing repeats itself at Sandringham for Christmas. For the fuller picture of the Highland summer, see our guide to Balmoral and the royal summer.
It is worth noticing how deliberate this is. These are people who could holiday anywhere on earth, and for a hundred and seventy years they have chosen the same damp, green, unglamorous answer. Not a resort. A wet hill, a river, a dog, a long walk, and dinner with people they actually know.
The pattern is unmistakable. When autumn arrives, you go to the country.
The version available to the rest of us
Most of us cannot manage a Scottish estate. But a Friday train, a borrowed spare room, a pub with a fire in it and a Saturday spent walking somewhere muddy. That is entirely achievable, and it is the single best thing you can do with an English October.
The trains to almost anywhere green leave Paddington, Marylebone or King’s Cross every twenty minutes. The bag takes ten minutes to pack. The only part that genuinely requires thought is what goes on your feet, because a country weekend punishes the wrong shoes faster than almost anything else. Town boots die in a wet field. Walking boots cannot come to dinner.
You want one pair that does both halves of the weekend. Which brings us to a very particular British name.
Why Penelope Chilvers understands this better than most
Penelope Chilvers founded her label in 2002 and showed her first collection at Paris Fashion Week, having started out at her kitchen table with a hundred pairs sold to a Notting Hill boutique. She trained as a painter at Byam Shaw before a Spanish Ministry of Culture scholarship took her to Madrid, and it is Spain that shaped the shoes.
Her signature Long Tassel Boot came out of her years in Barcelona, riding through the Collserola hills at lunchtime in boots made by local artisans. She went back to those same hill workshops and commissioned her own version, cut close to the ankle, with the scalloped zip detail and hanging tassels that became the label’s signature.
They are still made in Spain by the same kind of craftspeople. Goodyear welted, commando rubber soles, replaceable: built on the assumption that you will keep them rather than replace them.
Which is precisely why Catherine, Princess of Wales, has. She first wore her conker-brown Long Tassel boots in 2004, at the Blenheim Palace Game Fair, and has been photographed in them repeatedly ever since. By the designer’s own account she has never replaced that original pair: more than twenty years of school runs, farm visits and Highland walks in one pair of boots. It is the most persuasive endorsement in British footwear, and nobody had to pay for it. Our piece on Catherine’s country style tells the full story.
There is a second royal thread, too. The label’s collaboration with India Hicks, goddaughter of King Charles, granddaughter of Lord Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, and one of the bridesmaids at the 1981 wedding at St Paul’s, produced a run of riding boots drawn from her grandparents’ world. Which is about as Court & Capital as footwear gets.
And now the part that matters
The End of Season Boot Sale is live, with discounts of 50 to 80% and a further 10% off with the code SALE10.
That is not a gentle seasonal markdown. The Rein riding boot has come down from £399 to £120. Chelsea boots that were £249 are £75. These are the prices that make an investment brand briefly, thrillingly, not one.
The catch is the obvious one: this is a clearance, not a rolling promotion. Eight of the nineteen boots in the sale had already sold out when we looked, including the two deepest cuts of the lot. Sizes go first and they do not come back. Browse the End of Season Boot Sale.
If you have been circling this brand for a couple of years waiting for a reason, this is the reason.
For the practical half of this, the seven pairs still in stock that are actually worth your money, and what each one is good for, read part two: The Edit: Seven Penelope Chilvers Boots for a City-to-Country Autumn.
If you would rather build the whole country wardrobe from the boot room up, our guide to the British countryside wardrobe covers the wax jackets, wellies and tweeds that go with them.
