Sarah Ferguson has left the Royal Lodge for a very cold start to 2025 celebration in Altaussee, Austria after spending Christmas with Prince Andrew in Windsor. The trip comes after the exes broke cover minutes before the release of King Charles III’s Christmas speech.
The Duchess of York welcomed 2025 with a new video posted on her Instagram, in which she greeted her fans and shared her gratitude for their support. “A very very Happy New Year to you all and thank you. Just huge gratitude, huge love,” she said and added that it’s minus seven where she’s at and blew three frosty puffs into the camera before concluding her message, “Let’s make joy bubbles and really embrace the love and turn to to joy.”
Fergie, as she’s famously known, also shared a video taken from the grounds of Royal Lodge after Christmas. The 65-year-old shared a wholesome clip in which she looked back at the past 12 months and the challenges that came her way, including her skin cancer and breast cancer diagnosis.
“I have found real joy and peace. It wasn’t cancer that kickstarted me into taking the shackles off my heart, but it was because of mindfulness and mental wellness,” she admitted in the video, which showed her standing under a huge tree accompanied by one of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s pet corgis and her own dog.
She also admitted that she’s not ashamed to admit that the last year had been tough as she revealed her a new partnership with a wellness app called Zoul. She wrote alongside the video: “Sometimes, all of us are overwhelmed by loneliness, anxiety, or sleeplessness. So this year, I decided to seek out tools that can help with healthfulness, wellness, and peacefulness.” Fergie shared that the tool helped her “find peace, quiet (her) mind, and work on (her) own inner strength and resilience.”
Fergie loves Austria and this isn’t the first time she visited the country. She kickstarted the holiday festivities earlier last month to explore the famous Vienna and Salzburg Christmas markets which she said “absolutely didn’t disappoint!”
Then it was back to the U.K. for the Christmas countdown, where she bonded with her daughter Princess Eugenie and her two sons at Windsor Great Park Illuminated.
Aside from Christmas in Sandringham, Sarah and Andrew were also absent from the pre-Christmas lunch King Charles III hosted for the Royals at Buckingham Palace. It’s said that it was her decision to skip the annual event amid ongoing speculations about her ex-husband’s association with alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo. The Duke has since said that he has ceased all contact with Tengbo, who has also denied any unlawful activities and being involved in espionage.
This is the first time since Charles took over the throne that Fergie and Andrew missed Christmas in Sandringham. In 2023, they joined their daughters and their respective husbands for the annual morning walk to Christmas service at St. Mary Magdalene Church.
They later greeted the crowd who had gathered outside and Andrew was even caught on video in a bizarre exchange with a fan. Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank were likewise not at the royal gathering in Norfolk following reports that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle invited her family to California for Christmas.
Published: Jan 3, 2025 10:30 am