III

Lindisfarne and Bamburgh, Northumberland

Day one Circular walk of Lindisfarne (4 miles)
Day two Budle Bay to Bamburgh to (5 miles)

The first swallows are swooping round the headland as I follow the coast path along the western side of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. There are ringed plovers on the beach and a couple of grey seals bobbing out at sea. A barefoot guy is splashing along the tidal Pilgrim’s Way, an ancient post-marked path across shining sands. Lindisfarne is only accessible when receding tides uncover this path and the curving causeway road nearby.

The original 62 miles of Northumberland coast path, which opened 20 years ago, bypassed the island, so I’ve been looking forward to walking this stretch of the England coast path, which opened two years ago.

Very few of us will walk the full 2,700 miles of the King Charles III England coast path, which was inaugurated in March, but a four-mile stroll around Holy Island is an adventure in itself, a shifting landscape of wader-foraged mudflats, dunes, beaches, whinstone cliffs and a reedy blue-and-gold lough.

Waymarked posts lead through grassy sand dunes, freckled with cowslips. Skylarks and stonechats clack and chirrup, while courting lapwings tumble over the fields. Gertrude Jekyll’s little walled garden, on the hillside facing the clifftop castle, is bright with marigolds and purple rock cress.

Edward Hudson, founder of Country Life magazine, bought Lindisfarne Castle in 1901 and hired architect Edwin Lutyens to turn it into a home. Inside the craggy fortress, there are four-postered bedrooms and an elegant drawing room in the old gunpowder store. From the ramparts, a telescope shows the seal colony near two obelisks guiding boats into Holy Island harbour.

Just over the fields are the red sandstone arches of Lindisfarne Priory; these ruins date from the 12th century but a monastery was founded here by Saint Aidan in Northumbria’s seventh-century heyday. I walk past stacks of lobster pots to visit the museum with its carved stone crosses and fossil rosaries. Nearby Pilgrims Coffee offers fancy brews and fresh focaccia.

A stream of cars crosses Lindisfarne causeway, but you can arrive instead on bus 477 from Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mon-Sat in school holidays; otherwise Wed-Sat). A bus ticket gets you 10% off at the castle and 20% off at the priory. With good transport links, Berwick makes an excellent base for exploring this end of the coast path.

Getting off bus X18 at Budle Bay campsite the next day, I continue walking south towards Bamburgh. The original coast path runs inland from Lindisfarne, but there are now 10 miles of seasonally sensitive coastal access, open in June and July, plus this short new year-round path on the south-eastern edge of Budle Bay.

Wading birds forage in the mudflats and miles of moss-green salt marsh. Past ruined lime kilns and coconut-scented gorse, I cross cliffs into dunes, where a grasshopper warbler whirrs among roses and honeysuckle. The Walled Garden cafe, opposite St Aidan’s church, serves huge crab sandwiches with lemon and herbs. Nearby, the Norman keep of Bamburgh Castle has towered for nearly 900 years over the wide yellow sands.

Transport for this trip was provided by LNER. The nearest mainline station to Lindisfarne is Berwick-upon-Tweed. The Walls B&B (doubles from £130 B&B) overlooks the Tweed, or there is a YHA hostel next door (private rooms from £57)
Phoebe Taplin

Around the Wash, Norfolk and Lincolnshire

From King’s Lynn
To Sutton Bridge
Distance 15 miles

Isolation is claimed to be one of the latest trends in luxury travel. If true, then the stretch of the King Charles path around the Wash must be the most extravagant pleasure you can enjoy in England.

For hours I traversed a landscape of no people. No walkers, no workers, no houses, no cars, no noise except the shrill cry of redshank and the babble of skylarks drifting on the wind. If you’re weary of chatter and conflict, this undeniably desolate walk is for you. Every view of vast horizontals of green, brown and blue could be the cover for an album entitled Nowhere.

I set out from King’s Lynn, one of England’s most vibrant ports in the 13th century, which retains a wealth of medieval buildings. The coast path around the Wash, England’s biggest natural bay, requires excursions inland to cross the rivers that feed the largest multiple estuary system in Britain. Several miles can be sliced from the King’s Lynn section by taking the ferry across the Great Ouse from the old port to West Lynn.

I find no sign of life at the bottom of Ferry Lane, only a mysterious notice: “If you require the ferry please make yourself seen BEFORE the time NOT AFTER”. After 15 minutes pondering its meaning, I spot a small boat crossing the turbulent brown water.

I’m ferryman Ben’s only passenger and he’s convinced I’ll be cold in my shorts. “No shelter out there,” he warns. It’s a blustery May day, and I head up the western bank of the river.

The Ouse sparkles silver and blue, but there is only a distant line of bronze representing the retreating North Sea. The sea views are underwhelming yet the effect is rather like being at sea, the seabank a kind of ship, ushering us between the vast prairie fields of the reclaimed Fens on one side and epic salt marshes on the other.

Most of this 15-mile stretch between King’s Lynn and Sutton Bridge borders the Wash. The south-eastern corner of this national nature reserve was first recognised as a precious home for stupendous flocks of wintering wildfowl and breeding waders by Sir Peter Scott, the 20th-century conservationist and artist who helped found the World Wide Fund for Nature.

He would be delighted by the wealth of little and great white egrets along the seabank, and it is only birds I have for company (I encounter just three walkers all day). I eat my packed lunch in the shelter of a stunted hawthorn – notices warn walkers there are no toilets, cafes or public transport on this section.

The grand liminal arena of the Wash, where land and sea blur into one, plays tricks on distances and perspectives. Faraway trees pop up like a mirage above the blue horizon. For a while I entertain myself with “ship or tractor?” when spying a distant machine. I see both.

I pass a mysterious island, identified on the map as the Outer Trial Bank, a test to see if more land might be wrenched from the sea. When I follow the path inland again alongside the River Nene, and pass the old lighthouse where Scott once lived, it is like returning to land after a sea voyage.

Other stretches of the coast path are unquestionably more scenic, but there’s something glorious and trance-like about walking for so long in such space and solitude. On the bus back to King’s Lynn, I glow from this unique experience.

Accommodation is limited around the Wash, but King’s Lynn is a good option, with day walks either side (Hunstanton to King’s Lynn is 17 miles with buses to get you out/back). The Bank House (doubles from £165 B&B) is in the historic old town
Patrick Barkham

The west Somerset coast

From Minehead
To St Audries Bay
Distance 11 miles

Minehead may be the birthplace of the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, but it’s a coastal, rather than cosmic, odyssey I’m beginning here, walking 11 miles east to St Audries Bay.

Despite this being one of Somerset’s most well-trodden stretches of coast, few tackle it in one go; tides dictate when beach paths are passable, and return journeys rely on a public transport system that doesn’t yet stretch to moonbuses, so many visitors opt for circular hikes instead. Until now I’ve done the same, but the opening of the England coast path has inspired me to pull on my walking boots and lace together the sections I’ve skipped.

It’s not a propitious start. Coastal erosion has forced a 1½-mile diversion leaving Minehead. Instead of clamouring gannets and the rush of waves, I’m trailed by the rumble of engines as the route follows the A39. It’s not far to Dunster, however, where the soundtrack switches to lawnmowers and willow warblers, and I’m soon at the beach.

Clattering shingle underfoot, I’m buffeted along to the village of Blue Anchor, with its huddle of beach chalets. Along the promenade, I meet angler Steve, who’s hoping for dogfish or conger.

“Will you eat them,” I ask?

“I’m soft,” he smiles. “I throw them back. If I want fish, I go to the chippy.”

From here on, the path gets steeper and prettier, detouring around the headland through woods trimmed with blossom and birdsong. Midweek, the trail is quiet, despite the herds of caravans corralled in adjacent fields.

Approaching Watchet, the path spills on to the grassy earthworks of Daw’s Castle, a clifftop fortress founded by King Alfred to stave off Viking raiders. Fossil hunting is another long tradition along this coast, and when I stop at the town’s Market House Museum, I’m transfixed by a huge ammonite, found on a nearby beach a century and a half ago.

It’s market day in Watchet, and the trail leads past a rainbow of striped awnings to East Quay, the town’s social enterprise arts hub. In its cafe I order a charred sweetcorn and courgette salad and a cheese scone almost as gargantuan as that ammonite.

I’d like to visit East Quay’s art gallery and Watchet’s boat museum, but time and tide wait for no woman along this shoreline. Two hours before low tide, the route across neighbouring Helwell Bay is passable, but I’m cautious as I step over rocks and slippery kelp, mesmerised by the swirling mud and serrated shoreline below my boots as I play seaweedy hopscotch.

Leaving the beach near Doniford Farm Park, the trail winds through a maze of caravans then out into fields before dropping into St Audries Bay. I feel the waterfall here before I see it, its icy spray a reminder not to linger.

Retracing my steps to Doniford Halt, a request stop on the West Somerset Railway, I arrive just in time to flag down a steam train to take me back to Minehead. As we puff along, the landscape I have walked is rewound through the window. There are better coastlines in England for swimming than these estuarine bays, but as a tidal immersion on foot this walk has been stellar.

Train from Doniford Halt to Minehead is £17.50 one-way (west-somerset-railway.co.uk). Doubles at the Foxes hotel in Minehead from £120 B&B
Rhiannon Batten

Chichester harbour, Hampshire and West Sussex

From Prinsted
To West Wittering
Distance 16½ miles

Wild, windswept wetlands stretch to the horizon. Human figures are outnumbered by birds. Church spires and thatched roofs signpost scattered settlements. Can this really be the crowded south coast of England?

My boyfriend and I are walking part of a 35-mile stretch of the King Charles III England coast path, linking South Hayling in Hampshire to East Head in West Sussex, which opened in February. This section includes Chichester harbour, a protected estuary with open water and sheltered inlets, reedbeds, salt marshes, mudflats, shingle banks, sand dunes and a wooded shoreline.

We join the path at pretty Prinsted, after coffee (and directions) from the Southbourne farm shop. We set off east around Chidham peninsula, trying to spot the birds pictured on the information boards. Tens of thousands of wading birds and waterfowl spend the winter here, and in summer it’s a breeding ground for threatened species of seabirds and waders. Early April may not be peak time for birdwatching, but we still see a plethora of gulls and ducks, plus oystercatchers, curlews and a kestrel.

After rounding the peninsula and making our way up the other side, the day’s destination comes into sight across the water. Bosham, a cluster of buildings crowding up to the quayside, looks close enough to touch, but the winding coastal path is deceptive, and we still have a way to go (8½ miles in total).

We are glad to reach the Millstream, a 31-room hotel made from converted cottages, set in a lovely garden. Our room is in a tiny thatched cottage, reached by a little bridge over the stream.

Bosham (pronounced “Bozzum”) is ancient – believed to predate the Romans. Some think this is where King Canute tried to turn back the tide. King Harold II is depicted in the Bayeux tapestry praying at Bosham church, and the manor is recorded in the Domesday Book as one of the wealthiest in England. We visit the Saxon church and see the plaque to Canute’s eight-year-old daughter, who is said to have drowned and been buried here.

More cheerfully, we stop for a pint at the ivy-clad Berkeley Arms before dinner at the harbourside Anchor Bleu. The latter, family-run inn has been welcoming weary travellers since 1741 and has a daily changing, seafood-heavy chalkboard menu. The inspired kelp, samphire and seaweed “seacakes” mean that vegetarians don’t miss out, either.

The next morning, we walk across the harbour (a walkway appears at low tide) and continue south for a couple of miles. The wind is howling and it’s hard going – thankfully the route is flat and the formerly muddy tracks are now smooth paths. Areas along the trail that previously flooded at high tide have boardwalks above the water level, made from recycled bottles, and the paths are designed to be easily “rolled back” in the event of coastal erosion.

We battle the wind to the water’s edge and wave down the ferryman on the far shore. For hundreds of years, travellers have taken the Itchenor Ferry (AKA the Itchy Bosom) across the Chichester Channel to save them a 13-mile detour by foot. Today, the ferry also operates as a taxi service for people going to and from their boats, and on our crossing a bonus spin up the channel to pick up a couple of sailors is included in our £3.50 fare.

We disembark at West Itchenor and stop for coffee and cake at the Quarterdeck Cafe in the bustling boatyard. From here, it’s a six-mile shoreline stroll to the dunes at East Head spit, and the adjacent sandy beach at West Wittering. We are no longer alone – the car park is packed – but the beach is so vast, we don’t mind sharing.

Southbourne station is within walking distance of the start of the walk and Chichester station is a bus ride from the end. Accommodation was provided by the Millstream hotel (doubles from £200 B&B)
Rachel Dixon

The Fylde coast, Lancashire

From St Annes-on-the-Sea
To Freckleton
Distance 11½ miles

Two avocets dip their scimitar beaks into the lagoon. An egret hops on to the bank. A herd of cattle wade knee-deep. In the hazy light it might be a remote outpost on the Pampas. But it is Lancashire, and Preston is just around the corner.

Some walks exhilarate partly because your expectations are quite low. I imagined the coast from St Annes-on-the-Sea to Freckleton to be suburban seaside, with the occasional moment of peace, beauty or wildness perhaps. But it is all of this and more.

I have a few childhood memories of St Annes from visiting my grandad. It still has a 1970s atmosphere: quietish, residential, conservative. Local businesses are sprucing up frontages and gardens for the coming season. A litter-picking campaign has set up shop near the pier.

We walk on the sandy beach until it segues into a greener area, with dunes on the left and salt marsh on the right. The path between is busy with dog walkers and families enjoying the morning sun. Groups of nordic walkers speed past. Two detectorists bleep below the prom. On Fairhaven Lake the pedalos and boats are out.

Soon we come to Lytham, smart and gentrified. We buy coffees from a kiosk on the front before strolling along the Mussel Tank Memorial to visit the free museum inside the windmill. The birdlife is already good – oystercatchers, curlews, herons – and it only gets better as we leave built-up areas behind and stride out on to the edges of the Ribble Estuary national nature reserve – also designated a site of special scientific interest, a European special protection area and international Ramsar wetland site.

Why all the titles? Because this estuarial Eden happens to be the most important site in the UK for wintering wildfowl, supporting more than a quarter of a million ducks, geese, swans and wading birds; it’s internationally important for 16 species of wintering visitors. Spring isn’t bad, either. I’ve remembered my binoculars. As well as the wondrous avocets, we see and/or hear redshanks, skylarks, linnets, sedge warblers, shelducks, goldfinches, swallows, peewits, kestrels – and hares.

I have brought a hat, too, which is lucky. Coast walks are great – you can proceed without navigating or having to look down – but there’s not much cover. As we approach Warton airbase, the path follows a causeway. We have passed lots of benches (and loos), but here we sit on the grass to enjoy a picnic and birdsong.

The Lancashire coast is known for resorts rather than beaches, nature, cliffs or birdlife. The towns are famous; the bits in between overlooked. The King Charles III England coast path could alter this, which would be a good thing; it will spread visitors out, perhaps explode a few cliches. The Lancs littoral turns out to be as generous with fresh air, flora and fauna as it is with fun and frolics.

The Lancashire section isn’t fully open or waymarked, but work is afoot and Cicerone has published a guide and map. The 68 bus runs between Blackpool and Preston, stopping at St Annes, Lytham and Freckleton. The stretch between Freckleton and Preston is best done by bus as the path is forced on to a main road. Trains connect Blackpool, St Annes-on-the-Sea, Lytham and Preston. The Rooms Lytham has doubles from £110

First-year baseball coach Dino Flores of Fremont High teaches health, and for the entire semester, he had a freshman from Venezuela, Roiber Colmenares, sitting in class.

One day, Colmenares asked Flores a strange question.

“Hey Mr. Flores,” he said in Spanish. “Do you know how I can join the baseball team?”

“Yes I do,” Flores said.

Colemenares told him playing baseball was all he did in Venezuela.

Then Flores had Colemenares show him how to field a ground ball with an imaginary ball in class.

“That’s when I knew we had something special,” Flores said. “Just his movement you could tell he’s a baseball player.”

With Colmenares leading the way, Fremont has advanced to face Hamilton in Friday’s 2:30 p.m. Division III final at Stengel Field. The Division II final will have South East playing Roosevelt at 5:30 p.m. at East Los Angeles College.

“He’s our best hitter and best pitcher,” Flores said of the 5-foot-8, 140-pound freshman.

Fremont used to be a baseball power, having won five upper-division City titles, the last in 1963. There also was a 3A title in 1992.

“The history is well documented,” Flores said.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

LONDON — President Trump sang the praises of King Charles III after the monarch’s state visit this week. He even lifted some tariffs on Scotch whisky as a favor to the British monarch.

The king delivered a diplomatic master-class on the trip, mixing praise for his host with subtle criticism. It’s unclear, though, whether it will make a major difference to a trans-Atlantic relationship troubled by divisions over issues including the Iran war.

“In the short term probably yes, in the long term probably no,” said Kristofer Allerfeldt, a University of Exeter professor specializing in American history. But he said Charles had “definitely clawed back some of the prestige of the monarchy” in his homeland with his assured performance.

“He’s done us proud,” Allerfeldt said.

Like all royal visits, the four-day trip to Washington, New York and Virginia by the king and Queen Camilla was a carefully choreographed diplomatic event carried out at the request of the U.K. government. Timed to help mark the United States’ 250th birthday, it was a chance to heal rifts between the U.K. government and the Trump administration.

Trump has criticized Keir Starmer

The president has lambasted Prime Minister Keir Starmer — whom he once praised — over his unwillingness to join U.S. military attacks on Iran, dismissing Britain’s leader as “not Winston Churchill,” the World War II prime minister who coined the phrase “special relationship” for the U.K.-U.S. bond.

It’s part of a wider split between Trump and the United States’ NATO allies, whom he has called “cowards” and “useless” for not joining action against Iran.

None of that has soured Trump’s fondness for the British monarchy, which seems to have been deepened by the president’s unprecedented second state visit to the U.K. in September.

Some U.K. opposition politicians had called for the king’s reciprocal trip to be canceled, lest the president do or say something to embarrass the monarch.

In the end, there was much warmth and few awkward moments — though Trump did not always adhere to the convention that conversations with the monarch should remain private.

At a white-tie state dinner on Tuesday, Trump said “Charles agrees with me, even more than I do” that Iran must never have nuclear weapons.

Trump also said that “if that were up to him,” the king “would have followed the suggestions we made with respect to Ukraine.”

Buckingham Palace appeared relaxed about Trump’s Iran comment, noting that “the king is naturally mindful of his government’s longstanding and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation.”

The king’s speech chided Trump policies

On Ukraine, however, differences were clear. The U.K. has been one of Kyiv’s strongest supporters in its fight against Russia’s invasion, and in a speech to Congress the king underscored the importance of the need for “unyielding resolve” to support Ukraine.

It was one of several implicit rebukes to the “America first” U.S. administration in the speech, the centerpiece moment of the trip.

With regal understatement and in a cut-glass accent, Charles stressed the essential role of NATO, the importance of checks on executive power, the threat posed by climate change and the strength drawn from “vibrant, diverse and free societies.” He spoke of his pride at having served in the Royal Navy, a force Trump has disparaged.

“It’s difficult to imagine he could have gone much further in what he said and what he didn’t say,” historian Anthony Seldon told The Guardian. “He judged it incredibly well: very brave, very smart, very clever.”

Allerfeldt noted the “extraordinary” reception from both sides of the political aisle to the speech, which drew multiple standing ovations.

“Apart from the section on the natural world and the environment, both Republicans and Democrats stood up and applauded,” he said.

In a less formal speech at the state banquet, the king even drew laughs when he joked about British troops burning down the White House in 1814.

The king alluded to Epstein’s victims

The trip was judged a success despite the shadow of the king’s younger brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who has been stripped of his royal title of Prince Andrew, exiled from public life and put under police investigation over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied committing any crimes.

Epstein victims had urged the king to meet with them and other sexual abuse survivors. He didn’t, but he did refer obliquely to the issue in his speech to Congress, mentioning the need to “support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.”

Andrew Lownie, author of a biography of the former Prince Andrew called “Entitled,” praised the speech as “the best defense of the monarchy in years.”

After the royal couple left the U.S., Trump announced he was lifting certain tariffs on Scotch “in honor of the King and Queen of the United Kingdom.”

Buckingham Palace toasted the announcement, saying the king “sends his sincere gratitude for a decision that will make an important difference to the British whisky industry and the livelihoods it supports.”

Trump called the king “a phenomenal representative” for his country, before turning back to a familiar theme: criticizing Starmer.

The president told Sky News that Charles is “a much different person than your prime minister.

“Your prime minister has to learn to deal the way he deals, and he’ll do a lot better,” he said.

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.

April 30 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Thursday lifted tariffs that he had levied but limited business between bourbon makers in Kentucky and Scotland.

Trump announced he was scrapping the tariffs after King Charles III and Queen Camilla were starting to wrap up their visit to the United States this week, which included the king addressing a joint session of Congress, a state dinner at the White House and a trip through Virginia before they head home.

King Charles and Queen Camilla have just wrapped up a four-day trip to the United States, which Trump scheduled and invited them for after a state dinner in the United Kingdom last year.

“In honor of the King and Queen of the United Kingdom … I will be removing the Tariffs and Restrictions on Whiskey having to do with Scotland’s ability to work with the Commonwealth of Kentucky on Whiskey and Bourbon, two very important Industries within Scotland and Kentucky,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

“People have wanted to do this for a long time, in that there had been great Inter-Country Trade, especially having to do with the Wooden Barrels used,” he said.

Trump reinstituted a tariff on whiskey and other spirits coming out of the European Union in March 2025 that he had instituted during his first term in the White House that had been discontinued by the Biden administration in 2021.

Some whiskey distilleries in Kentucky age their bourbon in barrels that have been used to age Scotch and the tariff had increased costs for U.S. whiskey manufacturers — and in the absence of a U.K. tariff on American spirits — had been a problem, USA Today reported.

In the reverse, bourbons that are sold as “Kentucky bourbon” — a specific product unique to Kentucky, and which includes brands such as Jim Beam, Woodford Reserve and Buffalo Trace, among many others — are required to be aged in new, charred oak barrels that are later sold to some scotch distillers who use them to age their spirits, Politico reported.

LONDON — In the world of diplomatic faux pas, it could have been a lot worse.

At Tuesday’s state dinner honoring King Charles III and Queen Camilla, President Trump said that during a private meeting earlier in the day the British monarch had agreed with him that Iran should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

“We’re doing a little Middle East work right now … and we’re doing very well,” Trump told the audience. “We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever — Charles agrees with me, even more than I do — we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.”

While many Britons would agree with the president’s sentiment, the comment triggered mild consternation among pundits in the U.K.

By convention, people aren’t supposed to relay private conversations with the monarch. That is partly because the king has to remain above the political fray, but also because the sovereign doesn’t have the ability to wade into a public debate and correct the record if he’s misquoted.

“Generally, as a matter of protocol, I think I would expect discussions between heads of state to be sort of behind the scenes, in those closed meetings, for those to be sort of kept private,” said Craig Prescott, an expert on constitutional law and the monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London. “And, you know, this was something that the U.K. government wanted to avoid.”

There had been a fair amount of jitters before the king’s trip to the United States, which comes amid Trump’s very public frustration with U.K. Prime Minster Keir Starmer over his failure to support U.S. actions in the Iran war.

Like all royal visits, this is a carefully choreographed diplomatic event carried out at the request of the U.K. government, which hopes that warm relations between the king and Trump can help repair the rift.

But Trump is an unconventional leader who has a penchant for breaking protocol, and there were concerns about just what he might say or do.

At least in this case, the king’s comments seemed clearly within the bounds of existing U.K. government policy.

“The King is naturally mindful of his government’s long-standing and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement designed to provide context to the president’s remarks.

Prescott said that “in a sense, this was always the issue, just what Trump would do or say — would he put the king in an embarrassing position?’’ Prescott said.

“You always had that sort of issue of what he would post on social media,” he said. “And I think, you know, this could have been much, much worse.”

Before the state dinner, Charles gave a speech to a joint session of U.S. Congress. The king received repeated standing ovations during the address, which celebrated the longstanding bonds between the U.S. and Britain while nodding to differences over NATO, support for Ukraine and the need to combat climate change.

Now, from the U.K. government’s point of view, the trip is shifting to safer ground as the king and queen leave Washington behind and head to New York, where the focus will be on the city’s creative industries, rather than politics.

The most difficult part of the trip may be over, Prescott said.

“If this is the only controversy arising out of this phase of the state visit, I think overall this has been an enormous success for the king and the British government, because the king was able to make some quite pointed remarks in Congress and it hasn’t really yielded any sort of negative reaction from the president.”

“In a sense,” he said, “you get the feeling that the king rather charmed Washington with his speech to Congress and, you know, his very witty speech at the state banquet.”

Kirka writes for the Associated Press.

April 29 (UPI) — Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla laid flowers at the Sept. 11 memorial and met with victims’ families and first responders in New York City on the third day of their state visit to the United States.

It was the first visit by a reigning British monarch since Queen Elizabeth II visited in 2010.

The terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in 2001 killed nearly 2,800 people, 67 of them British. During the queen’s trip, she officially opened what is now called the Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden. The lower Manhattan space honors the British citizens who died in the attacks.

The royal couple laid flowers beside the reflecting pool, which has the names of victims etched into the side. Standing beside them were firefighters and officers from the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department and the New York Fire Department, in dress uniforms, The New York Times reported.

Charles spoke to both houses of Congress on Tuesday, and he mentioned that 9/11 was the first time that NATO invoked Article 5, which declares that an attack on any members is an attack on all.

Charles referenced the attacks during the speech.

“We stood with you then,” he said. “And we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that NATO has never come to the aid of the United States.

Charles also emphasized his country’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Trump said earlier this year that British troops “held back” in the war, which caused some Brits to demand the state visit be canceled.

After the visit to the memorial, the king went to Harlem to meet with young people who run an urban farm. He fed lettuce to the chickens, The Times reported.

Camilla visited the New York Public Library and gave a speech about the power of literature. She gave the library a replica of Roo, the character in Winnie the Pooh, a British children’s classic.

The library has the original stuffed animals that inspired A.A. Milne to write the Pooh series, but the Roo animal was lost.

Wednesday evening, the king and queen will attend a reception with “celebrated creative and cultural figures from both sides of the Atlantic,” the British Embassy said. They will then head back to Washington.

The pair will attend a block party for the United States’ 250th anniversary in Virginia Thursday and say good-bye to Trump, ending their state visit.

WASHINGTON — Two and a half centuries after the American colonies declared independence from Britain under King George III, his descendant King Charles III lands in Washington on Monday with trans-Atlantic ties under strain and security in the spotlight.

A shooting at a Washington dinner attended by President Trump on Saturday sparked a last-minute security review of the four-day state visit, intended to celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, and the U.S.-U.K. “special relationship.”

Buckingham Palace said the king “is greatly relieved to hear that the president, first lady and all guests have been unharmed.” After a security review, the palace said the trip “will proceed as planned.”

Trump praises the king but derides Starmer

A rift between the U.K. government and Trump over issues including the Iran war had already raised the political stakes for the British monarch’s visit.

In recent weeks, Trump has lambasted Prime Minister Keir Starmer over his unwillingness to join U.S. military attacks on Iran, dismissing Britain’s leader as “not Winston Churchill,” the World War II prime minister who coined the phrase “special relationship” for the U.K.-U.S. bond.

It’s part of a wider rift between Trump and the United States’ NATO allies, whom he has called “cowards” and “useless” for not joining action against Iran. A leaked Pentagon email suggested the U.S. could reassess support for the U.K.’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic. Britain and Argentina fought a 1982 war over the islands, also known as the Islas Malvinas.

The president insists the political chill won’t affect the royal visit. Charles “has nothing to do with that,” Trump said in March, meaning NATO.

The president has spoken in glowing terms about Charles, repeatedly referring to the monarch as his “friend” and a “great guy.”

He also continues to mention his “amazing” trip to the U.K. in September with first lady Melania Trump for an unprecedented second state visit. Starmer hand-delivered the invitation from the king in the Oval Office five weeks after Trump returned to office, in a very public attempt to woo the Republican president.

The U.K. royal family laid on pomp and pageantry for the Trumps, with scarlet-clad guardsmen, brass bands and a sumptuous banquet at Windsor Castle.

“President Trump has always had great respect for King Charles, and their relationship was further strengthened by the president’s historic visit to the United Kingdom last year,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Associated Press. “The president looks forward to a special visit by Their Majesties, which will include a beautiful state dinner and multiple events throughout the week.”

Trump, meanwhile, told the BBC that the king’s visit could “absolutely” help repair the trans-Atlantic relationship.

“He’s fantastic. He’s a fantastic man. Absolutely the answer is yes,” the president said.

Some have called for the trip to be canceled

Kristofer Allerfeldt, a University of Exeter professor specializing in American history, said the two governments have very different objectives for the trip.

He said that for Charles, the trip is about “reinforcing long-term ties, showcasing the monarchy’s soft power and reminding the world that Britain still carries diplomatic weight.”

For Trump, it’s more about “a media event,” with emphasis on the optics of a visit that resembles a meeting of “two gilded monarchs.”

Some U.K. politicians worry that the trip is fraught with opportunities for embarrassment. Trump’s recent broadsides at Pope Leo XIV have heightened those concerns.

Ed Davey, leader of the U.K. centrist opposition Liberal Democrats party, earlier this month called Trump “a dangerous and corrupt gangster” and implored the government to cancel the trip.

“I really fear for what Trump might say or do while our king is forced to stand by his side,” Davey said in the House of Commons. “We cannot put His Majesty in that position.”

Starmer defended the visit, saying “the monarchy, through the bonds that it builds, is often able to reach through the decades” and bolster important relationships.

Andrew and Epstein cast a shadow

Raising the stakes is the shadow of the king’s younger brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who has been stripped of his royal title of Prince Andrew, exiled from public life and put under police investigation over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied committing any crimes.

Epstein victims have urged the king to meet with them and other sexual abuse survivors. It’s unlikely he will do so.

Charles has visited the U.S. 19 times, but this is his first state visit to the country since becoming king in 2022. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, made four state visits to the U.S.

The king, who is 77 and was diagnosed in early 2024 with an undisclosed form of cancer, will spend four days in the U.S. accompanied by Queen Camilla.

In Washington, the king and queen will have a private tea with the Trumps and attend a garden party and a formal White House state dinner. The president and the king will also have a one-on-one meeting.

The royal couple will also visit the Sept. 11 memorial in New York and attend a 250th birthday block party in Virginia, where Charles will also meet Indigenous leaders involved in nature conservation — a favorite cause of the environmentalist king.

Three centuries after Britain’s kings and queens gave up any real political power, the royals remain symbols of soft power, deployed by elected governments to smooth international relationships and send messages about what the U.K. considers important.

A key moment will be the king’s speech to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday. It’s only the second time, after Queen Elizabeth II in 1991, that a U.K. monarch has addressed a joint meeting of both houses.

Elizabeth praised liberalism on that trip, spoke against the idea that “power grows from the barrel of a gun” and praised the “rich ethnic and cultural diversity of both our societies.”

The king’s treasured causes, including the environment and harmony among religious faiths, are in contrast to Trump’s. He’s unlikely to accentuate differences, but Allerfeldt said that, in the monarch’s subtle way, the king could use his speech to send a message.

“He does have an unorthodox way of looking at the world, and I think maybe he can actually have something valid to say when he addresses Congress,” Allerfeldt said.

Superville and Lawless write for the Associated Press. Jill Lawless reported from London.