Kate Middleton was pictured holding a newborn baby during a royal walkabout with Prince William as the couple continued their protest-hit tour of the Caribbean with a visit to a school in the Bahamas amid torrential downpours.
The royal couple greeted crowds who gathered in Parliament Square before attending the colourful Junkanoo Carnival in Nassau to celebrate the monarch’s Platinum Jubilee alongside the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Philip Davis, and his wife Ann-Marie.
Kate was pictured speaking to a mother in the crowd and cradling her baby’s head before the iconic street parade, which featured locals wearing colourful costumes and dancing to music.
This morning, the couple took a trip to Sybil Strachan Primary School in Nassau this morning where they dropped in on a class to meet pupils and staff, and joined the morning assembly – with the Duchess of Cambridge joking that they had brought ‘England’s rain with us’.
Kate, who was wearing a dress by Self Portrait and jewellery by Bahamian designer by Nadia Irena, said as she walked under an umbrella in the rain: ‘Oh my gosh. The weather, sorry, we’ve brought England’s rain with us.’
And William also quipped: ‘We’ve brought the weather, haven’t we?’ In fact, the UK is enjoying unseasonably warm weather today as temperatures reached 19C (66F) and people flocked to beaches across southern England.
Today’s assembly saw children from schools across the Bahamian islands dial in to meet the couple. Schools in the Bahamas were closed for nearly two years from March 2020 until January this year because of the pandemic.
In a speech during the assembly, Kate told the children: ‘I hope you didn’t get too wet coming here and apologies for bringing this British weather with us.’ The Duchess added: ‘Thank you so much for such a warm welcome.’
She said the couple’s three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis ‘all love being by the sea’, adding: ‘So I hope they will be able to experience your clear waters and beautiful beaches before too long.’
Kate said ‘the last few years have not been easy for many of you’. Appearing emotional, she added: ‘One of the hardest things I think we’ve all found about the pandemic was being separated from the people we love. But we’ve also had the chance to rediscover how important our families are and how important our friends are too.’
Later during their first full day in the Bahamas, William and Kate will take to the waters off the islands to join a regatta in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and are expected to race against each other. The Cambridges will also spend time with key workers and frontline staff in an informal gathering in the Garden of Remembrance, also in the capital, to hear about their experiences of the pandemic.
In the evening they will attend a dinner hosted by the Governor General Sir Cornelius Smith featuring community leaders and local heroes and the duke will give a speech. They are currently on an eight-day tour of the Caribbean which began on Saturday and has already taken them to Belize and Jamaica. The tour will finish tomorrow.
