How IS Fergie paying for her crisis holidays? Sarah is lying low at luxury hotels...previous trips have involved £4,000 excess baggage fees, a butler up at 4.30am to chill her watercress and an unpaid bill at the end
Sarah Ferguson has visited no fewer than three holiday destinations in her search for solitude amid the fallout from the Epstein files.After being booted out of Royal Lodge, the former Duchess of York, 66, has not been seen in public since her fleeting appearance at her granddaughter Athena's Christening at St James's Palace on December 12.Last week, the Daily Mail revealed that, for much of the time, she has been sheltering in a famous £13,000-a-day Swiss clinic, the UAE where she has close contacts and prospective benefactors and, more recently, Ballyliffin Lodge & Spa in Donegal.It comes as no surprise, according to royal historian Andrew Lownie, who revealed in his book Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York, that her reaction to a crisis has always been: 'go on holiday.'One might question how she's afforded her most recent jaunts given her sources of income have dried up in the wake of the Epstein scandal.However, Andrew's ex-wife has always had money troubles and that's never stopped her.'She would just breeze out of the Four Seasons and the Palace in New York as if she was too important to pay,’ one source told Lownie. ‘There would often be large room service bills but she got away with it more often than not.’Lownie explained how, after the News of the World scandal in 2010, in which she was filmed by the now-closed publication offering 'cash-for-access' services to her former husband, and revelations about her mounting debt, Sarah fled the UK. Sarah Ferguson and Princess Eugenie previously pictured in Saint-Tropez. The former Duchess of York has visited no fewer than three holiday destinations in her search for solitude amid the fallout from the Epstein filesHe wrote: 'Sarah’s reaction to crisis, as so often, was to go on holiday. First stop Sotogrande, then to a £1,500-a-night five-star Portuguese luxury spa resort, where she signed up for an eight-day £3,000 weight loss and anti-ageing programme, which included her own personal trainer and face mesotherapy involving various extracts being injected into the skin.'There was three weeks on a billionaire’s ranch in Connecticut and two weeks at a house lent by a friend in Montecito, before going on to stay with Lisa Marie Presley in Hawaii. 'From there to Malaga then to stay with Richard Branson on Necker for his sixtieth birthday party. In August she returned to Sotogrande for three weeks, before her eighth foreign jaunt of the summer, joining 180 guests at the seventy-fifth birthday party of hotel magnate Sol Kerzner at the exclusive Hotel Cala di Volpe in Sardinia.'He claimed that during these holidays, Sarah reportedly ordered that a breakfast table be laid out at three different spots each morning so that she could have a choice, while a butler had to get in at 4.30am to put watercress on ice.The author also wrote how Fergie would allegedly regularly miss flights that were not refundable and pay up to £4,000 in excess baggage fees. One source told Lownie: ‘She thought nothing of arriving at an airport with 25 cases and paying between £800 and £4,000 in excess baggage. 'At least five of those cases were packed with toiletries and make up. Another one would be used solely for clothes hangers.'In her attempt to stay out of the public gaze amid the fallout from her friendship with Epstein, the former duchess is believed to have fled the UK for Switzerland, the UAE and then Ireland. After being booted out of Royal Lodge, the former Duchess of York, 66, (pictured on holiday in 1999) has not been seen in public since her fleeting appearance at her granddaughter Athena's Christening at St James's Palace on December 12Last week, the Daily Mail revealed that, for much of the time, she has been sheltering in a famous £13,000-a-day Swiss clinic, before apparently taking refuge in the UAE where she has close contacts and prospective benefactors.Fergie secretly took refuge in the world-renowned Paracelsus Recovery Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, over a month ago.A Swiss source told the Daily Mail: ‘Sarah left for Zurich just after Christmas, and stayed until the end of January.‘She always feels at home at Paracelsus, and knows she’ll get love and attention there, as well as expert health treatment when she’s feeling at her most vulnerable.’The lakeside clinic offers several different month-long recovery programmes for ultra-wealthy clients. Individuals will have access to 15 medical experts, as well as a chauffeur and a private chef.Another friend in Switzerland told the Daily Mail: ‘Sarah has built up a strong relationship with Paracelsus, so it was the obvious place for her to get away from everything.’After the prolonged stay at the clinic, thought to have lasted several weeks, the globe-trotting former royal is subsequently thought to have spent time in both the French Alps and the United Arab Emirates.Following the release of millions of the so-called Epstein files by the United States’ Justice Department, Sarah’s entangled relationship with the financier became clear. Princess Eugenie, Sarah Ferguson and Princess Beatrice leaving beach Club 55 in Saint-Tropez in 2005Emails revealed that the former duchess and her beleaguered ex-husband, Andrew, had kept up their close friendship with the paedophile even after he was first convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution.Embarrassing emails showed her begging Epstein to help pay off her mounting debts, even asking him to employ her as his house assistant as she ‘desperately’ needed cash - despite knowing he was still under house arrest in Florida for child prostitution.In another email, she issued a grovelling apology for publicly denouncing him, claiming it had only been to protect her career as a children’s author, telling him he had been a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend’.The former duchess later claimed she had sent the fawning email in a bid to protect Princess Beatrice and Eugenie after a 'chilling' phone call with Epstein. It is perhaps unsurprising then that Ms Ferguson took to Paracelsus, which has been described as a ‘sanctuary where individuals can receive the highest standard of care, free of judgement’, according to its founder, Jan Gerber.The former duchess has previously visited the clinic and was involved in its promotional work last year where she appeared in a social media video with Mr Gerber.As well as the Swiss clinic, the Daily Mail has since learned that Fergie also apparently visited a second similar retreat, the Ballyliffin Lodge & Spa in Donegal - where she was spotted at the local airport earlier this month.It's not the first time she has visited the spa: when she was there in 2024 she posted a TikTok filmed on a nearby beach in which she said: 'I find things get sometimes overwhelming, I just try and take myself off to the most beautiful, wonderful blast of fresh air.'A royal source said: 'Last time Sarah visited Donegal she spoke about how it was somewhere she could escape to when things were "overwhelming" - and they can't ever have been more overwhelming for her than they have been in recent weeks.'And just as she did with the Zurich trip, she knew what she was going to in Donegal as she'd been there before and that it was very remote and very discreet so there was minimal chance of her presence becoming known to the wider world. Sarah (pictured in Ireland previously) has been staying in a wellness retreat in the north west of Ireland, one of her favourite places in the world - and where she goes when she feels 'overwhelmed' 'She seems to be very keen indeed to avoid being seen while she works out what to do next.'The 40 bedroom hotel and lodge, which recently reopened following a £1.5million refit, is just off the famously scenic Wild Atlantic Way that follows the remote west coast of Ireland.The ex-duchess has ancestral roots in Ireland and it seems the country has frequently been her refuge when times get hard going back over 20 years.Following her divorce, in 2005 she said in an interview: 'Ireland gave me back my life' and said she wanted to be buried in Powerscourt House, her family's historic estate in Wicklow.She went on: 'The Irish people gave me back my life and I feel very strongly that I went back to the core values.'I think that is why I feel so comfortable in Ireland because the Irish people accept Sarah as Sarah instead of trying to make her into anything else.'In the following year, 2006, she again evoked the notion of being 'saved' by Ireland: 'I was just separated and I had the two girls with me and I was feeling very insecure and really lost,' she said about having gone to the country as a refugee.So frequently did she visit the west coast of Ireland that locals began to jokingly refer to her as 'the Duchess of Cork'.Meanwhile, Fergie is also understood to have visited the UAE in a similarly low-key way that saw her evade photographers and journalists.Sarah previously spent years co-habiting with Andrew despite their being divorced but this was facilitated by the sheer size of Royal Lodge - it has some 30 rooms - and his reduced circumstances in Norfolk mean that resuming this arrangement there is thought to be completely out of the question for Ferguson. Lownie has said that she may end up living overseas - and that multi-millionaires in Dubai and the surrounding countries of Bahrain and Qatar will probably be bankrolling Fergie already.He said: 'In Britain neither Sarah nor Andrew will be socially accepted again whatever they try to do or wherever they go. But in the Middle East no one will care about what they have got up to.'Earlier this week, Fergie and Andrew's daughter Princess Eugenie was seen in public for the first time since the former duke's arrest when she ventured out with husband Jack Brooksbank in London.The 12th in line to the throne was dressed casually in Nike trainers, blue leggings, a jacket and a North Face baseball cap as she grabbed a coffee in Notting Hill.Eugenie was seen standing next to her husband, who was wearing a colourful bobble hat as he spoke on the phone on a street outside Hagen Espresso Bar.Princess Beatrice was most recently seen in public in late January when she was photographed taking her daughter Sienna horse riding with her father - shortly before he was forced to move out of his Royal Lodge house in Windsor.After Andrew moved, instead, to a farmhouse on the Sandringham estate, he was raided by police and arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.The former prince spent 11 hours in custody on his 66th birthday last week while officers searched his property at Sandringham before he was released under investigation.
