LONDON — Catherine, Princess of Wales, returned Friday to the Royal Marsden Hospital, where she was treated for cancer, and told staff that a secret 24-hour climb of Britain’s three highest peaks was “my small way of being able to give back and say thank you.”
The 44-year-old princess made an unannounced visit on Sept. 11 to meet patients still in treatment and to see how money from the June National Three Peaks Challenge will support a planned Centre for Holistic Wellbeing and Recovery. She became joint patron of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, with Prince William, in 2025 after her own care there.
“I had incredible care here and support from a huge team and I’m really, really grateful on a personal level,” she said, according to remarks carried by The Times, BBC News and Reuters. “But also the holistic care, the treatments and therapeutic support on the outside is so important.”
She listed what she said helped during chemotherapy: “the impact of nature, the impact of good nutrition, good ongoing support around you when it’s really difficult to manage the trials and tribulations of medical treatments.” “It makes a big difference,” she repeated. “It made a big difference to me and it made a huge difference to lots of patients who I’ve spoken to. Thank you and well done.”
Of the new center she added: “I think it will be transformative not only for patients but for families too.” Speaking with patients she said cancer is “not just the physical changes your body is going through.” “There’s a mind-body aspect that changes who you are … having professionals who can help you navigate that is really essential.”
In June she climbed Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in England and Snowdon in Wales within 24 hours. Kensington Palace has not published the sum raised. She had described the challenge earlier as “not simply as a physical endeavor” but “as a chance to explore life beyond diagnosis and to give something back.” On Instagram after Friday’s visit she wrote: “Wonderful to spend time with patients, staff and families at The Royal Marsden Hospital, to see their vision for holistic cancer care first-hand.”
The princess wore a long green dress and black slingback heels. She sat with people being treated for breast cancer, head and neck cancer and a brain tumor, and toured the site earmarked for the wellbeing center. The charity frames holistic care as physical, emotional, spiritual and social support alongside medicine.
Kate announced her diagnosis in a video in March 2024, two months after Kensington Palace said she would have “planned abdominal surgery.” Preventive chemotherapy followed at the Marsden. In January 2025, on an earlier surprise visit to the same hospital, she said she was in remission. “I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you to The Royal Marsden for looking after me so well during the past year,” she wrote then. “My heartfelt thanks goes to all those who have quietly walked alongside William and me as we have navigated everything.”
The Marsden is a specialist cancer hospital in Chelsea, London, and a research partner of the Institute of Cancer Research. The princess’s patronage is personal rather than ceremonial: she was a patient on the same wards she walked Friday. The Three Peaks route is a standard endurance test — about 23 miles of ascent, long drives between mountains, a clock that starts on the first summit and stops on the third. Completing it privately, then tying the proceeds to a building that treats the aftermath of treatment, is the through-line she offered staff.
She did not discuss her specific cancer type, which the palace has never named. She did not announce a fundraising total. She did name the pieces of care that, in her telling, sit outside the infusion chair: nature, food, people who stay after the protocol ends. The hospital’s next step is a center designed around that list. The princess’s next step, she suggested, is to keep showing up in the building that treated her and to treat the climb as thanks rather than spectacle.
