In a touching tribute to his late sister, Charles Spencer has revealed that he visits Princess Diana's grave almost daily. Speaking to Good Morning Britain on Oct. 15, the 9th Earl Spencer, who runs the family's historic Althorp estate, said his sister's memory is "very" present on a daily basis.
"I go pretty much every day," he said of her private gravesite, which is located on a small island located in the center of the property's Oval Lake. When asked if he talked to his sister during his visits, Spencer—who famously delivered a eulogy lashing out at the media for Princess Diana's death—said "not always."
However, he shared that "last week, one of her closest childhood friends came and was on the island. And that was so nice."
Diana's grave is accessible only via rowboat and not open to the public, although it was once accessible by bridge, a detail that Prince Harry mentioned in his memoir, Spare. “The bridge had been removed, to give my mother privacy, to keep intruders away,” he penned.
Since his sister's grave is located in the middle of a lake, Earl Spencer received an especially touching gift for his 60th birthday. He told Good Morning Britain that a friend "handmade a canoe" for him to use on his daily trips to visit Diana.
Although members of the public can't access her grave, they can visit "The Temple," a memorial dedicated to the princess on the estate's grounds. While the Grecian-style building has been part of Althorp for hundreds of years, it was dedicated to the princess in 1998 and includes a plaque with her name and quotes from both the princess and her brother's eulogy.
Spencer shared that he's constantly being stopped by people who want to share memories of his sister, who tragically died in a 1997 car accident.
"Even when I was in makeup just now, somebody came up almost crying saying how much she meant to them," he told Good Morning Britain, adding, "every day people tell me what an inspiration she was, how much they miss her, what they did the day she died. It's extraordinary."
"I'm sure pretty much everyone watching this program has had trauma in their family at some point," he continued, sharing, "like everyone else, you sort of get used to it without it ever going away."
