Rowing planned for Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's Poland and Germany trip

There will be a competitive element to the European royal visit by Prince William and Kate Middleton who will join forces with a team from Cambridge to take on a team of German rowers.

Although they have not undertaken any training as yet, the couple will join women rowers from the Cantabrigian (Cantabs) Rowing Club, Cambridge, and a German counterpart from Heidelberg on the Neckar river on Thursday (20 July), the Telegraph reported.

The race is expected to be one of the key moments of the five-day tour which will include a meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel, a trip to the Stutthoff concentration camp and a visit led by Lech Walesa to the European Solidarity Movement museum.

The visit has been described as part of a "Brexit charm offensive" for the Foreign Office and follows a trip to Paris earlier this year.

Prince George and Princess Charlotte will travel with their parents and will be photographed with them.

Arriving in Warsaw on Sunday (16 July) the Cambridges will take in Gdansk on Tuesday (18 July) where 3,000 Union flags are being raised to welcome the couple, the Telegraph reported.

Krzysztof Szczerski, a senior official of Polish president Andrzej Duda, said the royal visit showed the "good relations between Britain and Poland".

Germany is also getting royal fever with the staff at the British residence in Berlin spending 10 days polishing the silver, according to the newspaper Bild. Meanwhile, Hamburg's Morgenpost headline read: "Hooray, the Royals are coming".

Britain's ambassador to Poland, Jonathan Knott told Sky News: "This isn't a ministerial visit, this isn't a prime ministerial visit, but what I think the visit is really going to do is accelerate that process of deepening our relationships and making sure that as we go through the process of leaving the EU our relationship doesn't weaken - actually it gets stronger."

British ambassador to Germany, Sir Jonathan Knott, told the broadcaster: "In a way this is historic, the first time that Prince William comes with his family on an official visit, and it's the beginning of what I hope will be a long standing relationship between them and Germany."