King Charles III met patients, their families, staff and volunteers when he officially opened a new hospice.
The monarch toured Priscilla Bacon Lodge, on the outskirts of Norwich, which welcomed its first patients last month.
He was welcomed in the rain by the Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk, Lady Dannatt, before being introduced to Lady Bacon, patron of the Priscilla Bacon Hospice Charity, Robert Carter, chair of trustees and chief executive Sandra Dinneen.
One of the first to greet the King inside the new building was Agnes, the therapy dog, who licked his hand to His Majesty's obvious amusement.
Owner Anne Eldridge, who has volunteered for the hospice charity for 20 years, said her 11-year-old labradoodle was a "calm, gentle kind of dog" who everyone wanted to fuss.
The King sat in on a breathlessness workshop with outpatients including Bernard Godding, 81, who thanked him for coming to Norfolk.
"It's a jolly good place Norfolk, isn't it?" the King who is a regular visitor to his Sandringham Estate in the county replied.
The King met fundraisers including Malcolm Metcalf, from Gorleston, who set out to complete 90 challenges for the hospice his 90th birthday and has so far accomplished 100.
They include riding a horse, walking on Southwold Pier, painting a friend’s shed, and taking part in a litter pick on Gorleston Beach.
"Are you going to stop now," the King enquired. Mr Metcalf said he was not.
The King met patients including Rebecca Turner, 31, from Norwich, whose four-year-old daughter Arielle Bayliss had been making crowns beside her mother's bed.
Miss Turner, who has stage three melanoma, said: "I love it here. They treat me like a princess, they give me Baileys at 11 every day, it doesn't get much better than that."
The King also toured the gardens at the hospice and met the volunteers who tend them and signed a register next to one he signed in March, 1998 when he visited the new hospice's predecessor in Unthank Road.
Campaigners took four years to raise the £12.5m needed to replace the Priscilla Bacon Lodge on Unthank Road in Norwich with a new facility on an eight-acre site next to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital at Colney, on the outskirts of the city.
The appeal, launched in 2019, was backed by the EDP and its readers.
The new site offers a state-of-the-art palliative care unit along with inpatient beds, a day unit and a wellbeing centre, while it will also act as a hub for community-based services, enabling people to also receive care in their own homes.
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