Members of the royal family were given spontaneous applause at the gate to Balmoral Castle after stopping to talk to well-wishers and inspect the deep mound of flowers lying at the wall.
Prince Andrew, his daughters Eugenie and Beatrice, Prince Edward and Sophie, and Princess Anne had driven to Crathie Kirk, the church close to Balmoral where the Queen and her family worshipped every Sunday during her holidays on Deeside, for a brief, private service shortly before 2pm on Saturday.
As they returned to Balmoral, their convoy stopped at the narrow granite bridge over the River Dee to allow the family to greet about 150 well-wishers, who had been waiting patiently for up to 45 minutes behind a crowd barrier.
Before walking back into the estate, Sophie was seen dabbing at tears as she read some of the inscriptions on the bouquets; flanked by his daughters and siblings at the black- and gold-painted gates, Andrew held up his hands together in a prayer of thanks, provoking a burst of applause from the crowd.
Dressed in a black mourning suit, Andrew was the most talkative, asking visitors where they had come from. He spoke to Jackie McIntosh, 69, an airport worker from Aberdeen. “It’s very sad, it is, to see him because they’re a family at the end of the day, who’ve lost their mum,” she told reporters after their brief exchange.
John Coutts, her partner, 49, added: “It’s only been a couple of days since they lost their mother, like the rest of us they are human, no one expected this. It was decent of them to speak with us.”
Elaine Rose, from Nuneaton, who has been on holiday in Inverness with family, said she had been at the Braemar Highland gathering last Sunday – an event normally attended by the Queen. Instead, she saw the then Prince Charles and Camilla, and Princess Anne.
Andrew briefly spoke to her and her family: “Thank you very much for coming,” he said.
Another well-wisher, Sue, had travelled to Balmoral en route from a holiday at Gairloch near Ullapool and told Prince Andrew she was on her way home to Durham. He expressed surprise at the distance she had travelled and thanked her for coming.
She was reluctant to speak to Prince Andrew, she said. “I really didn’t want to. I felt I couldn’t not because other people started to move away from him, so I needed to say something. But I didn’t feel comfortable.”
Tom Harrison, 62, from Forres, Moray, spoke to Prince Andrew and Princess Anne. He asked Andrew: “How’s things?” Andrew replied: “We’ve been allowed one day as a family. Tomorrow we start the process of handing her on.”
Princess Anne noticed his bright flowers and asked: “Are they from your garden?” Harrison said they were not. “I told her I’d not picked them myself,” he said afterwards. “I wish I’d lied and said they were from my garden.” Harrison added: “They were very sombre. They’ve lost their mum and their grandmother. It’s a family bereavement.”
Jefferson Campbell, 46, was at Balmoral with wife, Solange, 47, and daughter, Giovanna, 14, and had travelled from Westhill, Aberdeenshire, where Prince Edward remarked on the Brazil football shirt Campbell was wearing. “I didn’t think they would come walking here. We didn’t expect this moment,” Campbell said. Solange, a school teacher, said: “It is a sad moment for them but they always talk to the people.”
