The Queen's Bodyguards

The Queen opened the Scottish Parliament today and I stopped off for a chat with the Royal Company of Archers. They were all getting ready out the back of Holyrood Palace by the car park and were looking fabulous in their uniforms with quivers full of arrows and long bows.

They were very friendly and admitted that they didn't do much actual body guarding these days. Arrows are a bit long in the tooth for modern requirements. The company have been defending the Royal Sovereign since 1822 and it didn't look like they were going to give up anytime soon.

I bade them farewell after a few shots (on my camera :-) and walked back to my motorbike.

That's when the fun started.

Halfway back to my bike and a marine in fatigues was jogging towards me. "Stop there Sir for a moment". I had hardly slowed down when he did a quick circuit doing a visual inspection of my sizable ruck-sack. Jogged back in front of me, crouched down to pretend he was tying his shoelace and radioed in "Clear!".

So today I met two sets of the Queen's bodyguards; one from 1822 and one from 2011. Both still doing their respective jobs. Rather well I would say.