Finally a dry sunny day so planning and elevation drawing proceeded apace on the longhouse, with sunhats and headdresses replacing woolly hats and hoods for once, Poppy here sporting a very fine SAS headscarf which also doubles as a cleg defence:
But the really well-dressed members of our excavation team weren't on site at all, but several hundred miles away at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, as invited guests at His Majesty the King's first Royal garden party in Scotland, they surely don't look like that on site:
Steve and Julie were invited to represent us in their roles as Chair and Vice Chair of the Swandro Trust, of which HRH the Prince Charles the Duke of Rothesay was patron before his accession.
The weather wasn't great but that didn't spoil the occasion at all, and they kept sending us texts with photos, although since they didn't send captions I'm not sure what all of them are about, so had to do a bit of Googling, these fine upstanding gentleman are members of the Royal Company of Archers, the Sovereign's bodyguard in Scotland:
I expect that there were an awful lot more bodyguards in plainer clothes but with more lethal weapons in attendance, but they certainly do look the part, and they line up to form avenues for the Royal party to proceed down, accompanied by the Company's Captain-General and the President of the Council. (Not sure if that's one person or two to be honest, the gentleman with the Queen in this photo has two feathers in his cap, but then in the next pic the one with the King has three feathers, so maybe it's two separate people).
I didn't realise that you got to be so close to the action, but Steve said that the King stopped, looked him in the eye, and made a remark about how wet it was, I suspect our monsoon from yesterday may have headed south.
On top of all this excitement you also get fed, although with the weather they could've done with a pot of soup on the go as well as the sandwiches, they do look very pretty and I like the brownie with the chocolate crown on top, plus of course there's got to be cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off:
It's going to be a bit of a comedown for them to head back after all that excitement but at least the weather forecast is OK for the rest of the week, so they'll have a chance to dry out when they get back.
