THE Queen Mother yesterday joined worshippers at Canisbay Church of Scotland grieving the death of the parish minister.
The Rev Alex Robertson, 54, died in hospital after collapsing just before a wedding he was due to take in the church on Friday.
Yesterday's service was conducted by the Rev Alistair Roy, moderator of Caithness Presbytery, who greeted the Queen Mother after she arrived by car from the nearby Castle of Mey.
She made light of negotiating the uphill, stony path to the kirk, then sat opposite the pulpit.
Mr Robertson was born in Dundee. He attended Glasgow University and the Baptist College in Glasgow.
He crossed to the Church of Scotland in 1981 and was minister at Strathfillan and Laurencekirk before returning to Caithness in 1991, when he took over the charge of Canisbay and Keiss.
An American tourist chased after the Queen Mother's Range Rover on leaving the church, shouting on it to stop.
Mrs Barbara Weaver, a middle-aged woman from Indianapolis, was determined to hand over a shrub she had bought in a nearby heritage centre.
When the Range Rover stopped in response to her yells, she handed the plant in through an open rear window to the Queen Mother. Onlookers watched the departure from protocol in some astonishment.
Mrs Weaver's son Mark, 37, said: ``They just won't believe us back home when we tell them about this.''
The Queen, heading north alone on the royal yacht Britannia, made a five-hour stop at Stranraer on Saturday.
She visited a cairn which commemorates the deaths of 133 passengers and crew of the ferry Princess Victoria, which sank in January 1953.
She also had a private lunch cooked by catering students at the John Niven Centre and unveiled a plaque to mark the opening of a palliative care unit set up by Sister Irene Hunter at Dalrymple Hospital.
The Queen was making her first visit to Stranraer for almost half a century and she was presented with dozens of bouquets and posies of flowers as met the crowds. During one walkabout, Ms Sheila Clark from Glasgow presented the Queen with a colour picture which she had taken at Sandringham at Christmas.
The Queen is on what will probably be the last West Coast cruise on the Britannia before the Clyde-built vessel is taken out of service next year.
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