PREVIOUS royal visits to Scotland having neglected to include Biggar, in South Lanarkshire, the Queen decided to make amends in October of 1956. As this paper observed: “A thoughtful gesture by Her Majesty added 90 minutes in time and 35 miles in distance to her programme. Biggar, the only county town omitted from recent royal tours, was given a 10-minute call at the start” of an itinerary that included Lanarkshire and Dumfriesshire. The people of Biggar “responded by giving the Queen a rapturous reception in the tree-girt High Street.” The Queen is photographed leaving Biggar’s Town House with Provost W.P.Bryden.

Throughout her long drive through rural Lanarkshire to the £5.75 million Daer Valley water project, which she was to open officially, people turned out “in a hundred and one small groups at the hamlets and road-ends, to make the tour a real Queen’s progress through a countryside golden with autumn tints.” Indeed, the sun shone only once that day - when she was in Biggar.

At Daer Valley, the monarch alluded to the recent weather. “For those who live in these islands, blessed as they are with the mild and singularly varied climate of the Gulf Stream, it is often hard to realise that there could ever be a shortage of water anywhere. After a summer such as we have just undergone, we are inclined to think that there is altogether too much of it above and below.” A quiet murmur of assent rose from the packed stands opposite the royal dais.