The nurse in charge of the guard of honour welcoming the Queen to the Vale of Leven Hospital in 1965 has expressed her astonishment after pictures of the occasion were unveiled by the Reporter.

As previously told, Gordon Robertson shared never-before seen photographs of the historical visit after discovering them in an antique shop in Blairgowrie.

He asked the Reporter to help him find nurses featured in slides of the Queen’s visit to the Vale.

Mr Robertson’s appeal was spotted by stunned Helensburgh resident Helen Colwell, who had trained at the Vale and was a newly qualified staff nurse at the time of the royal visit.

On seeing the pictures for the first time, Helen said: “My goodness, all of the memories came flooding back.

“You know things that you had almost forgotten about. Seeing the pictures, the years just rolled away. It was restricted up there for security, so I had nobody taking photos.

“I am even more gobsmacked [to see the picture of the Queen making her way back to the royal car]. That’s me, there in the front of the nurses in the guard of honour. It’s a picture I never thought I would see. I’m thrilled.

“On the day I was in charge of the guard of honour. If the matron sends for you, you automatically think ‘what have I done’? But it was just to ask me to be in charge of the guard of honour. It was quite an honour to do it.”

Helen, who retired just before 2000, later trained as a midwife in Glasgow and as a Queen’s nurse in Edinburgh, before being sent to Rhu and working as part of the district nursing team in the Helensburgh area.

During her career, she also worked as a ward sister and night sister at the Vale, and as a nursing officer in the Borders, where she was responsible for a hospital and community nursing services in Berwickshire.

Latterly, she worked at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in England, where she was in charge of care in the community for Cambridgeshire, and was invited to speak about her work at a London seminar run by the UKCC and the Royal College of Nursing.

But she still fondly, and vividly, remembers the special day at the Vale at the very beginning of her career.

The 75-year-old explained: “It was quite an occasion. We were all so excited and had to wear white gloves because in those days if the Queen was maybe going to be shaking your hand you had to wear white gloves.

“When the Queen got out of the car she walked past and acknowledged us. She was lovely and smiling and nodding to all of us.

“Prince Philip came right up to speak to us and said ‘what are all the patients doing while you are outside?’ and we laughed.

“The patients were at the windows on ward five, which was immediately above the front door, and had the best view. She walked through the guard of honour and then met with the dignitaries.

“We were very fortunate that day when you think of our weather. If we were all standing out there in a guard of honour, normally it would have been raining, but it was a lovely sunny day.”

Gordon said he was delighted that Helen had come forward and that he hoped to reunite her with the original slides.

He said: “It’s just great that someone has come forward.”

Also featured in the slides walking with the Queen is the late Isabella Gordon, the hospital’s matron, who previously had served in the army as a Queen Alexandra nurse and remarkably was one of the first nurses to enter the liberated Bergen Belsen concentration camp at the end of World War II.

Helen, who continued to keep in contact with Ms Gordon until she passed away, added: “I never lost touch with matron. She is the one who is walking with the Queen with the three-cornered veil on her head – that was her Queen Alexandra nursing cap.

“It must have been quite a thing for her to have served in the army as a Queen Alexandra nurse and then to receive the Queen towards the end of her career in her own hospital.”