The Princess Royal is to visit Helensburgh and Lomond later this month, it has been announced.

Princess Anne will visit the amphibious transport dock HMS Albion alongside the Glen Mallan jetty on the east shore of Loch Long.

The visit, which is listed in the online Royal Diary, is her first to the Helensburgh and Lomond since January 2020 when she opened the refurbished Drumfork Community Centre.

And Her Royal Highness was in the area a year earlier to open the Scottish Submarine Centre in Helensburgh and to mark 50 years of the Royal Navy's Continuous At-Sea Deterrent operation.

Helensburgh Advertiser:

HMS Albion is one of the Royal Navy's two amphibious assault ships, lauched in 2001.

Capable of carrying 400 sailors and Royal Marines, its loading dock is packed with a variery of trucks, machinery and water craft as well as emergency supplies for use in disaster relief operations - leading to the MoD describing her as 'the Royal Navy's Swiss Army knife'.

The Princess's 2020 visit to Helensburgh marked the completion of the £2 million refurbishment of the Drumfork Community Centre - used by many military families in the area but by the wider community too.

The Glen Mallan facility - officially known as the Northern Ammunition Jetty - was refurbished over a period of more than two years and at a cost of £87 million.

The work was completed in early 2022 and allowed the Navy's largest surface ships - including the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth - to visit Loch Long to load and unload supplies of ammunition, though the Navy's flagship had paid its first visit to the jetty in March 2021, nearly a year before the upgrade work was complete.