The Queen paid a visit to an Aberdeenshire church yesterday morning without any noticeable extra security measures.
She has recently taken up residence at Balmoral Castle in Deeside and attended a church service at Crathie Kirk.
In the aftermath of the Manchester attack, the monarch postponed the trip to visit the survivors of the bombing in the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.
The Queen attended the Sunday morning service with her son Edward the Duke of Wessex and his daughter Lady Louise Windsor, the Queen’s youngest granddaughter.
However, there was no visible extra armed police or security measures surrounding the church, such as have been witnessed around the UK this week at railway stations and football events.
PM Theresa May had upped the threat level to “critical” on Tuesday, following the Manchester attack, but has subsequently lowered it again to “severe”.
On the Royal Estate, armed police were on patrol, but members of the public were undeterred from visiting the castle, while the Queen stayed elsewhere on the estate.
The Queen is normally among the Sunday worshippers at Crathie Kirk when she is staying at her private Aberdeenshire retreat and is accompanied by a number of security guards.
The service offered a tribute to those who died in Manchester last Monday at the Ariana Grande concert terror attack.
The Rev Kenneth MacKenzie, of the Braemar and Crathie Parish, said: “Her Majesty is usually up, but she waited this year because of the unspeakably awful event in Manchester.
“The situation was mentioned by me at the beginning of the service and then again during the prayers – it is clearly something that is on the minds of everyone in the land this week.”
Rev MacKenzie added the service had been of a reasonable size and that security was “not noticeably larger” than usual.
The Royal Party travelled the short distance to the church, which has been the place of worship in Scotland for the Royal Family since 1848, in a Range Rover.
The tradition was originally established by Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, who bought Balmoral in 1852 and fell in love with the countryside.