Camilla’s flying visit (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Camilla’s flying visit

11:37am Thursday 30th November 2006 in Swindon By Benjamin Parkes

CAMILLA, Duchess of Cornwall flew in to officially open Swindon College's new North Star building yesterday.

Her royal helicopter landed not far from the college and she arrived in a silver Lexus, closely followed by a team of bodyguards.

She spent two hours walking around the building, stopping to chat to students.

Principal Jonquil Brooks greeted the VIP as she walked up a red carpet and into the £17m building.

The new campus provides the college with industry standard facilities in art and design, hairdressing, computing, music and general trades and plumbing.

In all an extra 10,500 square metres of purpose-built learning facilities and workshops have been added to the existing site.

The college also has facilities for catering, engineering, construction and beauty students.

And this is what The Duchess wanted to see. "It's fantastic," she said. "It's lovely to see the students looking so happy."

For two hours the royal visitor was taken to different areas of the college.

Her first stop was in the hair salon where trainee hairdressers attempted to carry on with wash and blow dries while their guest inspected their work.

Next it was time for a group of performing arts students to show off their talents.

"I'm so pleased I got to meet her," said 17-year-old Lauren Card. "It was quite nerve wracking performing the routine in front of a royal but she looked like she enjoyed it. She said to me it was very good."

After the excitement in the dance studio, The Duchess was led to the library where she looked at an engineering display.

The BA (Hons) Fine Art students had waited patiently to see The Duchess and they say the wait was worth it.

Hannah Brooks, 21, said: "It was a real honour to speak to the Duchess. I showed her my work and she seemed to be interested."

After unveiling a plaque to commemorate her visit, the Duchess then greeted the excited crowd who had gathered to catch a glimpse of royalty.