YOU wait all year for a Royal Navy warship to visit and then two come all at once.

Hot on the heels of HMS Cattistock’s visit to Bristol, her sister HMS Quorn also found herself in the heart of the great city on the Avon.

Cattistock headed to Bristol to champion the Royal Navy’s suppression of the slave trade two centuries before.

History was also on the minds of the Quorn’s sailors, but the rather nearer past of the Falklands.

The minehunter’s visit to Bristol coincided with the city’s Service of Commemoration for the Falklands task force.

Her sailors lined up alongside more than 650 men and women from the RAF and Army , plus numerous West Country veterans of the 1982 conflict, in the city’s cathedral.

The Falklands commemorations continued after the Portsmouth-based warship departed Bristol, too.

Quorn’s next stop was Poole Harbour, where 1 Assault Group Royal Marines paid tribute to the green berets’ sacrifices 25 years ago.

A platoon of sailors joined the Royals on a march through the town and along Town Quay, while their shipmates manned ship.

Before departing the Dorset port, Quorn collected the Mayor of Melton, Cllr Pamela Posnett, 20 Sea Cadets and staff from the ship’s affiliated units TS Tiger and Venomous, plus nine-year-old Zoe Riley, winner of a schools’ competition, for a trip up the Solent into her home port, via the Needles Channel.

“It was a great pleasure for to be on board Quorn – not because I got a day off school but because it gave me an idea of what life at sea is like for when I hopefully join the Navy,” said Cadet Hannah Thompson from Loughborough.