Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie visit a Big Jubilee Lunch at All Saints Church, Fulham PIC: Matt Grayson/Fulham Chronicle/PA Wire

The Queen’s granddaughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie surprised picnickers by greeting them at the Buckingham Palace gardens.

The royal sisters were near the Garden Entrance of the monarch’s home, threading their way through the crowds to welcome bystanders.

Eugenie, dressed in a bright red vintage dress, said: “Hello everyone. “Who are you all excited to see - apart from Granny?”

Beatrice, in an Edem peacock blue print dress and Ferragamo blue wedge shoes, joked that she had yet to receive a hamper and that she would be setting out a picnic inside the Palace.

“I think we’re going to have a carpet picnic upstairs,” she told Sally Bratt, from Hendon, north London.

Tim Douglas, from Ivybridge in Devon, said after meeting Beatrice: “She liked the design of our picnic mat - Union flags.

“She said the weather yesterday at the pageant was typically British.”

Beatrice described the flotilla on the River Thames as “great fun”.

Eugenie, who took a peek into one of the picnic hampers, declared: “They’ve got champagne and everything.”

Brian Greenwood, from York, said after meeting both Princesses: “We were saying we were a bit disappointed by the weather yesterday.

“But they said it didn’t really spoil things. It’s a fantastic occasion.”