Harry chills with the troops

● Duke visits military personnel on exercise above Arctic Circle in Norway

The Duke of Sussex may have been many miles from the UK but two British servicemen on winter weather training in the Arctic Circle ensured the duchess was never far from Harry’s mind on Valentine’s Day.

A tiny makeshift igloo dug into the fresh Norwegian snow was just large enough to fit framed images from Harry and Meghan’s wedding, while candles and soft music also welcomed the duke as he edged his way inside the Quincey Shelter to meet Lance Corporal Lee Lovack and air engineering technician Kevin Burns.

The royal, spending his first Valentine’s Day as a married man with hundreds of British military personnel at the Bardufoss training base, laughed as he spotted the mementos.

“You weirdos,” he joked. “It’s very kind of you to invite me into your private shrine or whatever you want to call it. And the music, is that part of it? Romantic isn’t it?”

Speaking afterwards, AET Burns, 36, from Inverness, said: “We took him (the duke) through the structure of the shelter, how it’s made.

“He is used to the weather, I think, because he said about exercises he had been on, he looked around at the shelter with the pictures and candles and he said we were weirdos.”

In his role of captain general Royal Marines, Harry spent three hours in the icy wilds of northern Norway, meeting servicemen on the gruelling Exercise Clockwork.

Harry’s visit marked the 50th anniversary of Commando Helicopter Force and Joint Helicopter Command deploying to Bardufoss, where personnel are taught how to survive, operate and fight in the subzero conditions and gain experience of operating aircraft in severe cold weather and mountainous environments.