With the greatest respect, it was worth it

I had an unexpectedly amazing day yesterday.

In case you wondered why I was "absent without leave" from my usual routine of daily posts here, dear reader, I arose from my general Saturday morning coma in a haze of coffee and nicotine, feeling in a more-maudlin-than-usual mood. As I absorbed myself following the links on the BBC News website to the pomp and ceremony and contemplation that surrounds HM The Queen's lying-in-state, it really hit me.

I needed to be there.

So I grabbed my winter coat, checked the route to the start of The Queue at Southwark Park in Bermondsey, and off I went!

Arriving (eventually) at the correct entrance (other gates into the park were closed), at 1.30pm I entered a queuing zig-zag that would put most airports to shame [press reports said it was three miles long]...

...and that was just to get wristbands to join the queue! The illuminated signs gave an estimated minimum of fourteen hours to our destination, Gulp.

At this point, no-one had a clue what to expect, and, as we set off along the Thames Walk, all seemed well and good, except for the fact that, thanks to the lengthy creek that marks the remnants of the River Neckinger tributary, we had to back-track inland and back again to shuffle through Shad Thames to Tower Bridge.

That took two hours, to cover a distance (as the crow flies) of about half a mile. Then there was another zig-zag to contend with (it took about an hour) before we finally got back to the riverside to commence the stop-start, stop-start journey to our final destination.

And when I say that, I mean it - traversing the foot tunnels under London and Southwark bridges took forever, and we didn't even reach The Globe/Tate Modern for another two hours (that's usually only a half-hour walk at the most). The sun was already going down as we passed Blackfriars Bridge and the Oxo Tower, but at least that meant we actually got a "Waterloo Sunset" as we headed towards bridge #6 (if you count the Millennium Bridge) - and a fine view of a pink St. Paul's Cathedral:



And so it went on, and on, through the South Bank. We passed by the London Eye at around 8.30pm, then (on a long, long diversion round the back of the Old County Hall), crossed Westminster Bridge Road and were directed back onto the Thames Walk opposite the Palace of Westminster - almost two hours later!

So near, and yet so far...



In some respects, we were indeed on the "home stretch".

It didn't take that long to get across our final bridge, Lambeth Bridge - but, arriving at the Victoria Tower Gardens at the West side of the Palace of Westminster, a final "trial by fire" awaited...



...another zig-zag! - and this one was twice or three times the size of the others we'd traversed en route.

It took well over an hour of constant walking to get through, plus "airport-style" security, before we could enter Westminster Hall (at 12.15am) to do what we had spent so much time and physical effort to do - to pay our last due respects to the Monarch who served us all so well and so diligently, and to say goodbye to someone who we never really knew, yet loved all the same...



...and it was worth every exhausting minute.

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Footnote:

Throughout this post, I've referred to "we". I actually travelled to Southwark to do this whole thing alone. However, this was no ordinary queue. The atmosphere among participants was actually a heart-warming and genuinely friendly experience.

At the outset, I chatted with a little coterie of people in close proximity and indeed we walked the whole thing together, from beginning to its mournful end. A lovely group: a couple who'd come down that morning from Bradford in Yorkshire, a woman who'd flown in on her own from Jersey in the Channel Islands, a couple of Londoners who (like me) were originally "solo travellers", a few people from Essex, and a girl with her elderly West Indian Mum who, despite needing to sit down a lot, did the whole damned thing unbowed and without complaining.

For those gruelling eleven hours, we kept each others' spirits up - keeping a lookout for those who'd gone for a pee or a coffee so they wouldn't lose their space with us, sharing our thoughts and experiences, sweets and biscuits and snacks; and we locals delighted as the "out-of-towners" gawped at the landmark-filled vistas of London and took advantage of the photo-opportunities all along the route.

I compared the camaraderie to that old chestnut "the Blitz spirit" - we were all in it together.

It made the day go by very pleasantly. And what a day! A once-in-a-lifetime experience.

[click any pic to embiggen]