Queen Elizabeth’s coffin was taken from her summer home in the Scottish Highlands to Edinburgh on Sunday, past tens of thousands of mourners lining the route to pay tribute, many in somber silence, some applauding and others in tears.
Queen Elizabeth left her beloved summer estate, Balmoral Castle today as her coffin began the six-hour procession to Edinburg. The late queen’s coffin was draped in the Royal Standard for Scotland and topped with a wreath made of flowers from the estate, including sweet peas, one of the queen’s favorites.
The oak coffin was carried from the castle’s ballroom to a waiting hearse by six gamekeepers from the Balmoral estate, where the queen spent her summer vacations.
The cortege from Balmoral is the first of a series of events leading up to the state funeral at Westminster Abbey in London on Sept. 19. The six-hour route the procession takes, around 175 miles, is not the quickest way to get to Edinburgh, its first destination. It was chosen because it passes through Aberdeen, Dundee, and Perth, allowing many people the chance to pay their respects.
As the hearse reached the small neighboring village of Ballater near Balmoral, hundreds stood beside the road in silence in the bright morning sunshine as the hearse passed, some throwing flowers into the road.
“It’s just very, very sad. I’m happy I was here to say our goodbyes,” said Elizabeth Alexander, 69, who was born on the day the queen was crowned in 1953.
“I think she has been an ever-constant in my life. She was the queen I was born under, and she has always been there,” said Angus Ruthven, a 54-year-old civil servant from Edinburgh as he awaited the arrival of the coffin.
“I think it is going to take a lot of adjusting that she is not here. It is quite a sudden thing. We knew she was getting frailer, but it will be a good reign for King Charles,” he predicted.
Before reaching the Scottish capital, the cortege traveled down what is effectively a royal memory lane — passing through locations laden with House of Windsor history. Those included Dyce, where in 1975 the queen formally opened the U.K.’s first North Sea oil pipeline, and Fife, near St. Andrews University, where her grandson Prince William, now the Prince of Wales, studied and met his future wife, Catherine.
