The coffin carrying Queen Elizabeth II arrived on Sunday at Holyroodhouse Palace in Edinburgh, the monarch’s official Scottish residence, completing the first leg of her sombre final journey.
The hearse leading the seven-car cortege had left Balmoral Castle, where the queen died on Thursday aged 96, just after 0900 GMT and made a 180-mile (290 kilometre) journey along streets lined with mourners.
As the hearse left Balmoral Castle, some well-wishers threw flowers or applauded, while others were in tears as the long convoy led by a black hearse wound its way slowly on a six-hour journey to Scotland’s capital, where it will stay for two days.
Six groundskeepers had loaded the oak coffin — draped with a Scottish Royal Standard and a floral wreath — into the hearse that was followed by a Bentley carrying the queen’s only daughter Princess Anne.
The first glimpse of the queen’s coffin for a grieving nation came a day after her son Charles III was formally proclaimed king, and after her warring grandsons William and Harry, and their wives Kate and Meghan, briefly reunited for a walkabout.
The king himself will travel to Edinburgh on Monday for a prayer service, before the body of the queen, who died at Balmoral on Thursday aged 96, is flown to London on Tuesday.
Britain’s longest-serving monarch will then lie in state for four days which is expected to draw at least a million people, ahead of a funeral set to be watched worldwide and attended by numerous heads of state.
“We want to say thank you that we can honour the memory of the Queen,” said Ukrainian Viktoriia Saienko, who fled Kharkiv, one of the cities devastated by Russia’s invasion, and is working in Scotland.
