Sunday, September 11, the royal funeral procession left the Château de Balmoral to join Edinburgh.
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Have we ever seen this? Do we remember having crisscrossed a country, crossing at each crossroads, beaten by the winds of the Scottish heath, whole families, father, mother, children and grandparents, installed on folding armchairs placed in The grass of the embankments? Have we ever crossed villages, to the sound of the bagpipes, hailed by local elected officials dressed in elegant kilts under black sheet jackets? Have we already rolled for almost 300 kilometers, part of which on a highway, along crowds massaged behind the safety rambardes or perched on the bridges, eyes robbed towards the bitumen horizon?
Sunday, much more than this coffin covered with a yellow flag embroidered with red lions, placed in a black hear, that’s what was hit. This ordinary audience came to see in a flash – what, less than thirty seconds! – A line of cars carrying the body of a queen accompanied by an invisible princess, Anne, her daughter.
The royal family had published the route of the funeral procession the day before. From village to village, we passed the word. From Balmoral to Edinburgh, it took almost five hours to cross Scotland. First, leave the wild purity of the Highlands for the port of Granite d’Aberdeen. Then descend to the south and cross the old large textile city of Dundee. Finally, reaching up to Edinburgh, with its splendid university and cathedral. And everywhere, the same rallies.
Fugitive show
At the entrance to a village, students from a horse riding club awaited the deceased queen, perched on their double pony, well stored like a kind of royal juvenile guard. On the forecourt of a church, a choir began a hymn as soon as the bikers arrived opening the procession. Behind the motorway slides, children launched flowers, quickly picked up by their parents, once the procession has passed, so as not to hinder the normal return to road traffic. “Here she go!” (Here it is!), “She’s arriving” (she arrives!), Each time has run the same diffuse rumor, as if the queen would appear very lively greeting in her carriage, rather than in this curious coffin in sun colors. Was we heard, from official cars, applause?
to say everything, we were amazed at such patience and such a crowd for such a fugitive and sober show. But for many, you had to be. “This is the kind of moment that you will remember all your life, said a father to his little boy, there are not so many opportunities to bring the whole country.”
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