The hush had settled on the waiting crowd even before the Queen’s cortege appeared over the rise in the road from Balmoral. An oblivious toddler chattered into the silence on Ballater main street, where the country’s longest-serving monarch shopped for barbecue sausages at the local butcher.
It was a typically Highland farewell to a woman those lining the village streets considered a treasured neighbour: deeply felt, but understated in its expression. There was no applause, no spontaneous chorus of anthem or hymn as the coffin passed by sedately, and all eyes were pulled to the east to follow it beyond sight. Then, as though released from a trance, the bystanders turned to nod to friends and disperse promptly, leaving behind the metal crowd barriers, taking home the weight of their loss.
The Queen began her final journey through Scotland on Sunday, passing out of the wrought-iron gates of her beloved Balmoral estate shortly after 10am, and making slow and winding progress first through the villages of Royal Deeside, then from Aberdeen down the coast past Dundee and Perth, where tens of thousands more had gathered at the side of busy carriageways. She arrived, six hours and 180 miles later, in Edinburgh to loud cheers, whoops and generous applause.
As the cortege proceeded down the east coast, the proclamation of the new king was read with ceremony in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff, while crowds continued to flock to Buckingham Palace. King Charles and the Queen consort were greeted by thousands of cheering well-wishers as they arrived early in the afternoon to undertake official engagements with Commonwealth leaders.
In Ballater, the crowds had been gathering since before 7am, with the well-organised bringing supermarket bags of snacks and folding chairs.
Among the first to arrive in the brisk early morning chill were three generations of the Alexander family. Grandmother Elizabeth, who was born on Coronation Day and named after the Queen, had travelled from Huntly, an hour to the north, with her two daughters and three grandchildren, who clutched their union flags almost as tightly as their sharing tub of sweeties.
“The Queen has always been part of our lives, during the summer when she’s staying in Scotland,” Alexander said. “We’d often see her about locally, and the community always respected her privacy. She was so relaxed here, even in how she dressed. It felt that having her as the head of that family was a constant.”
Sitting alone on a bench by Glenmuick parish church in the centre of the village, Frank Groves was dressed in a dark suit and tie and carrying a bouquet of creamy flowers bound with a black ribbon. The 70-year-old had driven from the fishing village of Cruden Bay on the north-east coast to Ballater, which he often visited with his wife, Jeanette, after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Inevitably, this collective grief sharpens his own loss from seven years before.
“From when I was born, the Queen was there; when I went to school, got married, and when my wife passed, she was there. She almost feels like a distant relative.”
Seeing the coffin go past was “the culmination of sadness”, Groves observed. “But you need that to move on. Britain won’t be the same without her.”
Following the coffin in convoy to Edinburgh were the Queen’s daughter, the Princess Royal, her husband, Sir Tim Laurence, a representative of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and the minister of Crathie Kirk, the small granite church where the Queen worshipped every Sunday during her annual summer holidays in the Highlands.
Onlookers saw the coffin draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland. Set on top of the brightly coloured cloth was a wreath of flowers gathered from Balmoral estate: white heather and pine fir entwined with sweetpeas, one of the Queen’s favourite flowers.
“I was worried folk might start clapping or throwing flowers,” said Elsbeth Henry, who had come with her friend Isa McLeod from the coastal town of Lossiemouth that morning. “But it was very respectful, exactly as she would have wished.”
She paused to collect herself. “It was very emotional, though. I wish I could say more, but I can’t find the words.
“It would have been her wish to die here,” McLeod added gently. “This was where she had her freedom; she could breathe up here.”
From Ballater, the cortege travelled eastwards along the winding A93 through a succession of villages – Aboyne, Banchory and Peterculter – where locals similarly greeted the cars with affectionate understatement, the occasional smattering of applause and a few flowers thrown along the route. Some had come in full mourning dress, some wearing kilts or military uniform, others in more practical outdoor wear of the kind favoured by the Queen when she holidayed here.
From this rural approach, the convoy reached the A90, a dual carriageway leading the cortege south, passing Dundee and then Perth, where the crowds thickened in the early afternoon sunshine.
As the convoy reached larger roads, so the size and mood of the onlookers swelled too; in Dundee, cars halted on the opposite carriageway to observe the cortege passing, and by the time it reached Edinburgh, crowds who had been packed deep for many hours loudly celebrated its arrival.
But all along the route, every news organisation reported the same simple explanation: “We had to be here. She was our queen.”
And there in the cobbled streets of Scotland’s capital, from midday the international crowds were tightly packed. The numbers on the Royal Mile were, everyone agreed, the densest and deepest the Royal Mile had ever seen, and more than were present for the opening of the Scottish parliament in 1999.
When the procession reached its destination of Edinburgh’s Palace of Holyroodhouse, after more than six hours, the Queen’s children and their spouses – the Princess Royal and Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, the Duke of York and the Earl and Countess of Wessex – watched as soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Scotland carried the coffin into the palace. In a touching gesture, deference to the monarch was still observed, with the royal women curtseying and the men bowing their heads.
Everywhere there was friendliness, people making new acquaintances, tourists being told where they should go to eat or drink. Even those caught out by the many road closures, unable to get home, took things in their stride. The police presence was high but amiable.
Adriana De La Torre, 40, an attorney from Orlando, Florida, bagged herself a good Royal Mile spot for the day’s events because she wanted to see history.
“I’m a big fan of the royals. We don’t have this kind of unifying figure in the States who everyone rallies around, you just have the two parties. Her dedication to service is outstanding and it is something to celebrate.”
Edinburgh will remain the focus of royal events until the Queen’s coffin is flown to London from the city’s airport on Tuesday, as Operation Unicorn, the codename for the contingency plans should the Queen die in Scotland, continues.
On Monday, King Charles III will embark on a tour of all four nations of the UK, first travelling to Edinburgh, where he will accompany the Queen’s coffin as it travels by procession to St Giles’ Cathedral to lie in rest for 24 hours. Members of the public will be able to view her coffin there.
The King will then return to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, where he will have an audience with Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and later attend the Scottish parliament, where they will receive a motion of condolence.
In the evening, King Charles will hold a vigil with members of the royal family at St Giles’ Cathedral.
Back in Ballater, the parish minister, Rev David Barr, contemplated the Queen’s special affinity with his village. “When she moved through those gates, she became a wife, a mother, then a grandmother, not the Queen any more. Even as a child she had that freedom; she could play with her wee sister and their ponies and not worry about cameras or intrusion. They could be children, and that feeling stuck with her.”
The privacy that allows such unique freedom is what locals here so fiercely guard. Even in the midst of national upheaval and international focus, in Ballater restraint is uppermost: “She’s our neighbour – so we don’t talk about her,” one man said on the eve of the cortege, with a polite shake of the head.
“We have had such an honour to be her neighbours,” Barr said. “But she was more than a neighbour; she was a constant. And in thanks for that service, the little thing we could do was to extend that normality to the local village.”
Surveying the thronging world media, he added: “We’ll speak more now, but in a few week’s time, come up and ask me if I’ve seen a member of the royal family. Even with my dog collar on, even if I’ve spoken to one five minutes ago, I’ll lie through my teeth.”
