King Charles and Prince William delighted crowds during a surprise visit to queue to see the Queen lying in state yesterday.
They greeted hundreds who had waited through the night - including Yela Alvarado, who had been queuing for 12 hours armed with a Paddington Bear brought all the way from her native Peru when they arrived at Albert Embankment, south London.
Her friend Wende Hernandez, 43, had brought the cuddly bear 6,000 miles from their home city of Lima when she arrived to stay with Yala and her sister Yoshi Bunch last month.
Nanny Yela, 62, wept as she met the King - and told how he admired the bear, which hails from Peru in Michael Bond’s novels.
Afterwards, Yela told the Sunday Mirror: “I was so emotional I couldn’t talk. When King Charles saw Paddington he said ‘how marvellous’ - and when he realised we came from Peru he was so excited.”
Her sister Yoshi Bunce, an NHS nurse who lives in Epsom, added: “We also spoke to Prince William who was just so humble. He saw the bear and said ‘well, that’s Christmas sorted!’
“We are from South America but we absolutely love the Queen. Even more since Paddington was such a part of the Jubilee - it made a special link between our countries.
“She gave 70 years of service so standing in the cold for a few hours is nothing.”
There were cheers of God Save the King, God Save the Prince of Wales and hip hip hooray as the pair walked up and down the queue.
They thanked those who had been waiting through the night, with the Prince of Wales telling eight-year-old Poppy-Ann Brown: "Keep going! You're over halfway."
She told the Sunday Mirror: “He also asked me how many sweets I’d been eating - I said ‘a few’.
“It was exciting, I can’t wait to tell my sister Elsie about it - she’s only four so she is too little to come today.”
Before joining the queue in the early hours of Saturday morning, Poppy-Ann laid a book of memorial messages from pupils at Summerlea Primary School in Littlehampton outside Buckingham Palace.
Mum Katie, a 39-year-old teaching assistant, said: “Pops was there on behalf of her whole school as all the children had written messages.
“She’s done amazingly in the queue - she wanted to walk the whole way and has only had a couple of ten minute power naps to keep going.”
Dad Gary, a recruitment consultant, added: “We came because we wanted to be a part of history - and meeting Prince William means it is certainly something she’ll never forget.”
Richard Nihill also noticed kind William enquiring about the children who’d been queuing in the night “to make sure they were okay,” attendee Richard Nihill said.
The reverend, 49, said he passed on his blessings to the future King and his children.
“It was so wonderful that he took time to stop and chat to people when he is mourning the loss of his grandmother,” Richard, from York, added.
He and two other groups - Chris Stevens, 51, and his 15-year-old nephew Andrew, from Nottinghamshire, and Andy Davis, 56, from Darlington - met on the train to Kings Cross.
They shared a taxi to join the queue at around 2am and have been chatting ever since - and have even swapped contact details.
And the Prince of Wales told members of the crowd that his children George, Charlotte and Louis are “coping well”, with the loss of their great-grandmother.
Wendy Jones and Sarah Carpenter were “delighted” when the future King stopped to chat to them after they travelled 200 miles from Gobowen, Shropshire to pay their respects.
Wendy, 56, said: “I passed on my condolences and asked how the little ones are getting on. He told me they are coping well, and that it is a good thing that they have school.”
Armed with a bag of food and plenty of layers, the pals said they didn’t think twice about joining the queue at 2am on Saturday.
Sarah, 40, added: “We love the monarchy. The Queen did so much for us for so long. We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
You can now buy Friday's historic Daily Mirror commemorating the death of the Queen here: mirror.co.uk/commemorative
