Saturday 10 September 2022 10:10 PM 'A scene of quiet dignity': How six gamekeepers will transfer the Queen's ... trends now

Just before 10am this morning, six gamekeepers from the Balmoral estate, sturdy men with deep knowledge of the Highland landscape so adored by the Queen, will slowly file into the castle’s ballroom.

Since her death on Thursday afternoon, the Queen has laid at rest there in an oak coffin covered with the Royal Standard for Scotland and a wreath of flowers in what one senior Palace official last night described as a scene of ‘quiet dignity’.

The gamekeepers, some of whom in earlier years accompanied the Queen on walks over the grouse moors and mountains that surround Balmoral, will gently lift the coffin and carry it through an adjacent dining room to a hearse parked by the Entrance Portico.

It will be the first highly poignant moment of a three-day journey culminating in the Queen’s coffin being greeted by a guard of honour at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

She will later be moved to Westminster Hall, where she will lie in state for four days, allowing tens of thousands of her loyal subjects to pay their last respects.

Her funeral – which will be at Westminster Abbey on Monday, September 19 – has been declared a Bank Holiday. Schools will close and a government spokesman said ‘extremely large crowds’ are expected in central London, which will be ‘very congested’.

Every detail of the arrangements has been meticulously planned in Operation Unicorn, the mission to return her to London.

In a series of moments of high drama and symbolism, King Charles is expected to walk behind his mother’s coffin three times during processions in Edinburgh and London. The newly proclaimed Monarch will also mount a touching vigil as his beloved mother lies at rest in the Scottish capital tomorrow.

Princess Anne will also play a key role. She will accompany the late Sovereign’s coffin on the 55-minute flight from Scotland to London.

The Duke of Norfolk, England’s highest-ranking Duke, who is tasked with coordinating the Queen’s funeral, last night said those involved with delivering the arrangements will do so ‘with the heaviest hearts’.

‘But also, with the firmest of resolve to ensure a fitting farewell to one of the defining figures of our times; a Monarch whom we were truly privileged to have had as the Head of State of our country and the Realms, and Head of the wider Commonwealth,’ The Duke, who is also Earl Marshall, added.

‘While His Majesty The King was speaking about his family, I think it applies to us all when he said in his broadcast yesterday that: ‘We owe her the most heartfelt debt.’

‘I think we can, in some way, repay that debt by carrying out her last wishes in delivering Her Majesty The Queen’s Funeral.’ After leaving Balmoral this morning, the hearse carrying the Queen’s coffin will lead a cortege of vehicles on a 170-mile drive to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Tens of thousands of mourners are expected to pack the pavements of a string of towns and villages along the route to Holyroodhouse, the official residence of the Monarch in Scotland.

As millions around the world watch transfixed, the cortege will first pass through Ballater, a village just six miles from Balmoral where the Queen was a familiar sight, before slowing for crowds in the Royal Deeside villages of Aboyne, Bancory and Peterculter.

Shadowed by a news helicopter and convoy of police vehicles, it will cross the King George VI bridge in Aberdeen and then swing south along the A90, passing Stonehaven, Dundee, Perth and the Naval dockyards at Rosyth, before using the Queensferry Crossing – opened by Her Majesty five years ago – to cross the Forth. After passing through Edinburgh’s western suburbs, it will skirt the Royal Botanic Gardens and Edinburgh Castle before its dramatic arrival at Holyroodhouse.

Ordinarily, a trip of three-and-a-half hours, the cortege is expected to take six hours as it regularly slows to walking pace to acknowledge the vast numbers expected to pay their respects.

Courtiers are anticipating scenes of public mourning not witnessed since the 20-deep crowds that watched the journey of Princess Diana’s funeral cortege travel to Westminster Abbey in September 1997.

As with that momentous event 25 years ago, officials have been tasked with collecting the flowers that will rain down on the Queen’s cortege.

‘You can bet that every square foot in the streets here will be filled with people getting ready to say goodbye,’ David Cobban, 56, a chartered surveyor, and owner of the Brakely gift room in Ballater, said last night.

Mr Cobban, who chaired the committee for the local Platinum Jubilee events this year, said: ‘Many people in this town had dealings with the Queen, having perhaps worked for her at Balmoral, or having had family members who worked on the estate. Therefore, for many people here this is a very personal and poignant moment as she makes her journey through the village for the last time.