“A moment rich in emotions.” After twelve hours of waiting, Pierrick Bourgeois, a 23-year-old French student, was able to pray early this Saturday morning near the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, exposed in Westminster Hall. A “very tiring” moment, marked by a long wait “in the cold”, but worth it.
“I started the queue at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. They had told me 24 hours to wait, but I didn’t believe it. Result of the races, I arrived at Westminster at 5:40 am this Saturday. to meditate with the remains of the Queen and witness the changing of the guard. She was surrounded by people from all over the world. I made friends with Greg, an Englishman in his fifties who I did the twelve hours of queuing with,” she said on BFMTV.
The young man, who studies in Toulouse, had “promised” to attend the queen’s funeral: “I had not been able to go to Kate and William’s wedding or to the jubilee. I could not miss this moment from the first moment.” press releases about the Queen’s state of health, I understood what was going to happen: I booked my hostel and my plane from Toulouse”. The latter considers Elizabeth II as “the pillar of a family, of a nation and of an icon “, assuring that he is going to “a lot [lui] lack”.
“My mother obviously cried”
Like Pierrick Bourgeois, tens of thousands of people have traveled from abroad and the UK to see the queen’s coffin. Like Jules Birkby, an artist from Leeds, Yorkshire, who arrived in London from Thursday to Friday night to please her mother, a great admirer of Elizabeth II.
On Twitter, in a long series of hilarious tweets, the Englishwoman detailed her journey to London, from the train to the nearly empty tube, with only a few revelers returning from the night, to Southwark Park, where the queue began.
Jules Birkby and his mother spent more than 15 hours in line to get to Westminster Hall, traveling 14.8 kilometres. “My mother obviously cried. I was touched myself, it was wonderful,” he concluded, before posting a photo of him having a tea party at around 5 p.m.
The death of Elizabeth II, very famous after more than 70 years of reign, has aroused immense emotion in the United Kingdom. It is still possible to gather this weekend in front of her coffin, ahead of her funeral on Monday morning at Westminster Abbey at 10am GMT, 12pm in Paris. It is her first state funeral since Winston Churchill’s in 1965.
Source: BFM TV
