The Royal Garden Party

Well where do I start? The morning began with heavy cloud and it looked as if it was going to rain. The afternoon turned out to be sunny and hot. We entered Buckingham Palace through Grosvenor Gate in order to experience the gardens rather than queue at the Grand Entrance, on the recommendation of a previous visitor. Wow this was some magnificent garden, seemingly some 40 acres with a 3 acre lake. The whole experience is now impressed on my brain as we couldn’t take photographs! First of all, my partner Geoff and I met Adrian (immediate past President) and Mary Abel and we had soft drinks and finger sandwiches with cakes. It was obvious from the good organisation with no queuing that Buckingham Palace had run such an event before!! There were some 5000 people from all parts of society, military from UK, Australia and Canada, the church, , politicians, diplomats, local councillors and chartered societies such as ours.

The National Anthem greeted the Queen and the Royal Party flanked by the Yeomen of the Guard. We lined the ‘walks’ on either sides defined by the Gentlemen in Arms and hoped the Queen would walk down ours as we were at the front! In fact Prince Philip was the Royal who walked down our line. He was fantastic and looked younger than his photographs but he was smaller than we expected around 5 feet 7 inches. He could certainly ‘work the crowd and we were only two feet away from him, really exciting.
We then made sure we could see the Queen as several people again were presented to her, as with Prince Philip, as she walked down the walk way of guests lined on either side like a road. She wore essentially a delicate blue suit and hat that had a delicate brown leaf in the pattern and looked really lovely and relaxed. We walked around part of the grounds and lake seeing the rose garden, it was truly magnificent. Once the Queen and the Royal Party finished their tea they returned to the Palace and we were right at the front watching her walk back, again no more than 3 feet away! Prince Philip followed by Princess Ann, Duke and Duchess of Kent and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. Princess Ann looked particularly nice and slim in a green dress and hat.

There were two bands playing at opposite sides of the garden. On the playing of the national anthem we left walking back through the Palace and exited through the Grand Entrance with many tourists pressing their faces to the railings expecting to see very famous people, but just us. Outside we came down to earth and walked back to the car via St James Park and Adrian bought us all an ice cream. What a wonderful day!

Now on to China!