Description
The King's Coronation Procession is only 2.1km long, about a quarter of the length of the late Queen's five-mile celebratory journey. A newly crowned Charles and the Queen Consort will return from Westminster Abbey in the Gold State Coach via the proven route from Parliament Square, along Whitehall, around Trafalgar Square, through Admiralty Arch and the Mall to the Buckingham Palace. More than 6,000 members of the armed forces will take part in Coronation Day, the largest military ceremonial operation in 70 years, with gun salutes, an air parade and motorcade marches.
Some 4,000 sailors, soldiers, airmen and other military personnel from across the UK and Commonwealth will accompany Charles and Camilla on their return coronation procession.
The routes will be covered by more than 1,000 British Army, RAF and Royal Navy liners.
The journey will be the reverse of the King and Queen Consort's route to the Abbey, but much shorter than Elizabeth II's five-mile return expedition through central London, on which the 27-year-old monarch greeted the crowd along Piccadilly, Oxford Street and Regent. Street. .
The great procession of 1953 lasted two hours and brought together tens of thousands of participants, the two and a half mile cavalcade taking 45 minutes to pass through a given point.
It is understood that Charles's shorter route was chosen for practical reasons, with a preference for the family journey used on many royal occasions.
Previous monarchs, including Elizabeth II, have expressed their distaste for the bumpy and uncomfortable 260-year-old Gold State Coach.
The outward procession, called the King's Procession, is much smaller and will see Charles and Camilla travel in the modern Diamond Jubilee Coach, which has air conditioning and shock absorbers.
It will have around 200 members of the Sovereign's Escort of the Mounted Domestic Cavalry Regiment that will accompany the monarch and his consort, as well as troops from the three services that line the route.
The Queen's journey to her coronation on June 2, 1953 was 1.6 miles, taking a slightly longer route than Charles' by skirting the Victoria Embankment alongside the River Thames.
He traveled both there and back on the Gold State Coach.
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