The toll of the bells of Westminster Abbey cut loudly through the early morning London sky Monday, heralding to all who heard them that this was to be the unreal day Great Britain would say the final farewell to Queen Elizabeth II.
A stillness filled the dawn air even as people in their tens of thousands emerged onto London’s streets, gathering outside Buckingham Palace, thronging under the Union flags lining The Mall, to wait patiently for a glimpse of the Queen’s coffin as her state hearse was driven from Westminster to Windsor for burial.
Britain is a nation in grief, with a troubled royal family who will now have to face life without the woman who led them all for 70 years.
Even the exquisitely planned funeral was punctuated with moments that reminded the billions watching just how emotional and topsy-turvy things are within the family.
Prince Harry was banned from wearing his military uniform, while he and his brother, Prince William — now the heir to the throne — failed to exchange so much as a glance at each other while walking side by side behind their grandmother’s coffin.
Inside the Abbey, Harry and wife Meghan Markle, who gave up their royal lives to move to California, were displaced to the second row for the service in the historic abbey. (Although they made it to the front for a smaller afternoon service at St. George’s chapel, with Harry standing next to his 7-year-old niece, Charlotte.)
There was Sarah Ferguson, the scandalized ex-wife but still constant companion of Prince Andrew, who was rehabilitated after years in the royal wilderness, given a plum spot at Westminster, just behind Kate, now the Princess of Wales.
For the new King Charles, it was all just too much and he broke down in tears during the service.
He was hardly the only one to abandon the stiff upper lip over the past week and a half.
As a Londoner-turned-New Yorker, it was a somber scene that greeted me when I landed in Britain on Friday following the Queen’s death on September 8.
Photos of Her Majesty were emblazoned throughout Heathrow Airport and plastered on the windows of every store in the capital. Even McDonald’s paid tribute.
To be in the UK at this time is to truly witness history in the making. This is a London I have never seen before.
At Green Park, the tributes were piled high: flowers, balloons, stuffed toy Corgis and Welsh dragons. As the sun shone down, the smell of the decaying blooms — their plastic wrappers removed under the direction of the new eco-conscious King — was sweet and overpowering.
One person even left a black handbag with a marmalade sandwich tucked inside — a reminder of the tea the Queen shared with Paddington Bear just three months ago in a surprise video she filmed for her Platinum Jubilee.
Some people wept as they walked by the tributes, stopping to read the poems, letters and pictures left by children. Some even brought their dogs dressed in Union Flag bandanas.
As you walked around the city, the “bobbies” — police officers — were everywhere, patiently helping with directions and recommendations for the best place to get a “cuppa” tea.
Down toward the government buildings, the streets were closed to all traffic except dignitaries, and visitors were quiet while joining “The Queue,” as it became known, outside Westminster Hall, where the Queen was lying in state.
Even David Beckham lined up for 12 hours to say a final farewell to the monarch, sharing a makeshift meal of Pringles, sandwiches, coffee and donuts with the crowd.
At its longest, the wait time for the queue was more than 24 hours and it stretched as far as 10 miles.
Inside Westminster Hall, you could honestly hear a pin drop even as the never-ending sea of people flooded in to view the Queen’s coffin.
For 40 minutes, I stood watching them — standing in reflection for just a moment, some bowed or curtsied, others wept into tissues or blew a kiss before being ushered on.
The very last visitor, Christina Heerey made it in just before the Monday morning cut-off — and it was her second time.
Then, hours before the funeral, spectators started lining up outside Buckingham Palace.
Diane Thompson, from Northamptonshire, camped near The Mall overnight to see the Monday morning events and told The Post: “I’ve got one word for the procession: Brilliant. It was worth staying overnight for. I’m a huge royalist. She was my great-grandmother, I like to call it. She’s the only monarch I’ve known. I couldn’t even get through the anthem without crying. We would do it all over again. We’re getting ready for the coronation next.”
Juliet Thomas, 50 and her mom Pat Williams, 77, both from London, watched the funeral while lined up by the palace. “It was very hard to watch,” Julie said. “We’ve lived in London our whole lives and we’ve never actually come up and watched an event like that before. But for the Queen, we had to make the effort. Singing ‘God Save The King’ got us choked up. What an amazing experience to do it with the crowd. Having that special moment is unbelievable.”
For Holly George, who travelled down from Derbyshire, “It was amazing to be a part of history.”
As the custom Jaguar Land Rover hearse turned into Windsor Monday afternoon, to deliver Queen Elizabeth to her final resting place, her beloved Corgis Sandy and Muick were brought outside to welcome their mistress home.
The Sun’s veteran royal photographer Arthur Edwards, who has been snapping the royal family for decades, was the first to take official images of the new King Charles when he arrived back in London after his mother’s death.
“He told me he had been preparing for this day for years,” Edwards told The Post on Monday.
The new King now faces a multitude of challenges — how to keep the Commonwealth alive, as the Queen wished, but also how to reunite his warring family. On Monday night in Windsor, he faced the biggest challenge of all: bidding farewell to his mother at a private burial in Windsor, where she was finally reunited with her beloved husband, Prince Phillip.
Additional reporting by Nika Shakhnazarova
