Day 13: Maldon - Grampies Go To England and France Fall 2022 - CycleBlaze

September 19, 2022

Day 13: Maldon

We decided to stick at Maldon today, since the whole country was shut down to watch the Queen's funeral on TV. By shut down, we mean all shops, 99% of restaurants, everything. We too were not immune to the Queen's funeral obsession, and it seemed like a great idea to sit on the bed and watch the while pageant unfold, for about eight hours!

We thought we had prepared for the shutdown, by buying chef's salads and yogurt and stashing it in our food bag. Because hotels have refused to store our stuff in their fridges, we put the bag outside in the garden, with a note asking that it be not disturbed, but unfortunately also with our room number. In the morning we found some helpful staffer had brought the bag in and dropped it in the hall by our door, where of course it could warm up and be inedible. 

The hotel did come up with some breakfast, so it was not a fast day after all.

We certainly have the feeling of being part of a moment in history, being here with the British population, and observing with them  the incredible colour and ceremony of the funeral. It helped a lot that we were so recently at Buckingham Palace and Westminster, so we could look at the TV images and exclaim "Hey, we were there!"

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Always seeing some bicycle angle in things, I was interested in how many sailors it took to pull the gun carriage with the coffin, but also how many it took to come behind and act as the brakes. It would not do to come to any hill and have the thing run away and crash!
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Dodie despaired a bit with me, for my relative inability to recognize royal family members or to know who is related to whom. But here clearly are Charles and Camilla, and Princess Anne, who is Charles's sister. William appeared in a military uniform, but not Harry. Harry had "resigned" from the Royal Family, and Buckingham Palace banned him from wearing the uniform, despite 10 years of military service. We think this rather backfired because  his red head, not in a uniform hat, seemed to stick out in every TV shot, while Charles and William were rather invisible.

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Harry became unwittingly a star of the show.
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In keeping with our cycle blog tradition of recording historic architecture, here is a bit of Westminster Abbey, and followed by Buckingham Palace. 

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We have an old friend who is an Anglican priest. We met him when he was doing his Doctor of Divinity at McGill University, around 1970, and have stayed in touch since. So for you, John Kater, here is a shot of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

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Having mixed it up with the crowds at Buckingham earlier, we were interested to see what the crowd sizes might be today. In this image, the people seem very thick, but on the drive to Windsor they were quite thin along the way. That would have been the place to stand, had we not been engaged in trying to be as far from London as possible.
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Before the whole "thing" was actually done, we lost patience and went out for a walk. We had found especially the long cortege march to be quite depressing.

Out on the high street, we confirmed that the town was locked up tight. It was not even obvious how to get out of The White Horse. But we somehow did it, and can bring this image of the picturesque high street:

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And here is the white horse namesake of our hotel

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Here on the right is our hotel, locked up tight. We did know that we could go around and sneak in the back. But there were two cyclists, from Stuttgart, also trying to get in, so Wendy, the only employee left on duty, got phoned, and she let us in. Whew, this "holiday" is just as tough as Pentecost!
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Polly LowDid you spot/appreciate the Mounties leading the funeral procession? (I guess on borrowed horses, though…?)
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1 year ago
Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Polly LowDodie did spot the Mounties. We are not sure if the horses were brought over or borrowed. There is a special bond between horse and rider and perhaps a borrowed mount would not quite be the same.
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1 year ago
Jacquie GaudetTo Steve Miller/GrampiesIn the Vancouver Sun today: “The four horses used in the procession were previously gifted to the Queen. The four RCMP officers were tasked with getting to know the horses before leading the procession.”
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1 year ago
Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Jacquie GaudetThanks for the context, Jacquie.
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1 year ago