The military has paraded through the quiet streets of central London as part of the first rehearsal for the King’s coronation.
The rehearsal was due to start at 10pm on Monday (local time), but was delayed, before hundreds of military personnel followed the route on horseback to prepare for the coronation on May 6.
The King and Queen Consort will make their way back from Westminster Abbey via Parliament Square, along Whitehall, around Trafalgar Square, through Admiralty Arch and down The Mall back to Buckingham Palace.
The coronation procession stretches to just 2.1 kilometres – about a quarter of the length of the late Queen Elizabeth’s eight-kilometre celebratory journey, which went through Piccadilly, Oxford Street and Regent Street.
The grand procession in 1953 took two hours and featured tens of thousands of participants, with the four-kilometre cavalcade taking 45 minutes to pass any given point.
While there was no sight of it at the rehearsal, the King and Queen will be taken to Westminster Abbey in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach and return via the same route in the Gold State Coach.
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The coronation will feature the largest military ceremonial operation in 70 years, with more than 6000 men and women of the UK’s armed forces taking part.
Sailors, soldiers and aviators from across Britain and the breadth of the Commonwealth will accompany monarch and his wife to and from Westminster Abbey
Almost 400 armed forces personnel from at least 35 Commonwealth countries will also be on parade to mark the historic moment.
-AAP
