Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace, London

They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
“A soldier’s life is terrible hard,”
Says Alice.

Quite why Mama, who spent a large number of her formative years buttonholing people and ranting about the evils of the monarchy, should so frequently find herself in front of Buckingham Palace watching some kind of royal pagent is something of a mystery, although what I say is that if you don’t support your local princesses, who will be there when you need birds sung to, fancy pink dresses worn or virtual strangers married?

Mama likes to pretend that she is on her way somewhere and it is the quickest way up from Victoria to Piccadilly, but I am not convinced that this explains how she has pitched up there for things like 71 gun salutes fired in a particularly chaotic but difficult to achieve manner, views of the entire Royal Family standing on the balcony mugging at the crowd, and more than one fly past including everything from very old bombers through bright red planes trailing coloured smoke to modern fighters.

They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
“One of the sergeants looks after their socks,”
Says Alice.

About the only thing she has not turned out for, apart from most of the Jubilee celebrations, which wasn’t her fault as she tried to go to them all, but managed to get thoroughly rained on, choose the wrong place to stand, spend the duration hunting for the rest of her party or just turn up late with impressive regularity, was the relatively recent royal wedding.

She insisted on watching it on TV instead, much to our bored amazement. I hadn’t entered my pink phase then, and to be honest, even if I had, Kate is insufficiently blonde.

Mama claims that she finds it amusing that despite how very much in the public eye they are, none of the Royals are really all that good a behaving like celebrities, particularly when it comes to making sure their profile is in the right light at all times.

They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
“Well, God take care of him all the same,”
Says Alice.

William in particular has terrible posture she says, although Papa says that this is how you tell he is an aristocrat rather than middle class like Kate. Only someone that in-, sorry, well-bred can get away with slouching his way through his own wedding ceremony on national TV while his lowly future wife sits up ramrod straight, knees elegantly together, hands delightfully folded in her lap.

Commenting on the finer nuances of the class system. Oh dear. I think Papa may have spent too long in the UK and gone native.

Huh. Mama is making choking sounds in the corner. I think she might disagree.

They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They’ve great big parties inside the grounds.
“I wouldn’t be King for a hundred pounds,”
Says Alice.

Anyway, we have not, thus far, actually done the regular Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace from start to finish, and so jumped at the chance when one was presented to us in the form of accompanying an American friend recently.

The Changing of the Guard, is also known, to Mama’s inexplicable amusement, as Guard Mounting. It basically consists of one group of soldiers taking over, wait for it, guard duty from another. Quite why this needs two bands, lots of spectators and 45 minutes I do not know, but Mama says it is tradition. Tradition sounds expensive. Mama says, probably not when you consider the tourist trade as a whole.

We approached through St James’ Park. There’s a particularly well-placed bridge from which everybody should get their first view of Buckingham Palace looking whitely elegant, framed by trees, reflected in the water, peeping modestly out from behind the glorified traffic island topped by a socking great gold leaf cover statue of somebody or another.

You can also pick up a coffee from the refreshment vans in the two park corners nearest the palace. You will need this to fortify you for the wait. We got there at around 10.30. The action does not really start until 11.15. Despite this, what Mama now realises are probably the prime spots directly in front of the very high wrought iron railings looking onto the forecourt of the Palace, and the very top steps of the roundabout-cum-Victoria memorial were already pretty fully occupied. If you are wanting to see absolutely everything, you are going to have to get there even earlier or develop very sharp elbows indeed.

We declined to engage in pushing and shoving. Instead we opted for a front row position overlooking the road just off the right of the main gates and settled down to wait. At this point Mama recommends taking along someone who is an entertaining conversationalist. Which she had done. So that was her sorted.

They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn’t the King’s.
“He’s much too busy a-signing things,”
Says Alice.

Fabulous for her, not so great for me, but luckily for Mama the coffee kiosks also sell ice cream. You might be thinking that half ten is a little early for ice cream, but it provided an excellent distraction for a good ten minutes, and then the clean up operation was also extensive. After that there was the fun of watching the police horses, in gloriously plentiful supply, who obligingly came and stood right in front of me on a number of occasions while their rider shouted instructions at the crowd. Mainly to do with keeping your valuables safe, I think. Mama was always going  to be  ok there – she always keeps a tight hold of me in crowds.

And then the horseguards trotted past in full regalia! Was this it? Had the time come?

No. Apparently the were just going home after mounting the guard somewhere else.

After that highlight it was a bit of a long haul to the grand show.Every now and again a police horse would charge an errant pedestrian back behind the rope barriers. I started to get restless.

Finally, faintly, in the distance we heard a brass band playing. Louder and louder it got and closer and closer it came until the musicians hove into view, all bright red coats, shiny black boots and really really big furry hats.

And they marched straight into the entrance at completely the opposite side to where we were standing. We’d caught an intriguing glimpse, but not much more.

At this point, Mama realised that perhaps she should have done a bit of rudimentary investigation into how the Changing of the Guards works, and whether or not it is worth turning up if you don’t get there three hours ahead.

However, before guilt at being a monumentally bad hostess started to eat too much into her soul, a new band could be heard approaching. And this one swept past the first gate, past the middle gate and past us, with their big parpy trumpets, big booming drums, more big furry hats and big machine guns topped with bayonets, before diving into the final set of gates.

What happens next Mama cannot tell you, as it was audio only for our little tourist group. Some shouting, the occasional stamping and some kind of battle of the bands were what reached us. Mama began to regret not insisting on crushing people’s toes in the pursuit of a good view, but I quite enjoyed balancing on the rope barrier like a circus princess, and then some kids came and sat on the curb in front of us, so I joined them, made friends and got to play with Mama’s camera.

Lots of bottoms in my world Mama discovered later.

Eventually, the Guards had done enough Changing. The middle gates opened and out marched the first group, executing a smart right as the did so and providing us with an excellent view of their retreating backs.

But we were wise to this behaviour now and hung on for the second wave, who, sure enough, turned the other way when they left and we got another splendid view.

The whole thing was over by about 12 noon.

They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
“Do you think the King knows all about me?”
“Sure to, dear, but it’s time for tea,”
Says Alice.

Mama decided to reward my quite good behaviour with a trip to the children’s play area in a well-placed nearby corner of St James’s Park. It’s one of those places which is split up into hidden zones. But there’s an excellent little picnic island with a clear view of the one and only exit and the whole playground is fairly compact. And I am, after all, over three now and not quite so prone to hurling myself into dangerous situations as before. Overall, Mama feels that the layout is acceptable. As for the equipment, I think it has a great sandpit, full of really big, slippy and hard rocks to jump on and off. Mama sees Prince Philip’s hand in this breach of health and safety rules for children. I also like the sunken slide area.

Basically, it’s clear that if you are on the parade route, wherever you stand, the Changing of the Guard is organised so that at some point, soldiers will stamp past you. The closer to the central gates you are, the more you will see of both groups of soldiers, but to be honest, Mama thinks that if you just have a casual interest in seeing the ceremony, you might want to turn up fairly late on and just take your chances in the crowd.

Everybody is pretty obliging about letting children through to the front, and as long as you don’t mind sitting on the curb, the odd Mama and Papa might be able to wiggle though too on the grounds that their kids might need protecting from flying police horse poo.

We also noticed that a couple of people with wheelchairs had been positioned by the police horses on the edge of the road in a pretty decent spot, so that’s something to take into consideration if you have mobility requirements which might otherwise put you off going.

If you want to see the whole thing, Mama thinks you are looking at an arrival time of at least 10am. She thinks your children might need to be a bit older than me, or more stoic to put up with that.

Is it worth it? Take snacks, plenty of water, and lots of photos of the police horses and I’d say so. It was certainly an excellent start to our day of wandering through the rest of Central London.

And if you have even more time, here are more of the top tourist attractions in London.

 More Information

The Changing the Guard website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about how to work for the Queen.

Address: Buckingham Palace, London, SW1A 1AA.

Times: Every other day throughout the year, except April through July, when the guard changes every day. Cancellations are due to extremely bad rain, or other weather. The show starts at 11.15am and finishes around 12 noon.

Admission: Free

By Tube/train: Victoria (Railways station and Victoria line), Green Park (Victoria and Piccadilly lines) and Hyde Park Corner (Piccadilly line).

By bus: Numbers 11, 211, C1 and C10 stop on Buckingham Palace Road.

By car: You are insane.