A right royal time.

 Wed 22nd

One more day and we vacate this berth. Quite fancied staying over the weekend so we gave C&RT a bell to see if it was possible. No problem at all but having had our 7 days free mooring  a charge of £20 a day would be forthcoming. We very quickly decided not to!

The local news this morning was full of the Queens visit.  so would have been silly not to try and see her. Both of us have never seen her in the flesh and knowing she would be making an appearance on the balcony of the Town Hall at 12.30pm, we left FS at 11.30 and started making our way to the square. It was already filling up when we arrived but then a good size gap appeared,having been vacated by a small group so very lucky to find that spot relatively near to the balcony We held our place amongst the pushing and shoving of the crowd, refusing to budge and tutting very loudly at those that tried to muscle in. They soon got the message and moved! Our view was slightly off centre  and I worried we wouldn't have the best vantage point, but needn't have worried as I got some fabulous photos.

Traffic diverted

The Royal Standard is flown

And taken from the Queens photo gallery

I'm the one holding the camera. Ian is behind the policeman

She looked stunning, so youthful looking if only I would look that good at her age. She was only on the balcony for a couple of minutes before disappearing from view and the welcome was deafening, cheering, clapping and what a great atmosphere. We then had to fight our way through the crowds to leave. Most stayed wanting to see her after she had emerged from lunch, roughly an hour later. It took what seemed forever for us to get through shuffling forward very slowly. Eventually the crowds thinned and we went off for a spot of lunch ourselves. We found another Wetherspoons near Lime street station, had the chicken special and then made our way to the World Museum. Spending several hours wandering around it was time to return to FS for our final night here. What an amazing city and what a great time we've had. If you haven't done the link yet I would recommend that you try and do it at some point 'cos it's fabulous.

The Natural History part and loads of lovely bugs.

Can you see what time it was. It's an hour behind as time was now 13.30.

Pterodactyl