Trooping the Colour

This Saturday 16 June the Trooping the Colour ceremony to officially celebrate the Queen’s birthday takes place on London’s Horse Guards Parade. Its one of the biggest annual display’s of military pageantry with massed ranks of infantry, cavalry and military bands, all in their ceremonial uniforms.

Horse Guards Parade is the large parade ground at the eastern end of St James’s Park, just off The Mall through Admiralty Arch. Temporary seating is erected for Trooping the Colour but is limited and allocated early in the year. If you can’t get close enough to Horse Guards, a royal procession carrying the Queen will leave Buckingham Palace escorted by Household Cavalry at 10.40am and there should be plenty of space along The Mall to get a view.

At Horse Guards the Queen will review the troops and take the salute. She used to do this on horseback but now does it from a reviewing stand and horse drawn carriage. After the colour’s have been trooped the Queen heads back to Buckingham Palace, a gun slaute is fired in Green Park at 12.52pm and an RAF flypast goes overhead at 1pm which the Royal Family will watch from a Buckingham Palace balcony.

If you’re visiting London and want to to get some good pictures of British ceremonial, Trooping the Colour is a good event to get along to.