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Over the last 18 months, the quintessentially British sight of royal guards has been missing from central London’s royal palaces. Well, rejoice royalists, because yesterday (August 23), our red jacket and big bearskin hat-wearing friends returned to their posts.
Although the Queen herself was not there to welcome them back (she’s on her holidays at Balmoral, of course), plenty of tourists made their way down to Buckingham Palace to witness their first day back at work. To mark their return, the Band of the Coldstream Guards soundtracked their march with some surprisingly crowd-pleasing songs, all designed to celebrate Team GB’s recent Olympic success in Tokyo.
On the metaphorical playlist as the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards marched from Wellington Barracks to Buckingham Palace were the likes of Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’, ‘Chariots Of Fire’, the Olympic theme, and Whitney Houston’s ‘One Moment In Time’. That’s pretty rousing stuff for 11am on a Monday.
The Changing of the Guard also returned to St James’ Palace yesterday, while it was resumed at Windsor in July. The tradition was halted in March 2020 to discourage large groups of tourists from gathering in hopes of not worsening the spread of Covid-19.
If you want to watch the big march for free, it will now take place every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at Buckingham Palace at 11am until May.