We will be in London the middle of June. I saw in a brochure that Trooping the Colours will be on June 18th. I am thrilled that we will get to see this but am not sure how one goes about having a "good seat", so to speak. We will be staying at Thistle's The Royal Horse Guards. When I looked this up I believe it said the queen leaves around 10:00am to begin. Where is a good place to be standing to get the most of this event and how early should we go there? Thank you for your help.

The ceremony itself is best viewed on TV. Tickets are only available to the specially invited - diplomats, VIPs and so on. You can see the processions there and back (around 12 - 12.15) anywhere along the Mall, but you might well only catch a glimpse over other people's heads. On the other hand, there is usually an edited highlights programme on TV about 6pm that evening, so you could see what you've missed.

Other possibilities: the gun salute in Green Park; the royal family on the palace balcony and the fly-past at about 1pm.

Trooping the Color has a dress rehearsal open to the public about one week before the exact event. Check around and you can find the exact date. We went there for the dress rehearsal, had front row standing room in Horse Guards Parade, and enjoyed the sunshine (it rained the day of the event).

If you're here for the rehearsal (always exactly the same time as the main event but the Saturday before), you probably will be able to see the precision drills around Horseguards Parade, most easily from the St James Park side. The only differences from the real thing will be that the crowds are smaller and the Queen won't be there: her husband or one of her children usually acts her part at the reheasal.

If your only option is the main event, it really is close to impossible to see the actual Trooping live, as Patrick says. But you can get a good view of the parade marching to and from Horseguards by standing on Duke of York steps, at the Horseguards end of The Mall, where it's easy to see over other people's heads. The component parts of the parade start processing around 1015: the Queen herself leaves the palace around 1045, to arrive at Horseguards at PRECISELY 1100 (the trick, which you can only really appreciate on TV, is that she gets to her review stand just as the eleventh gong on the clock goes).

If your hotel is close by, it really is worth watching the parade live from The Mall and popping back to the hotel to watch the actual Trooping on TV. And then, if you're a serious military band addict, (and there's nothing shameful about it: we do all that stuff jolly well), back to the steps to watch the parade back.

Hi,
According to the following website, June 11th is the date for the Trooping the Color. We're planning to be in London on the 11th, so I'm wondering which date is right. Hmm.

http://www.londontown.com/LondonEven...heColour/3b131

Oh, and according to the same site, the rehearsal is on Weds & Thurs June 1 & 2 at 19:00 hours.

http://www.londontown.com/LondonEven...heColour/d4680

The bands and the troops whose colours will be paraded before the Queen have dress rehersals during the week at the Horse Guards Parade. You can buy tickets and you get to sit in the reviewing stands that the VIPs use and where the Trooping is actually performed. Usually a memebr of the royal family reviews the rehersal, using the Queen's reviewing stand. We saw this in the mid-eighties and Princess Margaret was scheduled to review-but she was sick and we got the Queen Mother instead-nice upgrade!
Going to the rehersal is as close as you will come to seeing the trooping, and viewing the Parade on the day is very hard. Standing room along the route is usually very crowded, and, if you are short, like me...you don't see much! I got photos of the troops and the tops peoples' heads, too
Panda Judy

I must confess to having sort of cheated with a foreign visitor one year. We went up to see the processions but I took a small portable TV for the ceremony: we soon had an audience crowding over our shoulders...

Before I break down and call London... Does anyone know if Beating Retreat is sold out already?

Thank you for your help. We will only be in London from the 17th and leaving the 20th of June. Does anyone have information on the exact date the Trooping the Colours will be this year? There seems to be some conflicting date reports on that event.

The Queen's birthday/trooping the colour is June 11. For info:


http://www.army.mod.uk/ceremonial/ce...e/calender.htm