Condolences for The Queen

The team at Let’s Go Out join the nation in expressing our profound sadness at the death of Her Majesty the Queen. Whatever your personal feelings regarding the monarchy, the Queen came to hold a unique position of regard and respect. Throughout her long life, so much of which was dedicated to public service, she time and again provided the ultimate example of steadfast loyalty and dedication.

So much of our standing in the world- and the tourist industry which supports thousands of business, jobs and livelihoods- is held in high regard thanks to not just what she stood for, but the individual she was. When people queued to visit Buckingham Place, or thronged the Mall during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations, it was the Queen they spoke of in very personal tones, not a faceless symbol of the crown.

The monarchy has been threaded through the life, buildings, landscape and major occasions of our diverse country for centuries, leaving inedible markers throughout our customs, our towns, cities and countryside. We glory in one of the richest portfolios of Royal Palaces in the world, not just in London with Kensington Palace, the Tower of London, and Buckingham Palace. Of course the palace is now the focus of many people’s visits to pay their respects.

We have Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s, the sites of many spectacular Royal occasions and pageantry, the Houses of Parliament, home to the pomp of the State Opening ceremony every year, and the Royal Albert Hall, taking its name from its builder, Queen Victoria’s consort, plus many other buildings and museums with a Royal connection.

Just outside the city sits hilltop Windsor, the ‘home’ that the Queen held especially dear. Further afield are Sandringham, site of much Royal-spotting at the traditional Christmas Day Service. In Scotland, Holyrood Palace, Stirling Castle and up to Balmoral, where the Queen spent her last days, and which became the focus of the passing of the Crown to the first King most of us will experience, Charles III.

Curating great days out across our great nation, many of these buildings have become much-loved friends to the Let’s Go Out team, and, like many people, we feel we somehow knew the Queen, almost as if we had met her coming down one of their long corridors. Long gone are the days when the monarchy could live behind high palace walls, in a gilded cage. The modern monarchy had faced its turmoil and issues- but so has it through time, and these are the stories we seek out inside the palace walls.

In such places, we step back into centuries of history, from dark deeds and beheadings at the Tower of London, to the romance of the love-knot gardens and lantern-bedecked boats alighting from the river at Hampton Court Palace. We gasp at the splendour of the Crown jewels, wonder at the magnificence of Queen Elizabeth I, surveying her empire from her Royal Portraits. We imagine eating off the priceless dinner services, and walk in rolling grounds imaging ourselves Princes and Princesses.

Each place, each story, each discovery, casts a spell, as we know from the host of enthusiastic, humbled and inspired feedback we get from visitors. As the monarchy flows on, and we move from sadness to celebrating the life of our great Queen, and onto a new reign under King Charles, the history, the palaces, the mystique endures.

We join everyone in paying our respects to the Queen, honouring all she did for the country. We all thought we knew her, but much of what she did is only just being revealed, and her legacy will endure for even longer than her remarkable life.

RIP Queen Elizabeth