Today is the 50th anniversary of the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill and to commemorate it, the original boat - the Havengore - that carried his coffin took part in a memorial trip along the river Thames.
We travelled up to town to watch the event close to Tower Bridge. The bridge was raised in honour of the commemoration and amazingly it went up to almost 90 degrees which is normally only raised this high for members of royalty. The Havengore was escorted by a flotilla of boats including police launches, the inshore RNLI life boat and the Port of London Aothority launch to name but a few. On board the Havengore were a pair of pipers who played as the boat went by and all the military onboard saluted the HMS Belfast as they sailed by. The HMS Belfast also fired a 4 gun salute which was really loud! I am really glad we made the effort to come up town as I am not sure we'll ever see anything like the again.
