Royal fans set up camp outside Buckingham Palace a week before …

Royal fans have set up a camp outside Buckingham Palace a week before the King's Coronation. Sky London and Carol Foster were among the royal devotees who have begun waiting for Charles' Coronation next weekend. They set up a group of tents together, and were well supplied with deck chairs and snacks.

Asked why he had set up camp a full week ahead of the coronation, Mr London said: "There's a saying, the early bird catches the early worm." He added: "We intend to hold this place, we don't want anybody else to take it." Mr London is a seasoned royal camper.

He said he had camped outside the Queen's funeral, the Jubilee, and the births of all three of the Prince and Princess of Wales' children. It was at the birth of George that he met Ms Foster. The pair have been friends ever since, meeting up to celebrate their own birthdays, as well as the birthday of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Asked what she was most looking forward to about the coronation, Ms Foster said: "Seeing everybody dressed up, the pomp and ceremony. "I'm looking forward to seeing what Catherine and Camilla are wearing.
"It's a once in a lifetime thing."

The royal fans will be hoping to get a glimpse of the King during the procession on Saturday. The King's Coronation Procession stretches to just 1.3 miles - around a quarter of the length of the late Queen's five-mile celebratory journey. A newly crowned Charles and Queen Consort will make their way back from Westminster Abbey in the Gold State Coach via the tried and tested route of Parliament Square, along Whitehall, around Trafalgar Square, through Admiralty Arch and down The Mall back to Buckingham Palace.

More than 6,000 members of the armed forces will take part on the day of the coronation - the largest military ceremonial operation for 70 years - staging gun salutes and a flypast, and parading in the processions. Some 4,000 sailors, soldiers, aviators and other military personnel from across the UK and the Commonwealth will accompany Charles and Camilla on their return Coronation Procession. Flanking the roads will be more than 1,000 route liners from the British Army, RAF and Royal Navy.

The journey will be the reverse of the King and Queen Consort's route to the Abbey but much shorter than Elizabeth II's five-mile return expedition around central London which saw the 27-year-old monarch waving to crowds along Piccadilly, Oxford Street and Regent Street. The grand procession in 1953 took two hours and featured tens of thousands of participants, with the two-and-a-half mile cavalcade taking 45 minutes to pass any given point. Charles's shorter route is understood to have been chosen for practical reasons, with a preference for the familiar journey used on many a royal occasion.

Previous monarchs including Elizabeth II have expressed their dislike for the bumpy, uncomfortable 260-year-old Gold State Coach. The outward procession, called the King's Procession, is much smaller in scale and will see Charles and Camilla travel in the modern Diamond Jubilee Coach, which has air con and shock absorbers. It will feature around 200 members from The Sovereign's Escort of The Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment accompanying the monarch and his consort, as well as troops from the three services lining the route.

The Queen's journey to her crowning on June 2 1953 was 1.6 miles, taking in a slightly longer route than Charles's by making her way along the Victoria Embankment by the River Thames.

She travelled both there and back in the Gold State Coach.