Queen Elizabeth II: The Queen was ‘always touched’ by Welsh welcome
Welsh #Welsh
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The Queen was greeted by schoolchildren on a visit to Llandudno in 2010
During the Queen’s 70 year reign, she made more than 300 visits to Wales delighting crowds who came out in their droves to see her.
And it seems the Queen was always keen to ensure the people had the best royal experience possible.
“When the Queen came down to Wales, quite frequently she used the royal train,” said Cardiff-born journalist and royal biographer Brian Hoey.
“She loved the train. When she had lost the use of the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1997, it became her favourite mode of transport. She absolutely adored it.
“She knew when she was coming through Wales, and various little places, that people would gather on the bridges and wave, and nine times out of 10 she would order the train to be slowed down so that people would get a good view, and she gave them a little wave from the windows.”
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The Queen would often travel to Wales on the royal train
As a lady-in-waiting in the Royal Household and Lord Lieutenant of Powys, Shan Legge-Bourke organised numerous visits for the Queen.
“Wherever she went, whether it was in the valleys, in the mountains, it didn’t matter where, she always said how touched she was by the welcome she got from the people of Wales,” she said.
The warmth of the welcome extended was apparent even when she was a princess, when she visited the country several times, including on her first civil tour of the UK when she was 17 and later to meet the Girl Guides of Wales.
In 1948, the year after she married Prince Philip, the then Princess Elizabeth was given the Freedom of the City of Cardiff.
Mr Hoey, who was then a Cardiff schoolboy, recalled: “We all saw it in the cinema because in those days there was no television as such. We didn’t have a main television until the coronation year of 1953.
“It’s extraordinary really because I wasn’t present at the freedom ceremony but years later I did speak to the Queen about it and I said ‘do you remember it?’
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Princess Elizabeth making a speech before the Freedom of the City of Cardiff is conferred upon her in 1948
“‘Oh, I remember it well’, she said. ‘The funny thing is, one of the privileges that I had in being given the Freedom of the City of Cardiff was that I was allowed to drive my flock of sheep over Canton Bridge on the River Taff coming into Cardiff’.
“But she said ‘I’ve never taken them up on that particular privilege. Do you think I ought to?'”
Pomp and ceremony
It was, however, after she became Queen that the excitement around her visits became palpable.
When she made her first trip to Wales on her coronation tour after her accession to the throne in June 1952, she drew crowds from far and wide.
“A party of Upper Towy Valley farmers intend riding 17 miles on horseback from their homes,” reported the Western Mail in October 1952.
“Ten miles of their journey will be over bleak, mountainous country, but the party hope to reach the Elan Valley in time to reach the Queen.”
The newspaper also reported great excitement when a year later, she undertook a summer visit, travelling from Newport to Cardiff and up to Pontypridd and the valleys.
“At every stage the children provided in song and dance a continuous background of delighted harmony which must have deeply impressed the royal visitors with its joyous sincerity and spontaneity,” the Western Mail said.
“It was one of those occasions when all Wales was of one mind and heart, when the patriotism and loyalty of every class joined whole-heartedly in one grand sweet song – Long Live the Queen.”
Mr Hoey said the pomp and ceremony surrounding the Queen’s visits in those early days captivated onlookers.
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Thousands of people turned out to see the Queen and Prince Philip on the Royal Yacht Britannia in Cardiff Bay on 5 August 1960
When she visited the National Eisteddfod of Wales in Cardiff in 1960 with a young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, attention was great.
“But the main point of the visit as far as I was concerned was the fact that it gave all of us the opportunity to see the Royal Yacht Britannia with Prince Philip on board,” recalled Mr Hoey.
“And of course the Queen came down, the crowds gathered down on Cardiff Bay – Tiger Bay as it was known in those days, Cardiff docks – and the police estimated there was going to be around 10 or 12,000.
“They were totally wrong, at the end it was something like 33 or 35,000 people all waving and shouting ‘we want the Queen, we want the Queen’. It was wonderful and the Queen and Charles and Anne went up the royal gangway and they stood there waving as the royal yacht pulled out.”
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The Queen, Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne, holding a Welsh Doll, on the Royal Yacht Britannia in Cardiff Bay in August 1960
Security fears
However, not all of the Queen’s visits drew such adulation.
In fact, security fears brought on by protests during a visit to open a building at Aberystwyth University in 1996 led to its cancellation.
It is believed it was the first abandonment of an official engagement in the UK under such circumstances during the Queen’s reign.
About 200 demonstrators gathered on the university campus chanting anti-royal slogans and waving banners before a group of students and Cymdeithas yr Iaith (Welsh Language Society) members broke through a security cordon of around 50 police officers shortly before the royal car was due to arrive at the campus.
Buckingham Palace security advisers and senior police officers advised the Queen to cancel her remaining engagements.
“There are very very few places in the world where the Queen had been booed and had eggs thrown at her,” said Welsh historian and broadcaster Merfyn Jones.
“People might say well this is an unrepresentative bunch of students but it did happen and you can’t pretend that it didn’t happen.”
But, the Queen accepted people had a right to protest and the majority of her visits passed with little opposition.
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The Queen at Caernarfon steam railway station in 2010
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The Queen visits Cyfarthfa High School and Castle, Merthyr Tydfil, in 2012
Speaking in 2017, Brian Hoey said: “Over the years throughout her entire reign she travelled nearly 300 times – to various parts of Wales, not just the south, not just to Cardiff, but to every corner.”
Dame Shan said: “The Queen was always interested in meeting people and she had this wonderful rapport with people that she could talk to anybody about anything.
“When she arrived at wherever it may have been, at a station, in a market square or a muddy field in Powys, her whole face sort of lit up and obviously if people see you smiling it doesn’t matter who you are, they immediately begin to smile with you… It sounds old fashioned but she had that aura about her.
“You only had to watch the reaction of the crowds when she did a walkabout. She always had time to stop for someone.
“It just gave that bond between monarch and people.”
She officially visited Wales for the final time in October 2021, when she opened the sixth term of the Senedd.
Accompanied by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, she praised key workers who had worked through the Covid pandemic.
“They are shining examples of the spirit for which the Welsh people are so renowned, a spirit which I have personally encountered so many times,” she said.
“The Welsh people have much to be proud of.”
Some of the places the Queen opened in Wales
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The Queen at the official opening of Cardiff’s University Hospital of Wales in 1971
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The Queen opened Theatr Clwyd in May 1976 – the theatre said it was one of their proudest days
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The Queen opened the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre in 2016