It has become known simply as The Queue. Britain is filled with people queuing, but at the moment, there’s just The Queue. The only one that matters, the one that runs for miles so that people can walk past The Queen’s coffin inside Westminster Hall.

Where you join the queue depends on your luck, but it seems to be somewhere between Southwark and Tower Bridges so far, and once you join, it’s hours of slowly shuffling forward to get to the final destination.

I did The Queue overnight as it’s better for me, so catching the last train into London Bridge saw me joining The Queue at around 00:45am for an overnight walk to Westminster.

I could usually do that in under an hour. It was to take eight hours.

Fortunately, barring the occasional hiatus, the shuffle is nearly constant throughout the night. Walk for 15 seconds, wait for a minute, and repeat, for hours. It’s curiously relaxing, as you’re not standing around for ages. Even this writer who charges around on foot and loathes being stuck behind slow walkers found himself enjoying this enforced slow shuffle. Several cafes along the route as it snaked around Bankside were full of customers. The same customers who a few hours later would be grateful for the many toilets that have sprung up along the route.

Being along the river, you get some wonderful views across the Thames, towards St Paul’s Cathedral, the City offices, and the Illuminated River is (mostly) working overnight, giving the bridges a purple decoration. Don’t just face forwards in the direction of The Queue, but look behind you at times to see the City lit up at night.

People dart off occasionally to grab a coffee or use the loo – and while the official information is that you get a wristband to permit that at the start of the queue, they’re actually handed out next to the London Eye. It didn’t affect The Queue though, and people seemed free to pop off for a coffee or the loo and rejoin a bit later. More welcome was the eventual arrival of park benches along the riverside once we reached the OXO Tower.

There’s chatter along The Queue, but it’s muted and quiet in the darkness.

A lone skateboarder was practising his moves in the Southbank at 4am, possibly expecting to be entirely alone, but instead to occasional cheers from The Queue when a jump went well.

Eventually, though, The Queue, which snaked through quiet routes along the Thames reaches busier spaces, with security and marshalls increasing, and once past the London Eye, and wriststrap applied, it becomes much more serious. The occasional signs start to become much more frequent, while fencing and barriers start springing up, for we’re approaching Westminster, and now you can expect to have wriststraps inspected.

It took me about five hours to reach Westminster, and oddly it didn’t feel like five hours had passed. If there were no clocks to look at, I might have guessed maybe three hours, as time passed remarkably quickly.

Slowly shuffling along the Thames again, and with people stopping for photos of the Palace of Westminster glowing in the darkness, the thin queue has got fatter as it bunches up a bit. Over on the other side of the Thames, the Victoria Tower Gardens are floodlit and you can clearly make out the crowd over there shuffling forward.

Over Lambeth, and finally, you think you’re in the home run, but then comes the “snake”, as it’s been nicknamed. Imagine those long winding routes for queues in theme park rides, and then magnify it many times over. And again, oddly it’s not as bad as it seems. The Queue thins out again and also moves much faster, so you never feel stuck in The Queue, and eventually, you get to the front, the security search, and then into Westminster Hall.

I’ve been in Westminster Hall many times, but now it’s different. It’s not just that they’ve turned on all the decorative lights, nor that all the staff are in formal wear, it’s what we’ve come to see.

The late Queen is in the centre, surrounded by soldiers, and it almost seems crass to say it was nice, but I was there right at the moment when the changing of the guard took place. And we’re held back to watch this short ceremony that is repeated every 20 minutes.

And then the culmination of The Queue, the moment where you walk past the coffin, pause, bow if you want, and then pass out into a world that’s changed.

Eight hours in total from start to finish.

People often say the Brits are famous for their queues and this is the queue to end all queues.

We’re unlikely to see its like again anytime soon. I think The Queue is more than that though. It’s a curiously communal way of sharing a moment, and the effort involved made the final moment even more special. Yes, they could have issued timed tickets, but something would have been missing if you just turned up at 10:15am for your timed entry as if it was just a museum. It’s participating in The Queue, the time taken, the sore feet, the bad back, all of which turns a fleeting moment inside Westminster Hall and then into a memory that won’t ever be forgotten.

It’s also a remarkably democratic way of seeing a monarch. Looking around and listening to the chatter, especially in the snake, you can see and hear all the accents and cultures represented here. No matter if someone is a road sweeper or a managing director, they all join The Queue at the same spot and walk the same miles. Some turned up looking as if they had just woken up and thrown on a shirt, others in suits, and even some wearing medals and black armbands.  A lady born in Sierra Leone was having a long and animated chat with a chap who was at a black-tie event in Oxford last night and drove here without time to change clothes so he could join The Queue. It’s a mixing pot of British culture all doing the same thing at the same time.

Everyone is equal in The Queue.

As mentioned earlier, it didn’t feel like it had taken that long, and while exhausting to stand for that long slowly shuffling forward, it didn’t feel like I had been doing it for eight hours. I was yawning a bit, but less than expected considering I hadn’t slept all night.

I can be emotional at times, and maybe that plus the exhaustion of The Queue, but yes, I dabbed away some tears at the end.

If you’ve got the spare time, even if you have to queue overnight, it’s unlikely you’ll regret it.

There’s a live map showing where to join the queue here.

Queue tips

Caveat: This is based on my queue – your queue may differ.

Buying Food and drink

There are a number of places selling food and drinks — from a couple of branches of Caffe Nero, to several free-standing stalls. Most of them are before you get to the London Eye, with one coffee bar next to Lambeth bridge. Some people queuing seemed to have packed a lot of food for the long walk.

Toilets

Portaloo toilets start appearing at Gabriel’s Wharf, just past the OXO Tower, and reappear in clusters all the way along the route. The Globe and National Theatres are also opening their toilets overnight.

Once you cross Lambeth bridge, there’s a cluster of loos just before you enter “the snake”, but there’s also a handful of loos further along the snake as well.

Be aware that there are no loos after going through security until you leave Parliament, and then the nearest (paid) loos are in the subway under Whitehall. So use the free portaloos — it’s not often we get a freebie from the government.

Security restrictions

Absolutely no food or drink is allowed once you get to the security at the very end of the queue. They have bins to collect waste, and also bins for any unopened packages of food that can be redistributed.

When they say no liquids, it’s extreme, as I overheard warnings about makeup and hand sanitiser gels not being allowed as well as the things you’d expect to be banned.

Clothing

If doing this overnight, wear layers, as the middle of the night got really cold. So much so that I ended up putting away my book as my fingers were getting uncomfortable and wanted to be put back in pockets.

Try to minimise what you bring with you, there are restrictions anyway, but the smaller the bag you’re carrying, the quicker you get through security.