GME Scouts attend the Royal Wedding
15 Scout Network & Explorer Scout members from Manchester South attend the Royal Wedding!
Scouts from Manchester South were lucky enough be to granted 15 tickets, as part of the Scout Associaiton's allocation.
We all met in central London on Friday morning to make our way to make our way to the 'Youth Area' at Horse Guards parade. We were joined by Sam Butler & Samantha W, two professional photographers who had contacted us earlier to showcase our journey & the day - so essentially we had ourselves our own photography team - ace!
On our journey to Horse Guards we bumped into Tim Vincent (of Blue Peter fame) and did a short piece for NBC America - our first television appearance of the day!
The Manchester South Necker featured on its first celebrity of the day!
All of us outside Admiralty Arch.
We then made our way to Horse Guards Parade to watch the day's proceedings! Unbeknown to us, Bear Grylls (Chief Scout) was in attendance - so of course we were in awe and took the opportunity to mob him and take photos!
Everyone with Bear, and the necker gets its second celebrity!
We took the opporuntiy to settle in, get the picnic rugs out and watch the cars go one way and then horse carriages (& happily married couple) return - along with taking the time to eat some food.
We were then told by the Policeman in charge that they would be letting the Youth groups lead the walk down The Mall - with 500,000 members of the public following!
We were fortunate to actually end up in the very front row of the parade, right next to Bear Grylls - AMAZING!
After leading the rather long walk down The Mall (and being reliably informed that we were being seen on ITV!) we spotted our next victim celebrity for the necker. It was Mark Austin, ITV's 'in the crowd' journalist. Katy & Fran gave a fantastic interview live on air, and a few moments later we pounced to put the necker on Mark. We didn't realise that it was being aired live on TV - so when Mark put the necker on backwards we jumped into correct it. The footage was also featured on the 6pm & 10pm news.
You need to jump to 8:15 to see us featured.
We ended up outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and in perfect view to see the kiss - or more truthfully - two kisses and the fly by.
Overall, a fantastic day was had by all and it was a truly amazing atmosphere!
Ben Bowen, who was live Tweeting & Facebook-ing the event, said "This was an amazing once in a lifetime experience - it's not every day you get to attend a Royal Wedding and lead half a million people along The Mall! Just one of thousands of amazing experiences & adventures that Scouting provides!"
And finally... we thought we would give the last words to Fran Nice, of ITV fame:
"Following the success of the 'put a necker/ scarf on it' campaign for Founder's day, Manchester South Network decided to take some additional scarves with us and see who we could put a scarf on. Early successes included Tim Vincent working for NBC and Bear Grylls. As we walked down the Mall, we came across a TV reporter, who started to interview us. We weren't sure who he was, or know that it was a live broadcast, so we put a scarf on him! It was only after that we found out that it was Mark Austin of ITV and it was going out live, especially with Mark putting his scarf on backwards!!
In all we had an amazing day and made it onto live TV, the 6pm and 10pm news (which all of our families managed to catch after missing us live because they were watching BBC...) Thanks to TSA for allowing us this never to be forgotten day."
