Windsor Castle Royal Tattoo

This is Windsor Castle (or here, if you prefer Wikipedia links

Home to the Queen of England on weekends and the grounds on which the 2008 Windsor Castle Royal Tattoo is being held for the next few evenings. The program is on the sight and will be broadcast on the BBC, Sunday 11 May.

What is not mentioned is that there is a 7 May performance, tickets open to the military. Beverly reminded me this morning that we had tickets for this evenings performance.

The post is picture heavy. I limited the size of the pictures in the post. You can click on them if you want bigger. Almost all were taken with the telephoto lens on my Cannon EOS without benefit of flash. They are posted in performance order. (Commentary to be added when I am awake).

When we arrived, this lot was out on the field, practicing and milling around. Remember them.

At the start, for the benefit of visualizing several pre-recorded clips and closeups of the field, we had the wide screen panel over the band’s stage.

Enter the horse artillery

performing maneuvers

while pulling cannons that weigh a couple of tons.

prior to firing all eight.

There were also the mounted Horse Guards.

A firefight complete with smoke and more smoke (flashs, bangs, booms and an aircraft sound track).

The midpoint did not feature Zambonies.

Instead moving on through several groups to Cossacks

The Musical Ride, complete with the drum horse

And massed pipe bands

Joining at the end with

and the same blokes you saw out there earlier, only now dressed up.

finishing together with the pipers

For this is what it was all about