It was the day a million people took to the streets to pay tribute and celebrate the life of the Queen Mother. But it was also a day of mourning for a family coming to terms with the death of its 101-year-old royal matriarch.

The Queen was stoical as ever, playing the role of principal mourner to perfection, prepared for the ordeal by 50 years of royal duty.

But at the last, as her mother's coffin of Windsor oak left on its final journey home, the sorrow broke through.

The well-practised regal smile, with which she had acknowledged mourners at Westminster Abbey, had gone.

Now, as the pipes and drums played a melancholy lament, the Queen was deep in thought on what was probably her saddest day.

The Duke of Edinburgh, at 80 drawn and weary, lent support although at times he seemed to find it hard to stop blinking.

The grief was clearly etched on the face of the Prince of Wales as he struggled with his emotion.

Members of the public showed their feelings by converging on Westminster in their hundreds of thousands and by lining the 23-mile final journey to Windsor in even greater numbers.

Police estimated up to one million people had turned out. Some applauded, some stood with heads bowed. Others threw bouquets and single flowers into the path of the hearse in gestures reminiscent of the final journey of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.

The coffin, draped in the Queen Mother's standard and surmounted by her coronation crown, was driven from Westminster Abbey to Windsor Castle where it was interred last night alongside that of her beloved husband, King George VI.

Following the hearse was a sorrowful Prince of Wales who had sat in the Abbey, a picture of desolation, as he heard the Archbishop of Canterbury tell mourners: "Like the sun, she bathed us in her warm glow."

People were already gathering in central London as the doors to Westminster Hall closed at 6am, bringing to an end the lying in state and the public's homage to the Queen Mother.

Some began camping outside Westminster Abbey at the weekend. Three were treated for hypothermia and ended up watching the service on television.

At 11.15am, the Queen Mother's coffin was taken from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey accompanied by the skirl of 128 pipers and borne on the same gun carriage used for her husband George VI's funeral 50 years ago.

Nine senior members of the Royal Family walked solemnly behind the coffin.

Again, Prince William, 19, and 17-year-old Prince Harry were in their great-grandmother's funeral cortege with their grieving father Charles, and their aunt, the Princess Royal.

The Duke of Edinburgh led the royal mourners, who also included the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex, Viscount Linley, 40, and Peter Phillips, the Princess Royal's 24-year-old son.

The names of mourners arriving at Westminster Abbey read like a Who's Who of public life.

British Prime Ministers past and present filed in alongside foreign royals, leading figures from the racing world and personal friends of the Queen Mother.

In one choir stall, Prime Ministers from three decades sat alongside each other as Lord Callaghan joined Baroness Thatcher, with husband Sir Denis, and John Major, with his wife Norma.

Charles's companion Camilla Parker Bowles, Lord Snowdon, the Duchess of York, General Mike Jackson, who led the UN forces in Kosovo, and the novelist Dick Francis were also there, as was Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie.

As many as 35 members of the Royal Family and 25 foreign royals, as well as overseas dignitaries including America's first lady Laura Bush, attended the Abbey funeral service.

As they waited, the poignant sound of Westminster Abbey's Tenor Bell counted down the minutes to the nation's final farewell.

The bell tolled every minute, once for each year of her life, as thousands gathered outside the Abbey for the 11.30am funeral service.

Last to arrive at the Abbey, ahead of the cortege, was the principal mourner, the Queen.

As the building rang to the sound of the choir, elsewhere in the UK people marked the start of the service with two minutes' silence.

With all assembled, at 11.30am, the Queen Mother's funeral cortege waited at the Abbey's Great West Door, flanked by military top brass. The Abbey's organ fell silent as the Queen Mother made her final public entrance.

Her coffin was slowly carried along the Abbey's centre aisle, down which she walked 79 years ago, at 11.30am on April 26, 1923, as a royal bride.

The Archbishop of Canterbury read the sermon, in which he praised the Queen Mother's "strength, dignity and laughter - three great gifts which we honour and celebrate today".

He went on: "We come here to mourn but also to give thanks, to celebrate the person and her life - both filled with such a rich sense of fun and joy and the music of laughter.

"With it went an immense vitality that did not fail her. Hers was a great old age, but not a cramped one. She remained young at heart, and the young themselves sensed that."

The service concluded with the National Anthem.

The coffin was then taken, in a grand royal and ecclesiastical procession, back along the centre aisle. As it passed the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, the Massed Pipes and Drums played a lament.

A black hearse, from royal undertakers Levertons, was waiting at the West Gate and the Royal Family, headed by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, watched in sadness as the coffin was transferred.

In a day rich with symbolism and emotion, the RAF evoked the wartime British spirit the Queen Mother came to personify for many when two Spitfires and a Lancaster bomber saluted the cortege on its final journey down the Mall, past Clarence House, the Queen Mother's London residence.

The roar of their engines was a familiar sound when the Queen Mother was consort to King George VI during the Second World War.

The devoted Prince of Wales travelled with his dear grandmother's coffin on its final journey to Windsor, home of the Royal Family.

Along the route, at Horse Guards and Buckingham Palace, the Queen's Life Guards and Queen's Guard gave the Royal Salute, as did the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery, with barrels lowered in royal mourning, at Wellington Arch.

The cortege made its way via the Queen Elizabeth Gates, Hyde Park, to the Great West Road and Datchet. At Windsor, the hearse and accompanying cars drove through the Henry VIII Gate into the castle as crowds waiting outside applauded.

The Grenadier Guards (2 Company) made up a guard of honour as the hearse was driven past the household staff, and a bugle salute was played.

The hearse and its cortege of four cars was driven without stopping through the archway into the Horseshoe Cloisters and the gates were then shut.

The hearse still bore many of the flowers which had been thrown by well-wishers along its route.

The Queen and other VIP mourners returned to Buckingham Palace where the monarch put aside her grief to host a lunch.

Later, with close family members, she drove to Windsor for the committal service and interment at St George's Chapel, within the Castle precincts.

In the early evening, the Queen Mother's closest relatives said their final farewells as her coffin was lowered into the George VI Memorial Chapel, within historic St George's.

At last, she was being laid to rest with her late husband and the ashes of her daughter, Princess Margaret.

At the end of an era, the Queen, her immediate family and the Bowes Lyons were left with their private thoughts and memories of a great royal lady