Live updates: Queen's coffin set to leave Scottish estate

Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin is leaving her beloved Scottish estate Balmoral Castle as the late monarch begins her last journey back to London for a state funeral.

Six gamekeepers from the summer retreat where the queen died Thursday will carry the late sovereign’s oak coffin from the castle’s ballroom to a hearse Sunday. It will begin a six-hour, 280-kilometer (175-mile) journey through Scottish towns to Holyroodhouse palace in Edinburgh.

Crowds are expected to line the route as the nation mourns its longest-reigning monarch. Early Sunday, flowers and other tributes — a small Paddington Bear toy, a hand-drawn picture of the queen — were piled up outside the gates of Balmoral.

Also Sunday, King Charles III will be formally proclaimed king in the other nations of the United Kingdom — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — after a similar ceremony in Britain a day earlier.