An unusual royal procession has sailed serenely down the Thames as river traffic made way for a 16ft Egyptian Pharaoh made entirely of Lego.

A 16ft Lego Pharaoh on the River Thames

Weighing one tonne and comprising more than 200,000 building blocks, the enormous statue - one of the largest Lego models yet built - will be part of a new £3 million attraction at the Legoland theme park in Windsor, Berkshire.

The Pharaoh followed in the footsteps of Anubis, the Egyptian God of the Dead, who floated down the River Thames in 2007 to mark the opening of the Tutenkhamun exhibition in London.

It was the end of a long voyage for the model, which has travelled 1,395 miles by truck and boat from the Czech Republic to the theme park's Kingdom of the Pharaohs exhibition, which opens on March 21.

The statue, which took a team of four modellers five months to build, was launched from King George V Dock in East Ham and will arrive at its destination on Wednesday.

Legoland's chief model maker, Guy Bagley, said: "We can't wait to get our Pharaoh into the theme park. Without this final piece, we can't quite get the land finished and the park open in time."