As of Her Majesty’s 90th birthday, she had taken some 271 foreign trips and travelled over a million miles in her lifetime. To put that into perspective, The Telegraph reported that would be about the same distance as 42 trips around the circumference of the Earth.
The queen’s longest trip was a 44,000-mile tour in 1953, but she spent the most amount of time traveling to different countries in the 1970s. The queen took an astounding 73 trips in a 10-year period, an average of about seven per year.
Since Her Majesty was the very definition of well-travelled, it should come as no surprise to learn that she has her own list of handy tips and tricks to make her travels as smooth as possible.
Here are some of the Queen’s top travel tips:
Tackle JetLag Head On: Queen Elizabeth’s cure? Homeopathic remedies, including barley sugar candies, according to the Independent. The sweets can supposedly adjust the body clock to a new place by helping the blood sugar match the eating schedule in the destination.
Get a Good Suitcase: According to the luxury luggage label Globe-Trotter, Queen Elizabeth II chose to use the brand on her honeymoon in 1947. The site explains that the queen “continues to use her cases to this day.” How many of us can say we’ve used the same suitcases for over seven decades?
Always Pack a LBD: Always packed among her colourful clothes is a black outfit in case tragedy strikes. Her Majesty was on royal tour in Kenya when her father passed away but hadn’t packed a mourning outfit, so she needed to wait onboard in Britain until a black dress was delivered. Now, she is always prepared with a black outfit.
Bring Your own Toilet Paper: This may be the most surprising one! A reporter who spent 20 years covering royal tours reveal that Her Majesty always brings her own personal stash, sealed with stickers that only she and Prince Philip are allowed to break.
Afternoon Tea is Essential: According to Gordon Rayner, a chief reporter who travelled on royal tours with the queen for some 20 years, there’s always time allotted for afternoon tea. “Even if she’s on a flight at tea time, out will come a cuppa, a Dundee cake, and some scones and clotted cream,” he wrote in an article for The Telegraph.
Better Overpacking than Underprepared: If you thought you had a bad habit of over-packing, the number of Queen’s outfit options is guaranteed to beat out the items in your duffel. She reportedly brings an entire clothes rail stocked with as many as 30 outfits for her trip, all kept pristine in protective sleeves. Prior to embarking on a trip, a test run will be performed to make sure all of the queen’s luggage can fit through stairways and openings. There’s even a science to how the royal luggage is taken off the plane once the monarch arrives at her destination. The queen disembarks before the luggage, but this gets a little tricky because they “must be waiting in her suite for her arrival.”
Don’t Forget the Soap: Depending on the reason for why the queen is travelling, the contents of her luggage may vary slightly. Although The Independent says “two trunks of dispatch boxes, nine briefcases and five boxes of personal stationery” accompany the queen on every trip, some trips may require extra luggage. When visiting China, for example, the queen needed an extra 12 boxes just to hold presents for other heads of states. The queen also makes sure to pack some things to keep her occupied during any downtime she may have, like crossword puzzles and magazines. During summer trips to Balmoral Castle, she’s even been known to bring pork sausages from Harrods and shortbread from Buckingham Palace. If you’re one to travel with your own pillows, you and the queen have that in common. She also travels with her preferred pillows, as well as a hot water bottle, some framed family photos and her favourite “pine scented soaps and talcum powders.”
