Having covered at least 1,032,513 miles and visited 117 different countries during her reign Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, was our most travelled monarch.
To put it in perspective, the Queen has travelled the equivalent of 42 journeys around the entire circumference of the earth.
She has visited every country in the Commonwealth carrying out an incredible 290 state visits since 1952.
Her first trip as Queen was meeting the governor of Kenya, Sir Philip Mitchell, on 6 February 1952, where she heard the news of her father George VI’s death, while her last tour was a trip to Malta with the Duke of Edinburgh in 2015, a fitting end to a life of overseas travel, as this was where the royal couple lived for a period when they were first married in 1947.
The Queen carried out a number of historic trips during her reign, including becoming the first British monarch to visit China in 1986, and the first in a century to tour the Republic of Ireland in 2011.
However, there were still some places she never visited. The Queen never visited Israel, thought to be due to political reasons, nor Greece, because of Prince Philip’s family history in the country.
She always regarded travel as a vital part of her reign; as she said in her 1953 Christmas broadcast, which was recorded in Auckland, New Zealand: “I set out on this journey in order to see as much as possible of the people and countries of the Commonwealth and Empire. I want to show that the Crown is not merely an abstract symbol of our unity, but a personal and living bond between you and me.”
