Inspire your clients with the late Queen's travel adventures
We look in more detail at some of the places around the world that meant so much to Elizabeth II
It is well documented that Queen Elizabeth II was the most travelled British monarch in history, clocking up more than a million miles as she criss-crossed her way around the world throughout her reign. She made 290 state visits to 117 different nations between 1952 – when she became Queen while in Kenya – and 2015, when she made her final overseas visit, to Malta. And all without a passport... as a British passport was issued in her name, it was unnecessary for her to have one.
Here’s a few talking points that could inspire your clients upcoming travels...
Malta
The Mediterranean island had a special place in the Queen’s heart. Between 1949 and 1951, when she was still a princess, she paid several visits to Malta as a young naval wife, supporting Prince Philip who was stationed there with the Royal Navy, each lasting several months. She first arrived in Malta in November 1949 and spent Christmas on the island, living in Villa Guardamangia, which later fell into a dilapidated state, but has now been entrusted to Heritage Malta for restoration.
She often spoke of her happy memories of living in Malta during those years, where she and Philip lived in newly wedded bliss and in relative normality, taking part in the island’s social life, before the demands of the crown were placed upon her head.
She returned to the island as Queen on May 3, 1954, when a 21-gun royal salute proclaimed her arrival into Valletta’s Grand Harbour.
Her second state visit came in 1967, three years after Malta gained independence. She returned regularly, until her final visit for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2015, where she paid tribute to the island, saying that its small size was no measure of the moral strength of its people.
Kenya
Kenya is another of those places with intrinsic links to Queen Elizabeth II. She was in Kenya in February 1952 with her husband Prince Philip when her father King George VI passed away. They were near the start of a Commonwealth tour, representing her father who was too ill to travel – and she was taking a break from royal duties at the Treetops Hotel when the news broke overnight.
The couple had spent the day before observing elephants at a nearby watering hole, before retiring to their room high up in the trees. And it was here, in the early hours of 6 February, that Elizabeth became Queen. "For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess… and she climbed down from the tree next day a Queen," the couple’s armed escort and guide Jim Corbett, who was also staying at Treetops at the time, wrote in the visitors’ log book.
The diplomat and politician, Harold Nicolson, wrote in his diary: “She became Queen while in a perch in a tree in Africa, watching the rhinoceros come down to the pool to drink.”
However, it’s a little known fact that she was actually given the news later that same day by her husband Philip at Sagana Lodge, a farm some 20 miles from Treetops, which had been a wedding present from the Kenyan government. Prince Philip’s aide, Commander Michael Parker later wrote: "He looked as if you’d dropped half the world on him… He took [The Queen] up to the garden and they walked up and down the lawn while he talked and talked and talked to her."
From Sagana they travelled direct to Entebbe airport and flew back home to the UK. Not long after the Queen handed ownership of Sagana Lodge back to Kenya’s newly independent government and it is now used by Kenya’s president while on duty.
The couple returned to Treetops in 1959 and 1983, but it was a far cry from the rustic two-bed dwelling they knew, burned down by Mau Mau rebels during an uprising. A revamped 36-room lodge on stilts had a Queen Elizabeth Suite and a plaque that marked the spot where she went from Princess to Queen, but sadly closed during the pandemic.
Australia
The Queen paid 16 visits to Australia over 57 years, making it one of her most visited countries. Her first visit was 1954 and her final one was 2011. The Sydney Herald reported of that debut visit that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh received "the most tumultuous greeting Sydney has ever given any visitor".
That first tour saw Elizabeth travel 10,000 miles by air and 2,000 miles by road – including 207 trips by car and by royal trains. The Queen was treated to endless displays of quintessential Aussie pastimes: sheep shearing, surf carnivals and wood chopping and the staple of many a royal tour, singing and dancing by school children.
That tour was a mammoth 56 days, visiting every Australian state capital except Darwin, and 70 country towns. It’s estimated that by the time the couple departed, more than 75% of the population had seen her in person.
They returned to Australia in 1963 and this visited they visited every state including the Northern Territory.
The visits were not without controversy. In 1970 she helped celebrate the bi-centenary of James Cook sailing up the east coast of Australia, when there was a re-enactment of Cook and his crew meeting “the resistance of the Aborigines with a volley of musket fire”. It’s doubtful such ‘entertainment’ would take place today, and with royal assent.
In 2009, it was revealed that during that same visit, the couple had been the targets of rudimentary assassination attempt, when a wooden log was laid across the tracks at Lithgow in the Blue Mountains in a bid to derail the Royal train. The train hit the log but thankfully remained on the tracks.
Although crowds were a constant fixture on every visit, they were also marked by protests and debate over Australia’s constitutional position, and the Queen did not visit Australia between 1992 and 2000, sparing her direct questions about the 1999 referendum on the republic.
Her tour in 2011 was billed as a farewell tour by royal watchers and they were right. The 85-year-old Queen and Philip, then 90, signed off by visiting Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.
Ireland
The Queen visited Belfast about 20 times, but it was her visit to Dublin in 2011 that was most historically and politically significant. She was the first British monarch to visit the city for more than 100 years and – dressed in a symbolic shade of emerald green – she was the first to set foot in the Republic of Ireland since it gained independence, following the Anglo-Irish war. Her base was Farmleigh House in Phoenix Park, owned by the Irish government, which is open for guided tours and estate walks when not in use for official business.
She used the trip to help heal the wounds of the past – she began her address to a state banquet in Dublin by speaking words in Irish, which drew an exclamation of ‘Wow’ from the then-prime minister Mary McAleese. She also laid a wreath at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance, which commemorates those who fought against the British to achieve Irish independence.
In July 1953 she made her first visit to Belfast as monarch, staying overnight at Hillsborough Castle. The majority of her visits to Northern Ireland came in the 1990s and 2000s after the peace process took hold. One of the most remarkable of those took place in 2012, when she was pictured shaking the hand of Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, a former IRA leader at an event in Belfast. This was no token gesture – Prince Philip’s uncle Lord Mountbatten was killed by the IRA in 1979.
Canada
The Queen visited Canada more than any other overseas country in her long reign. If you include overnight visits and aircraft refuelling stops, she visited Canada no less than 31 times since her coronation in June 1952, according to the Canadian Heritage Department.
Her first visit came as a princess in 1951, with Philip, when they visited every Province and a total of 60 communities.
Her first official visit as Queen came in 1957, which included her first ever televised broadcast, live from Rideau Hall in Ottawa. The longest royal tour in Canadian history was a marathon 45-day tour in 1959 starting in Newfoundland. On that tour a brief journey of the Royal Yacht Britannia marked the official opening of the St Lawrence Seaway, unlocking the Great Lakes ports of Chicago, Toronto Hamilton, Detroit and Thunder Bay to the rest of the world.
The Montreal Olympics took place in 1976 and the entire family – the Duke of Edinburgh, Princes Charles, Andrew and Edward and Princess Anne’s husband, Mark Phillips – joined the Queen on tour to support Princess Anne, who was competing in the equestrian events for the British team.
In 1982 the Queen joined Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to sign the proclamation of the Constitution Act on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, giving the Canadian parliament the right to amend the constitution without the approval of the British parliament, signalling the last stage of Canada’s evolution from colony to fully independent state. The Queen remained as head of state and she often used the word ‘home’ when touring the country.
Her final visit came in Summer 2010, when she toured Ottawa, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Ontario and Toronto and celebrated Canada Day with 100,000 people on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Bonny Scotland
All the locations above were mainly toured on state visits, and would hardly qualify as holiday. For rest and respite, she often turned to Balmoral (pictured), her Scottish estate nestled in the Highlands, which has been a royal residence since the land was purchased by Queen Victoria in 1852.
Prince Albert oversaw the construction of the main castle, which was completed in 1856. It was where the Queen faithfully returned summer after summer and where she passed away peacefully, on Thursday. The castle grounds, gardens and exhibitions are open to the public between April and July. In the nearby village of Ballater, many local shops proudly display Royal warrants, signifying that they supply Balmoral with everything from bread to bacon.
There are many more royal connections with Scotland, and historic buildings with royal ties that are open for visitors: Holyrood Palace, the official royal residence in Edinburgh, connected to Edinburgh Castle by the Royal Mile; Glamis Castle, the childhood home of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen’s Mother and wife of George VI, and birthplace of Princess Margaret in 1930; and Castle Mey, the most northerly castle on the British mainland and a beloved holiday home of the Queen Mother. Her last visit there was in October 2021, aged 101. She first came across the property in 1952, while grieving the death of her husband. It had been on the market for several months and lacked bathrooms and electricity when she took it on.
Finally in Scotland, Edinburgh’s Port of Leith is the location for another royal residence, a floating one. The royal yacht Britannia was launched in 1953 and retired in 1997, undertaking 968 official voyages and sailing 1.1 million miles. An audio tour now explains the vessel’s illustrious history to visitors, as they tour its Sun Lounge, State Dining Rooms and the Queen’s Bedroom.
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