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By Philip Whiteside, Lara Keay, Ganesh Rao and Carmen Aguilar Garcia

Throughout her seven decades on the throne, Queen Elizabeth visited 116 different countries, covering more than half of the planet.

While she travelled far and wide, she spent two-thirds of her time abroad in Commonwealth countries, where she was also head of state.

During her Golden Jubilee year alone, the Queen travelled 40,000 miles by air, going around the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

In total, her travels are estimated to have totalled 1,032,513 miles 鈥� the equivalent of 42 times around the world.

Scroll down to see her trips

Waves and well-wishers

Throughout her reign, there were times when she travelled extensively and other times she was based largely in the UK.

The decade when she did the most travelling was the 1970s but she made nearly as many trips in the 80s, perhaps reflecting that, although she was approaching her sixties, travel was easier and quicker because of improving international connections.

Over the years, the places she visited most in any period often reflected the UK's strategic diplomatic focus.

While Commonwealth countries and the places where she was head of state obviously received a lot of attention, she made repeated visits to Britain's closest allies, and would often visit those countries which were not as close in order to bring them tighter to Britain's sphere of influence.

Many of the non-Commonwealth countries she visited also had monarchs as heads of state, with some being related to members of her own family, often due to long-standing historical ties.

She also tried to visit the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) as often as she could, with four of her last overseas trips 鈥� despite being well into her eighties and beyond 鈥� being to CHOGM gatherings in Africa, the Caribbean, Australia and the Mediterranean.

Before 2015, when she stopped travelling abroad, there were just four years when she failed to travel overseas.

Soon after ascending to the throne, she undertook a long tour, largely using a liner adapted for royal travel called the SS Gothic. As the tour neared its end, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, both young children at the time, travelled out to meet her and their father in the Mediterranean on the newly completed royal yacht Britannia.

She made a single foreign trip in 1959 when she was pregnant with Prince Andrew and none the following year after she gave birth to him.

But the Queen still managed to host three heads of state with Andrew still in a cot and made up for lost time in 1961 by visiting 12 different countries in 12 months.

Elizabeth made just one foreign trip in 1964 鈥� the year Prince Edward was born 鈥� to Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Although it shared a name with her fourth son, the Ottawa island is named after the Duke of Kent and Strathearn 鈥� the son of King George III.

By the time her youngest child was a toddler, Elizabeth was bracing herself for one of her busiest years - 1966.

That year she visited 17 countries, many of them in the Caribbean, during an extensive tour.

In 1972, she visited 13 countries, with more of her trips split up across the year.

Her youngest son Edward was eight years old at this point, making travel arrangements slightly easier.

The Queen's domestic schedule was also busy that year 鈥� hosting leaders from Thailand, the Maldives and France.

Five years later, the Queen marked her Silver Jubilee, and she completed a huge tour across Britain and Northern Ireland and beyond.

She didn't host any state visits at Buckingham Palace but chose instead to meet residents of the Commonwealth on their home soil 鈥� from Antigua to Western Samoa.

In 1985, the Queen attended the CHOGM in the Bahamas, from which she island hopped around the Caribbean.

As a result, it became another year when her country count hit double figures.

She also hosted three heads of state in the UK, while Prince Charles and Princess Diana visited the United States as part of a memorable tour that saw the Princess of Wales dance with John Travolta at the White House.

It was 1994 before she hit double digits again with 10 trips in 12 months.

When she stopped, winding down gradually from the noughties into the teens, the Queen handed the responsibility to the Cambridges, Sussexes, and the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.

When she undertook her last foreign visit, at the age of 89, it may have been with a degree of emotion as Elizabeth had lived on Malta as a child and later with the Duke of Edinburgh before she became Queen.

Canada

Canada appeared to be among the Queen鈥檚 favourite countries, which she visited 22 times while on the throne.

She first went there as Princess Elizabeth in 1951, and subsequently travelled to every state and territory.

Her role as Canada's head of state even saw her travel to the US as an official representative of the Canadian people.

Her love of Canada was made clear during her 2002 Golden Jubilee visit, when she repeated a quote from her late mother during a tour in the early days of King George's reign.

The Queen Mother had said: "Since I have landed in Quebec, I think we can say that I am Canadian."

Australia

Her next most-visited country was Australia.

While she was head of state there too, she appointed governor-generals in both Australia and New Zealand to act for her.

She first visited Australia two years after becoming Queen 鈥� in 1954 鈥� when she opened the parliament building in Canberra.

In 1973, she was back to open the Sydney Opera House, before returning four years later as part of her Silver Jubilee tour, which saw her travel to all six states in just three weeks.

She also travelled extensively in the antipodes during a further visit in 1988.

Despite a vocal republican movement Down Under, many commentators have said it was her popularity and visits that ensured she remained as head of state throughout her reign.

Pacific Islands and New Zealand

With many of the countries of Oceania also in the Commonwealth and with them being so far from the UK, it often made sense for several to be visited on a single tour.

The Queen went to New Zealand 10 times during her time on the throne.

But she was unable to travel back to welcome Dame Cindy Kiro 鈥� the first ever Maori woman appointed as governor general in 2021.

New Zealand was also part of her Silver and Golden Jubilee tours in 1977 and 2002 and the Queen was given a Maori name - Kotuku - which means "the white heron" and refers to a rare New Zealand bird.

Many of the trips to the smaller islands of the Pacific or nearby were made at the same time as visits to Australia and NZ.

Most of these were visited just once in her reign but were among the most colourful and memorable visits the Queen and Prince Philip carried out.

They helped create strong ties, despite the often sparsely populated and small island nations being thousands of miles from where the Queen normally lives.

Among those they visited in 1974 was Vanuatu, which was still the British colony of the New Hebrides at the time, where they met the Tanna tribe that regarded the Duke as a god.

Caribbean

With many Caribbean countries acquiring Commonwealth membership as they gained independence, it made sense that over the years, Her Majesty would often visit several of them on extended tours.

That happened in every decade from the 1960s until the 1990s, and there were other times when she made regular visits to the region.

In the latter half of her reign, there was pressure in many of the small island nations to turn republic, so her visits there became all the more important for their relationship with the UK. Indeed, half of the countries where she is monarch are in the region.

In 1966, film footage from her tour to places like British Guiana (soon to become Guyana) and Grenada in the royal yacht Britannia showed she was met by thousands of cheering people, as huge crowds turned out to line the streets.

The 1994 tour, this time partly by air, was also enthusiastically received but showed how easy it was for royal visits to be sucked into local controversy as it coincided with elections in Anguilla where her visit was criticised by opposition leaders, and it further ignited discussion about republicanism in Jamaica.

France

The non-Commonwealth country the Queen visited most was Britain's closest neighbour 鈥� France.

Buckingham Palace says she crossed the channel 13 times - more than to any other country in Europe. 

This included five state visits 鈥� the first hosted by President Rene Coty in 1957 and the most recent by Francois Hollande in 2014.

The first time she had made an official visit was in 1948 when she travelled there as Princess Elizabeth 鈥� her first outside the Commonwealth.

As well as official state visits, she also travelled to Paris on the first Eurostar train and to the former wartime battlefields for various commemorations.

On Paris's Ile de la Cite in the middle of the River Seine, the Queen has a flower market named after her 鈥� the Marche aux Fleurs Reine Elizabeth II.

The United States

While not the destination for as many visits as France, the Queen undertook several high profile trips to the US.

And, in a reflection of the times and place of the UK in the world, her visits there mirrored the mood of the transatlantic relationship at the time.

In 1957, much was made of the colonial origins of the USA, with Jamestown and Williamsburg on the itinerary.

By 1991, with the US and UK both concluding their military action in the Persian Gulf, the emphasis was on modern day co-operation, with Her Majesty giving the first speech to Congress by a British monarch since independence in 1776.

She travelled to the US at least six times, including a brief visit to Chicago in 1959, but there were many other visits by US heads of state to the UK so that by the time she died she had met 13 out of the 14 presidents who had served from 1953 onwards.

Planes, trains and royal yachts

Two days before the death of her father, George VI, a new royal yacht was commissioned that, unlike its predecessors, was designed to be solidly ocean going.

While not its sole function, it proved to be an ideal vessel which the royal couple could take advantage of on their long tours around the world.

It may not have been luxurious by modern standards, but it provided the Royal Family with comfort, space and privacy on their journeys, and even had a collapsible swimming pool for family members to take a dip if they wanted.

It was regularly used to host receptions on tours and featured a spacious and elegant Drawing Room that allowed the Royal Family to relax when in private use and that could also cater for up to 250 guests when dignitaries came aboard.

Security was provided by a British warship, which would always accompany the vessel while it was on royal duties.

In 1994, in anticipation of increasingly expensive refits, the government decided to retire the yacht, leaving the Queen no choice but to undertake her tours by air, or occasionally rail.

Of course, for many trips that were too far away for a royal yacht to reach, she had no choice but to fly, or to reach the many distant lands by whatever means she could, especially before major airports were constructed.

Seaplanes and light aircraft were common forms of transport during times when landing was via a grass airstrip or there was no airstrip at all.

A despatch from Dominica by the Foreign Office in 1994 hints at some of the difficulties she endured, with the official describing just one of the airfields she used as "a white-knuckle landing strip in the middle of nowhere".

The countries she missed out

Despite Prince Philip being Greek, Elizabeth never went to Greece.

Royal historian Hugo Vickers told the BBC this was likely to be the result of Philip's fraught relationship with his homeland.

His grandfather, King George, was assassinated there eight years before he was born.

And his father, Prince Andrew, was put on trial when he was a boy and the family was forced into exile.

The family settled in France and never went back, which could explain why the royal couple did not return.

Elizabeth visited every single Commonwealth nation during her life except Rwanda and Cameroon, which joined the group of nations in 2009 and 1995 respectively. She visited Eswatini (then Swaziland) and Lesotho (the former Basutoland) before she ascended.

Other countries missing from her list included large parts of Africa and many South American countries.

Credits:

Words: Philip Whiteside, international news reporter; Lara Keay, premium content reporter

Data journalism: Ganesh Rao and Carmen Aguilar Garcia, data journalists; Philip Whiteside

Pictures: PA Archive; Associated Press; Reuters