02The Queen has travelled around the world 42 times, visiting 120 countries during her 90 years, it has been revealed.
The monarch, who celebrates her 90th birthday on Thursday, has visited more than 60 per cent of the world’s 196 countries – and all without a passport, according to royal historian Kate Williams.
Her most-visited long-haul destination is Canada, which she has travelled to more than 25 times.
While closer to home, France and Germany have proved popular for Her Majesty, according to the research commissioned by travel website lastminute.com
Over 90 years, the monarch has been to countries including Thailand, Latvia, Pakistan and Sudan. As British passports are issued in her name she is the only member of the Royal Family not required to carry one during her visits.
During her first year on the throne, the Queen travelled more than 40,000 miles and visited 12 countries for her six-month Commonwealth tour, which took place between November 1953 and May 1954.
And in 1979, she visited six countries in two months as part of a tour of the Middle East.
The Queen has received many gifts on her travels, including a baby elephant during her visit to Cameroon in 1972, which was given to London Zoo.
Although usually accustomed to staying in the smartest hotels, the Queen took a bed and breakfast manager by surprise in 1981, after getting stuck in a blizzard near Bristol and asking to stay the night.
But the manager insisted on giving the monarch his own top floor flat above the B&B to stay in.
Moreover on this event, a rare handwritten letter from a young Queen Elizabeth II telling the story of her romance with Prince Philip before their 1947 wedding has been sold at auction.
The note, penned when she was a 21-year-old princess, recounts the early stages of their relationship from their rare meetings in wartime to the London dances they attended together.