The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Royal processions: where one likes to travel
Royal tours still captivate the nation. Chris Leadbeater recounts some famous visits – and suggests itineraries fit for a king or queen
Photos of our travels can capture a place, a mood, a moment, a pertinent fragment of our lives – perhaps even all these things at once. This can be the case with the quickest of snaps or the most informal of selfies taken on our own dashes to exotic destinations. It is certainly true of journeys taken by members of our Royal family on official state business.
Over the best part of the past two centuries, kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes and duchesses of this realm have gone abroad for visits that, when viewed as sepia shards of yesteryear, bottle the lightning of the era in which they occurred. From the future Edward VII romping around India amid the trappings of Empire in the 19th century to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – who will tour Norway and Sweden next week – and their overseas trips as faces of royalty in the social-media age, these forays to foreign shores come to be time capsules of the years that framed them.
Some snare the ghosts of lost epochs and fallen regimes – witness the tours of a stable Pakistan and a pre-revolutionary Iran taken in short succession in 1961 by our current head of state. Some preserve the fashions of the hour – the Queen’s Brazilian odyssey amid the optimism of 1968; Princess Diana’s adventures on the global stage in the Eighties. Others talk of tomorrow, like Prince Harry’s charitable expeditions in Africa and South America.
Better still, these regal itineraries can be inspiration for holidays in the everyday. The following list does not try to be an exhaustive outline of royal getaways, but – whether it is Queen Victoria seeing family in Germany, or Prince Charles absorbing high culture in Italy – it does select key tours, and suggests how they can be revisited by travellers who do not need to worry about the eyes of the world’s media when they arrive at the airport…
VICTORIA PRUSSIA AUGUST 5-30 1858
Received wisdom has it that, while she ruled over the British Empire at its height, Victoria rarely left home. She did, though; drawn predominantly to the German states by family connections. The most poignant trip was to Prussia in 1858, where she and Albert visited their daughter, Victoria, who had married the future (German emperor) Frederick III seven months earlier, and was already pregnant. The party stayed at Babelsberg Palace in Potsdam, and inspected the Belvedere auf dem Pfingstberg – an ornamental viewing platform, then still under construction, described by the queen as offering “a most splendid view”. In regal footsteps Potsdam (potsdam-tourism.com) still looks like the Prussian capital. Both palaces (spsg.de and pfingstberg.de) are open for tours (the Babelsberg is closed for renovation until May). Three nights at the Hotel Brandenburger Tor, leaving Manchester on June 14, cost from £240 per person via Last Minute (0800 083 4000; lastminute.com).
EDWARD VII INDIA OCTOBER 1875-MARCH 1876
Victoria’s eldest son earned a reputation as a playboy in his 60 years as Prince of Wales – partly because of jaunts like his swaggering trip around India in 1875 and 1876. Though not a state visit, his progress made headlines for its bacchanalian blur of parties, sporting events, hunting excursions and train rides. He landed in Bombay (Mumbai) on November 8 1875, and by Christmas was in Calcutta (Kolkata), staying at the Raj Bhavan (now the residence of the Governor of West Bengal) and attending Mass at St Paul’s Cathedral. He then went northwest via Lucknow and Kanpur to Delhi, where the prince’s camp “was a more luxurious bivouac than any monarch sleeping in the tented field has ever enjoyed.” In regal footsteps: Cox & Kings (020 3468 8762; coxandkings.co.uk) sells a 14-day “Taj, Tigers and Trains” tour that captures some of the spirit of “Bertie’s” trip in Delhi, Ranthambore National Park, Lucknow and Kolkata. From £3,155 per person, with flights.
GEORGE V PARIS APRIL 21-23 1914
George V and Queen Mary travelled to Paris for a visit to mark the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Entente Cordiale and a display of Anglo-French unity as the First World War loomed. It was a sunny affair, a foray to the Bois de Boulogne stirring the queen to happy words. “The weather was glorious,” she recalled, “…the Bois looking too lovely, chestnuts out, and flowers”. In regal footsteps: There is one place to stay in Paris to trace this trip – the Four Seasons Hotel George V. Built later in his reign (in 1928), and named in his honour, this art deco jewel has doubles in April from €978 (£851) a night (0033 1 4952 7000; fourseasons.com/paris).
GEORGE VI CANADA MAY 17-JUNE 15 1939
The world was on the verge of another war when George VI and Queen Elizabeth set off on an odyssey that was intended to emphasise Canadian identity in a time of gathering clouds. It did just that, ebbing through every province. The couple arrived in
These forays to foreign shores come to be time capsules of the years that framed them
Quebec City by boat, then proceeded, greeted by colossal crowds at every turn, to Toronto and on to Niagara Falls, where they dedicated the semi-built Rainbow Bridge.
The train would carry them west across the plains to the Rockies – through Winnipeg, Calgary and Banff, before rolling into Vancouver. Returning in 1985 as Queen Mother, Elizabeth would remember her 1939 tour, saying: “I shall always look back upon that visit with feelings of affection.” In regal footsteps Great Rail (01904 521936; greatrail.com) sells almost this exact trip (in reverse) in its 18-day “Canada Coast to Coast” jaunt from Vancouver to Nova Scotia via Quebec City and Niagara. From £4,995 a head – with flights. Next departure May 29.
ELIZABETH II KENYA JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 6 1952
This foray into Africa in 1952 is arguably the most famous of our current monarch’s trips abroad, because she left Britain as a princess and returned a queen. Technically, this was not a state visit – while Elizabeth was standing in for George VI on the tour of New Zealand and Australia that was to follow, her time in Kenya was meant to be a break from royal duties. No chance of that, it transpired. She and the Duke of Edinburgh had been watching elephants in Aberdare National Park, and staying in Treetops Hotel – a retreat up in its branches – when word arrived that her father had died in the night of February 5-6. The new head of state returned home that evening. In regal footsteps: Treetops Hotel burned down in 1954 but its successor Treetops Lodge is a 50-room oasis. It features in “Grand Safari Kenya”, a 10-day group tour sold by Titan (0808 2731060; titantravel.co.uk). Its May 25 edition starts at £2,949 a head, with flights.
PANAMA NOVEMBER 29-30 1953
Part of the world tour that the Queen embarked upon from November 1953 to May 1954 in celebration of her new reign, these two days in Central America dealt a few fascinating photocalls. The monarch arrived from Jamaica with the Duke of Edinburgh on the Royal Yacht SS Gothic, disembarked in Colon, and travelled south on land, tracing the Panama Canal. Images from November 30 find her in the control tower at Miraflores, operating one of the locks. In regal footsteps Journey Latin America (020 3811 6079; journeylatinamerica.co.uk) offers a nine-day “Journey Between The Seas” which crosses Panama via roughly this route, also sailing the canal and Lake Gatun. From £4,129 per person; flights extra.
IRAN MARCH 2-6 1961
Iran was a very different country in 1961, when the Queen travelled to see Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah – who would be deposed in the Islamic revolution of 1979. She spent time in the capital Tehran and the major city Isfahan (where Naghsh-eJahan Square is one of the planet’s biggest), but the clear highlight of the trip was the day amid the ruins of Persepolis, the ancient city that was founded in 515 BC as the heartbeat of the First Persian Empire. Footage shows the royal group entering the site through the Gate of All Nations, where inscriptions in the wall pay homage to king Xerxes the Great. In regal footsteps: Jules Verne (020 3811 6201; vjv.com) sells a nine-night “Return to Persepolis” trip which also calls on Tehran and Isfahan. From £2,795 a head, with flights.
ETHIOPIA FEBRUARY 1-8 1965
As with her Iran tour, the Queen’s visit to Ethiopia was an excursion into a now-vanished era. She was met at the airport in Addis Ababa by the Emperor Haile Selassie, who had spent five years in exile in Bath (1936-1941) while his country was under Italian occupation. He gave the royal arrival the full pomp-and-circumstance treatment. The Queen was driven through the capital in a coach pulled by six white horses, while the evening’s banquet at his palace was no more restrained – at that point, he kept pet lions in his gardens. Within a decade, though, he was gone, deposed in a military coup in 1974 and dying in captivity a year later. His home, where his bedroom is preserved, is now the Ethnological Museum. In regal footsteps: Explore (01252 883342; 8 explore.co.uk) runs a regular ““Ethiopia in Depth” group break. This T 13-day tour with lecturer Chris Bradley Br visits Addis Ababa as well as the t former capital Gondar (which was w also part of the Queen’s 1965 itinerary) itin and rock churches at Lalibela. Lalibela From £2,885 a head with flights. Next N departure March 30.
WEST GERMANY MAY 18- 28 1965
The state visit to West Germany in the spring of 1965 was a closing of a political chasm. It was the first royal trip to German territory for more than half a century – the previous tour had been taken by Edward VII in 1909, before two world wars had shattered the continent. This journey wandered into a scarcely more peaceful context. This was the height of the Cold War. Images of the Queen in West Berlin show her Mercedes pausing briefly in front of the Brandenburg Gate. At this point, the Berlin Wall was