How the Queen Travels

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The Queen is the Queen of lots of places—MiltonKeynes, Peterborough, Derby, the list goes on.

What that means is that she has had to travela lot in order to make sure that as many people as possible in as many places as possibleget waved at.

In fact, she is supposedly the most travelledhead-of-state in history, probably at least partially since she’s been Queen since theearly jurassic period, almost.

While she’s cut back on the internationaltravel in recent years, she still has, like, a lot of houses that she needs to visit.

She typically starts the year at SandringhamHouse, stays there through early February, then heads back to London to start her rotationof Buckingham Palace during the week, Windsor castle during the weekends, which she maintains, except for a few longer stays at Windsor, until the end of June.

It’s at that point that she heads up tothe Palace of Holyroodhouse, in Edinburgh, for a week, before heading further up northin early-August to finish out the summer at Balmoral Castle, and then heading back downto London where she stays until it’s time to go to Sandringham House for the holidays.

That’s a lot of travel, especially for a93 year old.

While of course a life traveling between palacessounds nice, she has to do lots of waving along the way which makes it a tiring lifestyle.

Now, starting with the closest, to get toWindsor, the Queen travels like a normal person and uses a motorcade—good, done.

Going to Sandringham, though, she typicallytakes the train to the nearby King’s Lynn station before driving the last bit.

Now, what makes this surprising is that sheactually just takes the public, regularly-scheduled train with normal, non-Royal, muggles on-board.

Of course, to keep up appearances, she doesride in first class.

For going to Scotland, to either Holyroodhouseor Balmoral, the Queen usually takes her private train, known as the Royal Train.

This allows her to sleep along the way, andeven to make trips from Edinburgh, where Holyroodhouse is, to areas around Scotland as she fulfillsher duties in relative comfort.

Of course, the unfortunate bit is that, despitehaving such a rail loving ruler, the best compliment you can make about the UK’s railsystem is that it’s better than the US’.

The Queen has, in her reign, of course hadto travel outside the UK quite a bit considering that she is the Queen in a number of othernations worldwide, and also the main figurehead for the UK.

While she’s ramped down the quantity ofthis travel recently, she still has done some in the past decade and this aspect of hertravel is.

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complicated.

You see, by policy, the monarch herself doesnot travel on commercial fights.

While other members of the royal family do, with some even being spotted on Ryanair, it’s considered far too complicated and risky forthe Queen.

There are, in fact, a decent number of rulesfor royal flight including, for example, that no two heirs to the throne are meant to flyon the same plane.

In practice, following this rule would bequite difficult since, for one, Prince Harry and each of his three kids would have to eachtravel separately so the Queen has given permission for this rule to be violated.

Now, even though the Queen is not meant totravel on commercial flights, she does not have her own aircraft.

The British government does have a VIP configuredversion of an aerial tanker configured version of an Airbus a330—yeah, I know it’s complicated—andit’s said that the Queen has first dibs on this.

If the Queen’s not using it, then PrinceCharles has second dibs, then the Prime Minister, then British government ministers.

This hierarchy has led to some tricky situations—in2017, the Prime Minister was forced to charter a plane since Prince Charles was using the government plane.

Ministers, at the bottom of the totem pole, rarely ever get to use the plane.

When he was foreign secretary, Boris Johnsoncomplained to reporters about the bathroom at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

He said, “I think it’s great, but it seemsto be very difficult to get hold of.

It never seems to be available.

I don’t know who uses it, but it never seemsto be available.

” Oh, actually, I’m told he was complainingabout the plane but, really, applicable to either.

Of course, the Queen herself has never usedthis plane since she hasn’t even left the UK since its introduction in 2015.

When the Queen has travelled outside of Europe, though, the last time being 2011 with her trip to Australia, she typically charterslong-haul aircraft from British Airways.

The airline would reconfigure their aircraftwith a sort-of bedroom suite for the Queen and her husband and Heathrow airport, wherethey would normally leave from, even has a private lounge specifically for the Queenand her family.

Chartering a huge aircraft like this does, of course, come at quite a cost for the royal purse, but given the eerily similar appearanceof the Queen of England and the Queen of Australia, it’s always been considered a worthy expense, at least by those who get to decide, in order to tie the Commonwealth together.

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