In 1561, a 25-year-old redhead became Queen of England. Nearly every summer for the next 45 years she travelled to meet the people of England in their homes. She slept at more than 241 places and came into contact with thousands of people who had never even seen a picture of her. They called her Good Queen Bess, but we know her as Elizabeth I.
   Elizabeth had not had a happy life -- her mother was Ann Boleyn, executed by her father, Henry VIII, for adultery and she had been threatened with the axe herself before she came to the throne -- but she never forgot her duty to her country or lost her love for her subjects. They in turn, loved her.
   The queen would decide where she wanted to visit and couriers would warn them she was coming. Then an official known as the Royal Harbinger had to inspect the accommodation to ensure it was fit for a Queen. The Queen did not believe in travelling lightly. When she moved from London she took her whole court of 1,500 people with her, and her pack train could include 400 wagons and more than 2,500 animals.
   At Cowdray Park, Sussex, in 1591, the Royal party consumed 140 geese and 3 oxen for breakfast. When the court arrived, they were likely to eat everything available in a couple of days, and bankrupt the host. For this reason, a number of places Elizabeth wanted to visit suddenly reported outbreaks of plague, landslips that engulfed the road, or the discovery that the rooms were not quite as large as Her Majesty would have liked.