Blue Peter Flies The World

The Summer holidays are well underway so its an apt time to look back at some of the amazing Summer trips Blue Peter has been on over the years. At the end of each series in June the team would soon set off to some exciting destination. When the programme returned in September the Summers adventures would be shown in a series of films during the first few weeks of each new series.
The first trip was in 1965, when Valerie Singleton and Christopher Trace visited Norway. The following year they visited Singapore and Borneo. Budgets were tight for the trips, but the production team always managed to find the funds for them.  Eventually the Summer expeditions as they became known were an essential to the programmes annual budget and success at the start of each new series.
As the team were jetting of on that years adventure a spin off show always aired showing highlights of the previous years expedition called Blue Peter Flies the World.

Clockwise from left to right
 Lesley Judd in Thailand 1974.
John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and Peter Purves in Mexico 1970
and John Noakes in Ceylon 1969.

Clockwise from left to right
Yvette Fielding, Mark Curry and Caron Keating in
The Soviet Union 1987.
Peter Duncan and Sarah Greene in Canada 1982.
Stuart Miles, Konnie Huq, Richard Bacon and Katy Hill in Mexico 1998.

Clockwise from left to right
Joel Defries, Helen Skelton and Andy Akinwolere in Turkey 2009
Matt Baker, Konnie Huq, Liz Barker and Simon Thomas in India 2004
Konnie Huq, Gethin Jones, Andy Akinwolere and Zoe Salmon in Bolivia 2007

Here is the full list of Summer Expeditions to date.

1965 - Norway
1966 - Singapore and Borneo
1967 - Jamaica and New York
1968 - Morocco
1969 - Ceylon
1970 - Mexico
1971 - Iceland, Norway and Denmark
1972 - San Francisco, Fiji and Tonga
1973 - The Ivory Coast
1974 -Thailand
1975 -Turkey
1976 - Brunei
1977 - Brazil
1978 - USA
1979 - Egypt
1980 - Malaysia
1981 - Japan
1982 - Canada
1983 -Sri Lanka
1984 - Kenya
1985 - Australia
1986 - No Expedition
1987 - Soviet Union
1988 - West Coast USA
1989 - Zimbabwe
1990 - The Caribbean
1991 - Japan
1992 - New Zealand with outgoing presenter Yvette Fielding and Hungary with incoming presenter Anthea Turner
1993 - Argentina
1994 - New England USA
1995 - South Africa
1996 - Hong Kong and China
1997 - Canada
1998 - Mexico
1999 - Australia
2000 - Spain
2001 - Vietnam
2002 - Morocco
2003 - Brazil
2004 - India
2005 - Japan
2006 - Southern States USA
2007 - Bolivia
2008 - Alaska
2009 - Turkey
2010 - Italy
2011 - No Expedition
2012 - Poland and Ukraine

In 1971 Blue Peter went on the famous Royal Safari with HRH Princess Anne, and we shall have a look at that in a future blog post.