Compare your travel adventures to Sir David Attenborough's with new interactive map

Sir David Attenborough is a national treasure who has travelled the word making wildlife documentaries for nearly seven decades - and now you can see how your travels compare to his globe trotting.

Following Attenborough’s latest travel documentary, Wild Isles, adventure travel company Explore Worldwide has undertaken a study to reveal the beloved presenter’s incredible travel history.

Researchers needed to watch hours of Attenborough’s documentaries, dating back to 1955, in order to take note of all the locations filmed from.

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Now this data has been visualised in an interactive map, allowing people to easily understand and appreciate the enormous travel achievements of one of the greatest documentarians and wildlife advocates of our time.

The study logged locations from 43 different shows, including his first nature documentary as a 30-year-old Zoo Quest from the 1950s, the epic 1979 series Life on Earth and 2020’s The Green Planet.

The research reveals that the places Attenborough has presented from the most are California and the island of Borneo.

The 96-year-old's most-visited countries are the USA (57 appearances), Australia (37 appearances) and the UK (29 appearances).

The interactive map of Sir David Attenborough's travels.Explore Worldwide

During his impressive career, Attenborough has presented from 333 locations, in 83 different countries including Lake Fuxian in China, Cape Royds in Antarctica, Pentecost Island in Vanuatu and Meru National Park in Kenya.

Through these documentaries the broadcaster has shared the planet’s incredible animals, plant life, oceans and natural habitats for over 65 years, and became an advocate for wildlife conservation and awareness of the devastating impacts of climate change.

To see how your travels compare, visit the interactive map here and then click on each of the countries and click whether you've been to the country, or you want to go there or neither.

If you scroll down you can click to see Attenborough's map all filled in with the places he's been to and you can see how you compare by clicking "See my score."

Sir David Attenborough on his new show "Wild Isle" all about the wonders of British wildlife.BBC

Given his impressive and extensive travels, it’s hard to imagine whether Attenborough has any travel regrets.

Though most of us certainly do, according to a new survey from Explore the majority of people aged 70 or over do have ‘travel regrets’, with 62 per cent saying there is somewhere in the world they regret never having visited.

Some of the countries mentioned frequently in the over 70s travel regrets include Australia, New Zealand, USA, Japan, and Canada.

When looking at specific travel experiences, one in three people over 70 say they regret never seeing the Northern Lights, making it the travel experience most people regret never doing.

Other missed experiences most regretted among this age group include seeing the Great Pyramids of Giza, visiting Machu Pichu and African safaris.

However, the same survey reveals that people in their mid-life (aged 40-55) expressed a strong desire to see more of the world in the next decade or two.

The most popular travel ‘hope’ for mid-lifers is seeing the Northern Lights, followed by a visit to the Maldives.

A massive 85 per cent of mid-life people say they hope to visit a new country, with Italy, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and USA coming out as the most popular places that mid-lifers want to visit in the next ten to twenty years.

Michael Edwards, Managing Director at Explore said: “Everyone at Explore is in complete awe of David Attenborough. His sense of adventure and curiosity has inspired so many, and with his final documentary airing we wanted to celebrate his travel achievements.

"By comparing your own travel history with Attenborough’s, our interactive map provides an original way to inspire people to keep on exploring our incredible planet.

“With our research showing that so many people aged over 70 regret not having visited more of the world, we hope our new map encourages travellers to keep on exploring, to keep on discovering new things and to embrace their inner-David Attenborough.”

Explore Worldwide also have a competition to win a holiday to either see sloths in Costa Rica, explore the wild Orkney Islands or walk in rainforests in Madagascar - those who enter the destinations you have visited into their interactive map and will be automatically entered - terms and conditions apply.

For the full survey findings, competition T&Cs and to learn more about David Attenborough’s travels see www.explore.co.uk/how-david-attenborough-are-you.

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