Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games baton relay route unveiled

The 2,500-mile final leg of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Queen’s Baton Relay route has been unveiled, starting with a five-day tour of London coinciding with the Platinum Jubilee.

The home leg of its journey will be taking in 180 towns, cities and villages up and down England and eventually reaching the West Midlands, signalling the symbolic start of the final countdown to the sporting contest’s beginning.

It will have taken 294 days and trips to each of the 72 nations that make up the Commonwealth by the time the final mile has been completed at the end of July.

Thousands of so-called Batonbearers will be taking turns along the journey – between 40 and 130 each day of the route – through England.

On June 2, the baton – which contains a message from the Queen to be read aloud at the Games’ opening ceremony – makes an early landfall in England, spending five days in London, coinciding with the monarch’s 70th year on the throne.

It will then be taken to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, before going to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, and then tours of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

Returning to England on July 4, there will be a 25-day tour of the nation signalling the last stage of its global travel programme.

The route will take the baton from coasts to cities, with the expectation it will attract the crowds as it passes through communities, with special events held to coincide with the occasion.

Notable locations are set to include Cornwall’s Eden Project on July 4, the caves beneath Nottingham Castle on July 10, a speedy trip on a zip wire in the Lake District on July 16 and on to Blackpool Tower the same day.

The relay concludes at the 17th-century Grade I listed manor of Aston Hall