BA intercontinental 747s were still making stops in Europe into the 1980s.
Frankfurt, Zurich and Rome were the points they had always used since the late 1940s, plus into the mid 1960s Dusseldorf as well. The stops were on both Asian and African services, and ran down over a long time. They were low frequency, rarely more than once a day.
This is how long haul flights were done at the time, if you took Qantas from London to Sydney on a Saturday in 1971 the 707 would start off by stopping at Amsterdam, Athens and Tehran. Now a 707 could easily get London to Tehran nonstop, but these stops were how it had always been done, and were commercially (and sometimes politically) significant. The same was true back in prop aircraft days - the BOAC fleet could always get nonstop to the Eastern Mediterranean direct if desired, and there were always some flights in the schedule which did so.
They also provided flights from European cities to points like Hong Kong, where BOAC were the long haul operator (Cathay Pacific were a smaller regional company before 1980). In fact BOAC operated flights from Hong Kong through Tokyo to the USA, and across the Indian Ocean to Johannesburg, well into 747 times.
For colonial passengers going to/from the UK, the various intermediate points were useful as stopovers for a couple of days, Rome in particular; in those days such stops were not charged extra.