Sophie, Countess of Wessex, is to cycle 445 miles in September for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award’s Diamond Challenge.
She will cycle from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to Buckingham Palace.
The BBC’s Louise Minchin joined her in training.
Published on May 10th 2016.
If you’re going to do a challenge do something that you don’t normally do and to be honest with you cycling isn’t something that I normally do other than with the children on the odd occasion it’s around about 450 Mi starting at the palace of Hollywood in Edinburgh um and finishing at buck and
Palace hopefully if all goes well of course it’s downhill because it goes from north to south doesn’t it m it’s not quite like that is it though are you nervous about it yes I I keep on thinking um what have I done you will get to parking Palace you
Will do it who will be there to greet you well hopefully my husband and my my children waving the flags um that would be nice of course the Queen’s 90th birthday there’s been so much um fabulous footage actually of her I love the photograph of her particularly um with the great
Grandchildren and your children of course and was that what was that like as a day I don’t think any of us knew quite what to expect anything could have gone wrong because we had some quite littes in in the picture they all behave fantastically well I think actually the
Better photograph would have been the one from behind the children looking to all of the adults trying to get all the children to smile and laugh you know to to to look engaging and everything do your children I know you try and um obviously um bring them up as best you
Can and everything but they are in the public eye do you try to keep them out or how do you work it certainly when they were very young um we tried to get keep them out out of it only because for their sakes um to grow up as normally as
Possible um we felt was quite important and you know they’re going to have to go out and get a job and and earn a living later on in life and you know if they’ve had a as normal a start in life as they possibly can get then then I hopefully
That will that will understand them in in in good stead I suppose there comes a point as well doesn’t that where they start to realize that actually their grandmother is the queen pretty important did it right okay so and and how and that’s for them was well for
Louise it was actually much more of of of a shock to the system and it was only when she was coming home from school and saying um you mommy people keep on telling me that Amar is the queen and I asked her and said but yes how does that
Make you feel and she said I don’t understand I don’t think she had grasped that perhaps there was only one Queen right um it’s 60 years since the Duke of edber awards scheme is it do you think um still as relevant now as it has been over the years absolutely um every every
Bit of it there’s a lot of um issues out there for young people and it doesn’t matter whether or not they’ve been born with advantage or no Advantage at all um you know everybody has to get a job everybody needs to to to get ahead of
Somebody else um and so to actually take young people and give them experiences that they would never have thought that they could they could do um and giving them a sense of real achievement I only did the bronze actually so it is it is yes I would have said there’s still time but
Un what do you think about kind of older women and sport is it important do you think it’s something for yourself um inevitably it makes you feel better um it helps you get up in the morning and to juggle everything else that you’ve got to do how many times you fallen off
Because I’ve fallen off a few times how many times uh three only three I thought I got this last T night I clearly didn’t and it hurts it really hurts thank you so much for talking to us on BBC breakfast lots and lots of luck with the
Cycling I’m sure you will enjoy it thank you mostly that’s really kind thank You