Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
LOCKDOWN AT GATCOMBE
Despite being marooned for months in Gloucestershire, the princess and Sir Timothy have been fully occupied during the lockdown. ‘Sitting still really doesn’t happen very much,’ she explains during a rather surreal conversation on the Gatcombe Park estate, her home since 1976.
The interview is conducted in the middle of a field, in order to comply with social distancing rules. A lighting stand blowing over in the breeze is not the only glitch. At one point we end up with some extra (off-camera) company. As the interview progresses, some of the princess’s horses and cattle wander up to the fence behind her to check us all out. Afterwards, Princess Anne introduces us to some of them, including a magnificent White Park bull and her horse, Cloud Formation.
‘There’s always something to do in a place like this. We’ve got a mixture of livestock; there’s fencing and gates; the things that always need mending,’ she says. However, she is the first to recognise her own good fortune. ‘Look around. It’s not hard here,’ she says. ‘The idea of being stuck in a block of flats with small children – I can’t imagine how difficult that would be.’
However, she has heard plenty of first-hand accounts. Never previously a fan of video links, Princess Anne instantly mastered the art of teleconferencing to keep in touch with her charities and military units, more than 300 all told. This is the longest continuous period of time that she has spent here at Gatcombe. Yet, like everyone else, she misses the human touch.
‘Almost everything that she does in a public way involves people coming together to meet her for some reason or another,’ explains Sir Tim. ‘So that’s been very difficult.’
No sooner had the Government’s stay-at-home edict been loosened than she was on her way (driving herself, of course) to her first postlockdown engagement. It was a show of support for the
Royal Corps of Signals (she is their Colonel-in-chief) who were on Covid-testing duty in the area. There were no cameras (other than our own) and no fuss. The princess just wanted them to know that their efforts had been appreciated. Explaining her approach to all of her Forces engagements, she tells me, ‘I think it’s important that they recognise that there is somebody from outside the military who may understand what they’re doing.’