Although Prince Charles had already granted the magazine unprecedented permission to explore the Duchy of Cornwall and interview its staff, it was only when I set out on my initial field trip last May that I discovered how close I would be allowed to get to the real story. Rain lashed down as the prince and his new wife, Camilla, began their first official tour of England's West Country, with me tagging along. Wherever they stopped, they were greeted by stiff lines of dignitaries or mobbed by paparazzi and the curious public. When I accidentally strayed into the royal path, bodyguards physically pushed me aside.
My task was looking depressing if not impossible until the royal party embarked on a small boat to the little island of St. Agnes, leaving all the crowds and other journalists behind.
As soon as Camilla stepped ashore, she kicked off her shoes. "Yoo, hoo, darling! Thinking of having a swim?" the prince called to her. Then, in a burst of bright warm sunshine, the pair began a relaxed stroll along the lush island lanes, bumping into islander-tenants whom the prince appeared to know by name, some of whom he kissed a warm "hello" like old friends. I was beginning to catch the mood.
The royal couple and a group of 20 or so islanders gathered ultimately on the lawn of the tiny village hall, where cups of tea and homemade cakes coated in thick yellow cream were passed around. If you ignored the circle of dark-suited bodyguards, Prince Charles seemed like any benign, old-fashioned, country squire visiting his tenants, listening to their worries, and offering concerned advice. It was exactly the kind of intimate insight the story needed.
Just then a courtier led me toward the prince. "National Geographic? It's a wonderful magazine," began Charles effusively. "It has been part of my life ever since I was a child. It's one of the very few that takes the trouble to get things right."
Soon afterwards, one of his staff whispered in my ear, "You are inside the magic circle now."
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It was November 2005, and the offer of a one-on-one interview with Prince Charles had arrived at last after an age of painstaking negotiations. There wouldn't be another chance; his schedule is inked in months ahead, and the deadline for delivering my text was by now barely a week away.
"You have 35 minutes. We had to juggle government ministers to get this much time with him," confided one of the prince's press aides, keen to convey the scale of privilege granted the magazine. "It may not sound terribly long, but I think it is the first interview he has given to a print journalist in about ten years."
So, finally, there I was in a beautifully furnished antechamber of Clarence House, Charles's London home, with a few minutes to go before the appointed time, when there was a knock on the door. A footman in a dark liveried suit walked in. "His Royal Highness' helicopter is caught in fog," he announced softly. He might as well have kicked me in the shin.
An excruciating half hour ticked by before the footman returned to say the royal helicopter had landed, and the prince was upstairs waiting. Suddenly, my worries lurched in a new direction.
The press aide had warned me earlier that the prince would want to relax with some small talk before launching into the formal interview and, now in a sweat, I foresaw myself emerging from the royal presence in a bare few minutes' time with my only quotes from him entirely about London's miserable weather.
I have never found myself in a room as full of clocks—especially antique ones—as Prince Charles's private drawing room. Yet, the passing time didn't seem to bother him at all once we started talking. So it was almost an hour later when he rose from his deep armchair and walked me to the door to say a friendly goodbye.
My precious interview was in the bag. So, I suppose the worst episode had a happy ending.
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The British countryside cannot offer many spookier or more forbidding experiences than Dartmoor in a cold mist. It was on this high, barren land in a typical chill fog that Sherlock Holmes met the terrifying hound of the Baskervilles. Should you get lost in bad weather here and somehow manage to avoid falling into one of the many derelict tin mines or lethal peat bogs, you might—if you're lucky—catch sight of the moor's mighty landmark: a 200-year-old granite prison—still in use—upon which misery seems to drip incessantly from the wet sky.
Dartmoor farmers live in isolated valleys, and in such a place as this are not used to strangers—let alone journalists—intruding. So, I figured, what could break down any barriers more surely than to offer my help as they rounded up their free-roaming moorland ponies, one of the rare occasions the farmers socialize as a group? And what better way to fit in than to ride a Dartmoor pony myself?
A local woman rented me a small black Dartmoor mare to ride for the day. It was friendly, steered left and right, and had brakes that worked. But it was only when I met up with a handful of farmers and followers on the edge of the misty moor that I realized my trusty steed lacked a little something. Like about a yard in height. All the others riders sat above me astride huge, long-limbed, sport horses, and they soon raced off over the heather leaving me way behind. The mist began to thicken.
Almost the only sounds I caught on my tape recorder that day were my own panting as I tried to catch up with the other horses, the "thump, thump, thump" of my little pony's frantic hooves, and—strangest of all—a very faint noise, like a wolf's spectral howl, in the distance. But I must have been imagining that.
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