The Duke of Cambridge has spoken candidly about his mental health, his conservation work, and his family in a new audio experience episode for Apple’s ‘Time to Walk.’
‘Time to Walk’ is an Apple Fitness+ audio experience that encourages people to walk while listening to prominent personalities on their own walks, narrating their experiences and sharing their favourite music.
William recorded his walk on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, sharing memories as he walks from Sandringham House to St. Mary Magdalene Church and ending at his home at Anmer.
Speaking of his love for Sandringham and Norfolk, William revealed, “We spend as much time as we can here. It’s very special, very peaceful. We feel very, very lucky to be out in the countryside. We’ve got the pond here with the ducks and the geese on. It’s a fantastic place to be.”
He added: “We’ve got hares running across the field over there, fat English partridges going over the hedge just here with a nice orange tractor up ahead.”
William revealed that it was his father, Prince Charles, who provided the inspiration for his career as an air ambulance pilot and his time with the Royal Air Force.
“As a young boy I went on a couple of trips, which I was very lucky to have, with my father in a Wessex, a very, very old helicopter, and I got to sit in the front. I didn’t realise at the time how much of an impression it would make on me, but I absolutely adored it,” he said.
“They gave me a photograph from the trip. I had it on my wall and I kept looking at it. It kept calling to me, like it was saying, ‘Come on, what’s the next step?’ And the RAF came along and I went and did search and rescue with them. The moment I started the helicopter training I realised that it was better than anything. It was one of those things that I just instantly took to and thought, ‘This is really cool.’”
About his mental health and working as an air ambulance pilot with the East Anglia Air Ambulance, William revealed the toll one particular accident with a child around the same age as Prince George took on his mental health and how talking with his team helped him.
“Talking about those jobs definitely helped, sharing them with the team, and ultimately, in one case, meeting the family and the patient involved who made a recovery, albeit not a full recovery, but made a recovery – that definitely helped.”
William also shared a few of his favourite songs for the episode, with one dating back to school runs with his mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales. William revealed in the episode: “One of the songs I massively remember and has stuck with me all this time, and I to this day still quite enjoy secretly, is Tina Turner’s The Best, because sitting in the back seat, singing away, it felt like a real family moment.
“My mother, she’d be driving along singing at the top of her voice. We’d even get the policeman in the car: he’d occasionally be singing along as well. We’d be singing and listening to the music right the way up to the gates at school where they dropped you off.”
He added: “When I listen to it now it takes me back to those car rides and brings back lots of memories of my mother.”
A current favourite song for the Cambridge family is Waka Waka by Shakira, with William revealing that, “There’s a lot of hip movements going along, a lot of dressing-up. Charlotte particularly is running around the kitchen in her dresses and ballet stuff. She gets completely crazy, with Louis following her around trying to do the same thing. It’s a really happy moment where the children just enjoy dancing, messing around and singing.”
He shared that Prince George and Princess Charlotte often argue over which song is played in the morning, but that the solution has been that they alternate between who gets to pick the song.
Prince Louis, meanwhile, is apparently obsessed with tractors.
His third song choice is Thunderstruck by AC/DC, and he said, “It absolutely wakes you up. You feel like you can take on anything and anyone.”
In a series of tweets from the Kensington Royal account, William wrote: “My whole family have a passion for walking – whether it’s my Grandmother still taking her corgis out at 95; my father embarking on lengthy rambles over the summer in Scotland; or my own children making their first appearance at our annual walk to church on Christmas at Sandringham.
“In the hope of inspiring a few other people to get active and take some extra time for their own mental health – I wanted to share a few of my stories and favourite songs with you in an episode of Time to Walk.
“I’ll explain how I learned to prioritise my own mental health, an important life lesson that taught me to take myself less seriously, & a vital story about how a friend helped me learn to be a better listener.”
William directed Apple to make donations to three mental health charities, the UK-based Shout; Crisis Text Line in the United States; and Lifeline in Australia.
William’s ‘Time to Walk’ episode will be free to stream by Apple users on 6 December. It will air three times throughout the day.
