The Countess of Wessex hopped on a tandem bicycle in London yesterday for a ride in support of the Vision Foundation’s latest initiative promoting the independence of visually impaired people.
Sophie, who is patron of the Vision Foundation, joined visually impaired cyclists for a charity ride in Bushy Park, West London, to raise awareness for the Foundation’s See My Skills report, which advocates for better employment opportunities for blind and visually impaired people.
The royal took the lead tandem bike and rode in the pilot position while the Foundation’s Centenary Appeal Manager, Monica Smith, who has vision loss, rode as her stoker.
Speaking to Hello! afterwards, Smith said that Sophie was “chatting away, describing everything that was going on, talking about the partnership between a tandem and those who are sighted and not sighted.
“It was really just like going out cycling with a friend, it was really lovely. Yesterday when we had a trial run, she said I was the one that was calming her down, and she said that if I had not been calm then she would not have been able to do it.
“She was amazingly down to earth and just understood my situation completely.”
In a clip shared by The Royal Family’s Instagram account, Sophie can be heard chatting with her fellow cyclists afterwards and saying, “I was completely out of my comfort zone. If you’d been a bit worried I might have said, ‘Look, I can’t do this,’ but you were the one who gave me confidence.”
The Vision Foundation’s chief executive, Olivia Curno, also spoke with Hello!, praising Sophie’s work as an “amazing champion of sight loss charities and disability employment, so it is incredible for us to have her here today shining her spotlight on this really really important issue.”
The See My Skills program is the Foundation’s newest initiative that will advocate for better employment opportunities for blind and visually impaired people.
Per the charity’s website, the program is calling for a “united response to address unemployment in the visually impaired community; to see skills not barriers. Through small changes in practice and attitudes, we know that together the public, private and charitable sectors can level the employment playing field for blind and partially sighted people.”
Sophie has been patron of the Vision Foundation since 2003, inheriting the position from The Queen Mother.
