A few years back, Sir Humphry Tyrrell Wakefield, fearless horseman, adventurer, antiques expert, armour collector, owner of Chillingham Castle, friend of Prince Philip and all-round British eccentric, had a quadruple by-pass operation.
Then in 2014, when he was 78, he broke five ribs after being rolled on by his horse Barack O’Bouncer — ‘Crack, crack, crack they went!’ he cries. ‘One doesn’t mend so easily — it’s such a bore.’
He has recently been suffering from some form of ‘rupture’ in his chest which, disappointingly, has meant he’s had to stop vaulting straight from the ground onto a bareback Barack every morning.
After breaking five ribs in 2014 aged 78, Sir Humphry Tyrell Wakefield is riding the length of the nation on his trusty steed
‘A couple of years ago, I still could. And pick things up from the floor with great ease — while at a gallop. Now I cannot,’ he says. ‘It’s very frustrating indeed, but the decline is very fast in your 80s.’
But despite — or perhaps because of — all that, he is part-way through an extraordinary solo horse ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End.
‘I’m in my 82nd year. What else am I supposed to do? Just sit around waiting to die?’ he says. ‘No, no, no! Idleness leads to depression. I like to be busy.’
So, earlier this month, he set out on Barack (‘I called him that because he is black and white), a 14-year-old half Friesian gelding, to walk, trot and canter the journey of around 900 miles, while simultaneously dictating his extraordinarily colourful memoirs (for his long-suffering secretary Victoria to type up) as he rode.
‘The plan was to sit back on Barack and let all my thoughts of joy, depression, failures and triumphs flow,’ he says. ‘But the minute I set off I was in such a state of happiness that they all dispersed, so I just enjoyed the view.’
He named his 14-year-old half Friesian gelding Barack because ‘he is black and white’
People have ridden the length of the British Isles before. But most tend to be young, muscular, firm-thighed ex-military types who plan every inch of their trip, invest in top-of-the-range kit and train frantically before they set off.
Not Sir Humphry.
‘One is advised to get one’s horse and oneself fit beforehand — train every morning and do press ups and so on — but I was far too old to do all of that, and much too busy travelling — India, Turkey, Russia,’ he explains. ‘So I was rather fearful, but it’s all turned out rather wonderfully.’
He camps, pitching his tent in windswept fields, wherever he can, inflating his airbed (‘Quite the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in’) and waiting for his aged retainer of umpteen years, to arrive in his battered support horsebox and cook dinner.
Sir Humphry refuses to wait for death and says that idleness causes depression, preferring to ride on his horse in the countryside
‘Oh we’ve had some wonderful things! Sausages, fish, a deer’s liver . . . it’s always a wonderful surprise.’ As a former captain in the 10th Royal Hussars, he washes in the wild and will ride in any weather: ‘Waterproof kit is frightfully good these days!’
On an average day, fuelled by porridge, egg, bacon and coffee, but always skipping lunch, he and Barack will potter for four or five hours, and cover between 12 and 20 miles. One day, they did 31 miles.
‘I forgot my compass that day, we got horribly lost and we were both a bit tired. But I love it. I am half in Heaven.’
Everywhere he goes, he bumps into lairds and land-owners who turn out to be old friends from long ago. ‘They have been so kind. So interesting. It has been a constant joy. Only one person said “bugger orf” when I asked if I could pitch my tent in a corner of his field.’ And there was a slight altercation a couple of weeks ago when he reportedly offended the elderly chatelaine of one castle with: ‘Oh yes, when you were young, you were terribly pretty.’
He covers between 12 and 20 miles each day on Barack, but one day went for 31 miles
‘No no no. All wrong. Out of context!’ he insists hotly today.
He has no interest in taking the quickest route, and will veer wildly off course for a chat and a large glass of whisky with anyone and everyone.
‘I do so love to meet people,’ he trills, sounding just like the late Sir John Gielgud, but posher and even more thespy.
Last week he broke off to attend a ‘wonderful party’ at the Edinburgh Festival.
This week, he had to pop down to London for a ‘tedious operation’ on his chest. It is here that he finds time to squeeze in a ride with me — ‘Hundreds of miles off course . . . but who cares? I’m not sticking rigidly to a plan’ — at a genteel riding stables in Wimbledon. He arrives carrying his own stirrups, but without Barack, who is resting. His riding garb — furry cossack hat, jaunty cravat, ancient cowboy boots and clanking silver spurs — causes quite a stir among both clientele and staff.
Sir Humphry doesn’t even stop for lunch on his ride, though he did veer off course to attend a ‘wonderful party’ at Edinburgh Festival
‘Spurs? Spurs!’ splutters the owner. ‘I don’t really use them,’ he explains. ‘It just means you can give the horse the tiny suggestion.’
‘If we showed them to our horses they’d faint,’ she gasps. ‘I’m going to put them in the office.’ And she does, along with his moth-eaten hat which she replaces with a riding hat.
‘I’ve never ever worn a hard hat in my life!’ he says indignantly. ‘It’s all very bossy these days, isn’t it?’
And with that, he swings up onto a vast chestnut called Dan, gives him a firm whack with the crop, and we’re off. As we make our way across Wimbledon Common he talks endlessly, breaks into Shakespeare sonnets, and talks some more — about his great aunt Daisy who was diving champion for Great Britain; his great uncle who won four Blues at Cambridge, dived off icebergs in Newfoundland and nearly summited Everest, 50 years before Tenzing and Hillary.
And, of course, his beloved Chillingham Castle in Northumberland.
He says: ‘I love it — love it like mad. And the smell! It’s like returning to a stable when you haven’t seen your horse for a bit.’
The ‘divinely dotty’ horse rider refuses to wear a hard hat on his horse, dismissing it as ‘bossy’
He once staged a wedding for his beloved bull terrier Brigand in the castle chapel and, in 2014, caused a stir when he appeared on a Channel 4’s Can’t Get The Staff, complaining how tricky it was to find a liege to polish it all.
On and on he chats. The Duchess of Cornwall is ‘a thoroughly good egg’, her late brother Mark Shand (who once helped Sir Humphry steal back one of his own white Mercedes from car thieves) is ‘Darling sweet Mark’.
He has known Prince Philip for years. ‘He is tremendous fun and such a lightener — he came for lunch the other day.
‘The Queen would have such a miserable time if she didn’t have him to play with. And if people try to take advantage of her, he’s on them like a whippet!’
But back to our ride, where he whickers constant encouragement in Dan’s pricked ears, but is clearly missing his beloved Barack.
‘His character is continuous optimism. He loves to stop and gaze at things — a rabbit, a deer, maybe just a nice view. We chat a lot — though he does more chatting than I do.’
The eccentric once enlisted the help of the Duchess of Cornwall’s brother Mark Shand to steal back a white Mercedes from car thieves
Sir Humphry is an excellent rider and clearly likes to be in charge. After 20 minutes he has his crop confiscated by a nervous riding instructor, and immediately makes another out of a bit of branch.
Ideally, he’d be doing his entire north to south ride bareback. ‘I love riding bareback. It’s the difference between dancing with a girl in a suit of armour and dancing with a girl in a bathing suit — always go for the bathing suit,’ he says.
The turning point came last year when he hunted bareback ‘crash, crash, crash, over the fences’, he recalls with a wince.
Jane Fryer confirmed that Sir Humphry is an excellent rider who likes to be in charge after she headed out with him
‘The canter is okay,’ he says. ‘But the heavy trot has become mighty uncomfortable. It’s perhaps not the best idea in the world.’
At home, he rides every evening and is constantly getting lost up in the hills after watching the sun set. ‘I really should wear a head torch.’
On this trip he just has Barack, his old retainer and copies of Milton, Shakespeare’s sonnets and the Koran for company.
‘I thought the Koran would be interesting, but it was a bit hard and I’m afraid I skimmed bits and pieces — I’ll have to go back to it.’
Though an accomplished rider, Sir Humphry is prone to getting lost in the hills after dark due to his tendency of not wearing a head lamp
But at home things are rather more luxurious, with eight full-time staff and three part-time ghost tour guides. ‘I used to have a butler, but sadly not any more.’
His own family pile in the Lake District was sold by an uncle for flats, and he was left ‘yearning for something wonderful with stone and panelling’.
So in 1982 he bought Chillingham and spent 20 years single-handedly restoring it from a wreck so decrepit — it needed 16 new roofs and had gaping holes in the walls — that neither the National Trust nor English Heritage wanted it.
His third wife, Katherine, was furious.
‘I was a maniac to take it on,’ he says. ‘She wouldn’t set foot in it for ten years.’ Regardless, he then obsessively filled it with tens of thousands of books, antiques, oddments and more than 2,000 pieces of armour from all around the world. The place is so full you can barely move in some rooms.
‘I’m not a hoarder!’ he insists. ‘Hoarders hide their stuff. I display mine. I love to arrange it.’
Sir Humphry Tyrrell Wakefield’s beloved Chillingham Castle in Northumberland
Ever since, he has worked frantically with endless money-making schemes — weddings, functions, ghost tours, spooky holiday lets and publicity stunts — to pay the castle’s astronomical overheads.
The 2014 programme wasn’t his only foray into television. Seven years earlier he appeared on Meet The Natives, in which five members of the Kastam tribe from the South Pacific came to stay with him.
They lived in mud huts and wore only woven penis guards at home, and were very excited to inspect Sir Humphry’s armour collection. ‘They were dressed because of the cold, but stripped off immediately when they saw it. And then I gave them some field glasses and a dead pheasant each. They were screaming. Thrilled. I must go and visit them. I simply must.’ No doubt he will.
He seems able to cram everything in, travelling to China to see pandas, trekking in the Turkish mountains, surviving a plane crash on an Antarctic expedition — and coping with two failed marriages.
The friend of Prince Philip and all-round British eccentric survived a quadruple by-pass operation
His first wife, Priscilla Bagot, he says, ‘was just the ticket, until she kicked me out’. The second, the Hon Elizabeth Sophia Sidney, was ‘a hugely pretty girl’, whose family owned the ruined Lough Cutra castle in Galway, which he did up himself. ‘My starter castle! And then she kicked me out, too.’
I do not meet the current Lady Wakefield, but she sounds very crisp on the telephone and, he says, gets cross when he leaves everything to the last minute. But he clearly adores her.
‘Katherine! The brand new wife of 43 years — she’s wonderful.
‘I like the Russian look of her. Plays the piano, hugely well. Skis, paints.
‘And she doesn’t give a damn. The moment I say “I’m orf”, she just breathes a sigh of relief.’
I suspect Sir Humphry might be a little tricky to live with, but he is wonderful fun and exquisite company. I have never met a man — of any age — so overflowing with plans and schemes and energy. Or possessing a more eclectic ‘bucket list’.
And with that, one of Britain’s great eccentrics dismounts, gathers his clanking spurs and furry hat, gives me an enormous hug, kisses my hand and bids me farewell.