Zara & Mike A perfect match

Zara and Mike Tindall’s daughters are already horseriding and now the royal family’s most down-to-earth couple is bringing them Down Under for surf, barbies and a sizzling polo match, they tell Juliet Rieden.

- Juliet Rieden

When Zara Tindall was pregnant with her first daughter, Mia, we talked about how she would fit motherhood around her decidedly unsocial schedule of competitive horseriding, which involved her travelling all over Britain and overseas, sleeping in her horse truck. “We’ll just carry on as normal,” she told me, explaining that eventing kids just have to fit in with their parents. After all, that’s what she did with her mum Princess Anne, Zara added.

That was five years ago and now I am back in her Aston Farm home, in the heart of Britain’s green and pleasant Cotswolds, and on the face of it not much has changed. Zara and husband Mike both have a full schedule of work commitments and they’re still laughing, joking and sparking off each other like comfortable romantics.

Outside, three of Zara’s horses – Cracker, Showtime and Socks (named for his four white socks) – are exercising in the stable yards and one-year-old boxer Blink is one of many family dogs running in and out. But hanging in the air around this energetic outdoor life, there’s definitely a warm glow of slightly frazzled domestic order. For it was just 18 months ago that Mia’s sister, Lena, arrived as the latest addition to the Tindall clan.

So, as I settle down to chat to Zara and Mike about their new world of parenting, I’m wondering how the ‘business as usual’ plan panned out.

Zara breaks into a broad smile. “I’m still eventing,” she says, laughing. And do the girls come with her? “Mia is at school so she can only come on weekends and it depends how far away it is, but yes, they’ve been to a few this year. It also depends on how many horses we’ve got with us. I think Mia just likes the camping – it’s probably more like glamping – in a truck. I don’t think she bothers about watching me too much.”