Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1986 and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

A castaway today is one of Britain's most successful and popular horse trials riders.

In a sport notorious for the technical and physical demands it makes on the participants,

she's shown exceptional skill and courage on her way to the top.

She's won at world and European level and at the 1984 Olympics won bronze and a silver medal.

She is Virginia Hulgate. Virginia, what kind of a family did you come from?

Well my father was in the Royal Marines and was sort of sent here there and everywhere abroad.

We started off, I think I was definitely born in Malta but after that we went to Cyprus, Canada,

Singapore, the Philippine Islands. So we traveled a lot. Mummy who'd always been brought up with horses

ever since she was three years old found it quite difficult really to keep going with the horses

in places like Singapore but she managed it. When did you first come to England then?

Well I suppose we were here for the first time and I was about three years old and that was in

between Canada and Singapore. I was then sort of planted on board and off we went, then left for

Singapore and I was about six and spent two years there and back to England for quite a long time

before we went to the Philippine Islands which is our final trip really abroad.

What kind of effect do you think all this travelling around this kind of brother,

the ruthless lifestyle you had had on you? I really did love the travelling. I mean as a child I

remember certainly in Singapore days of thinking of nothing but going to the swimming pool and eating

ice creams and love the sun. The sunshine was really important to me and also really meeting

different people, different races and I think in a sense I was fairly well educated in that way.

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