Frail Queen had final pony ride before she died and made playful joke

In the last weeks of her long life, as her health began to decline, it has emerged that Queen Elizabeth found the strength to take part in one of her favourite pastimes, horse riding. Despite becoming increasingly frail, at the grand age of 96, the beloved monarch even to her favourite pony on one final ride.

The late Queen’s long-serving and favourite groom Terry Pendry has revealed in an emotional interview that Elizabeth turned up at the stable with a bag of carrots and insisted that she take her favourite pony, Emma, out for a ride. Astonishingly, the Queen even insisted on getting in the saddle herself, while cracking a joke at the groom’s expense.

Speaking about the touching moment on the Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth podcast, Mr Pendry said Her Majesty still had that typical spirit in her, just eight weeks before her death. Although, the 96-year-old monarch was still wise enough to ask the groom to walk beside her, rather than ride, in case of a fall.

Yet in this condition, eight weeks before her death, Queen Elizabeth still had that quintessential wry wit. Pendry, who rode with her for the last 28 years of her life, opened up about the sovereign’s final ride to Giles Brandreth, telling of how he walked with her and took a photo of the moment, which she promptly stuck in her scrapbook.

But as Pendry added another step to the mounting block to allow the then-tiny monarch to climb on her favourite horse, sharp as ever, the Mail reports Queen Elizabeth remarked that she hadn’t had so much help riding a horse “since I was a princess,” to which her groom remarked that a 96-year-old Queen riding a 26-year-old pony might be a record.

He explained: “The very last time with her wasn’t a ride, I walked. She was quite frail. She actually ended up being smaller than Queen Elizabeth [her mother], her last four years that she was quite poorly.”