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I had one of the most outdoorsy childhoods you could imagine. I basically lived in the woods until I was 13. My dad and I built a huge treehouse in our backyard in Chesterfield, about 30 feet in the air. And we'd vacation on an island in Michigan, where I hunted a deer that we ate.

I spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid.

I had a very outdoorsy childhood. I was athletic and used to ride and do dressage. I could ride almost before I could walk. There is a picture of me at 18 months old sitting happily on the back of a donkey.

I loved riding bikes and horses. I was eight when I started having lessons, and when my father bought me my own horse I couldn't wait to go off on my own.

I was really active as a kid. I was outdoors constantly.

Just about every weekend when I was growing up, we would throw rods and rifles and tents and shovels and pickaxes into the back of the truck and then head off to the side of a mountain or the bottom of a canyon. Hiking, fishing, hunting, rock-hounding: this is how my parents passed the time.

When I was still at school, I'd help Dad at the concrete yard he had prior to the garden centre. I was doing things there, like driving the tractors and forklifts, that most kids my age couldn't.

I'm very close in age to my older brother, and we had a field at the end of the road where we could run around, climb trees, play football.

I will go back to riding one day - when I have kids. I have such amazing childhood memories of being on horseback.

My father being an outdoors person, he used to take us on quite a few adventures thorugh the wild areas down there, introducing us to alligators and rattlesnakes and all the trees and plants.