King Charles on his dive under the Arctic ice, half a century ago

In late April 1975, the future king embarked on a royal tour like no other, ITV News’ Sally Biddulph reports

King Charles has been reflecting on a visit he made as a young prince to the Canadian Arctic half a century ago.

He was speaking to the presenter and environmentalist Steve Backshall, who has retraced the steps Charles took in 1975.

In the documentary, which will be shown on ITV on Thursday, December 18, Backshall also completed a dive under the sea ice, just as the 26-year-old prince did 50 years earlier.

As they watched the footage of a young Charles in a big red diving suit from 1975, the King joked: “Thank God I was younger in those days. I could never have survived now!”

The two men were discussing how much has changed in the region as a result of changes in climate and warming seas.

When he travelled to the north of Canada in the same frozen landscape Prince Charles saw, Backshall noted that the region is “changing faster than anywhere else on earth” as a result of climate change.

“If it carries on like this,” Backshall said, “all of this will be gone within a matter of decades.”

And King Charles agreed, telling the presenter: “That’s the tragedy now, that it’s all going so fast.”

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And as he reflected on his visit all those years ago, he said: “I’m very glad that I was able to see it and I just want others to be able to witness the same thing.”

In the 1970s, a young and single Prince Charles had started to warn about the damage humans were doing to the planet.

In those days, he was a lone voice on the world stage.

The trek he took part in to Canada, a country in which today he is now head of state, formed part of his thinking about the importance of humans living in harmony with Mother Nature.

It also taught him to learn from local Inuit people about how best to live as part of the environment around them, rather than trying to live a life which is unconnected to their surroundings.

In 1975, the prince also put on an ice diving suit, so he could experience swimming in the freezing sea underneath a metre of thick ice.

At the time, he joked with reporters and photographers when he emerged in his suit, which had been inflated with air for insulation. Charles pressed the deflate button and pretended to flop down like a toy doll.

“I blew the thing up to see how far it could go,” the King remembered.

Backshall said to him that there was the “slight air of the ‘Teletubby’” about the footage they were watching together.

The King does not let on whether or not he knows what a Teletubby is.

The full documentary, Steve Backshall’s Royal Arctic Challenge, will be broadcast on ITV1 at 8.30pm on Thursday, December 18.

This is the Talking Royals – our weekly podcast about the royal family, with ITV News Royal Editor Chris Ship and Producer Lizzie Robinson