Prince William and Princess Kate got in touch with nature during a trip to Pontypridd, Wales on Wednesday, Feb. 26, touring the Meadow Street Community Garden and Woodland. While they explored the site, which was impacted by major flooding in 2024, the Princess of Wales revealed a few tidbits about her own hobbies.
During a chat with volunteers, outdoor enthusiast Kate—per Hello!—shared that she's taken up foraging in the woods surrounding her country home, Anmer Hall. Apparently, she found such a "huge" mushroom that her kids Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis were blown away.
"The children thought it was fascinating," Kate said. Some other royals who would be just as intrigued? Queen Camilla and King Charles, who share a love for the activity. The Queen's son Tom Parker Bowles even wrote about the couple's passion for foraging in his new royal cookbook, Cooking & The Crown.
The food critic said his royal mom and stepfather are "deeply competitive about their hauls" and that mushrooms are "somewhat of an obsession" for the couple.
The King and Queen, pictured during Trooping the Colour 2024 with the Wales family, also enjoy foraging for mushrooms.
![Cooking and the Crown: Royal Recipes From Queen Victoria to King Charles Iii [a Cookbook]](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/cE87jRUhVQTFyoMMJHqkz9-1920-80.jpg.webp)
It turns out The King was actually foraging for mushrooms on the day Queen Elizabeth died in September 2022, per royal biographer Robert Jobson. In his book Our King: Charles III: The Man and the Monarch Revealed, the author wrote that Charles was out in the woods on his Birkhall estate in Scotland "drawing solace and strength from the trees, the smell of the earth and the murmur of the River Muick."
Although his royal protection officers "hung back to give him some privacy," one of them had to go "find Charles to inform him that the queen’s condition had dramatically worsened,” Jobson wrote.
As for the other hobby Kate discussed during her trip to Wales, the princess told volunteers that like Meghan Markle, she's a fan of jam-making. Princess Kate—who swapped a red Alexander McQueen coat for an 18-year-old Ralph Lauren jacket—promised, "I'll send you my recipe so you can try it."
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