Whether it’s your garden or a favourite beach you love to visit, we all have a place where we feel most secure, happy and at peace. Prince William recently revealed his happy place during a visit with Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan and it’s a little more high-octane than you might expect.
The royals paid a visit to RAF Benson on 15th October and the Prince of Wales even got to reunite with some of his former colleagues. When asked if he still spends time in the cockpit he confirmed, “I do still fly, yeah – I keep my hours going.”
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This couldn’t be more different from the Princess of Wales’s rather more down-to-earth (literally!) happy place. Whilst her husband is totally at ease in the sky, Kate explained on the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast that she’s happiest when she’s with her family “outside in the countryside” and they’re “all filthy dirty”.
Of course, Prince William no doubt loves this too and it’s something he probably gets to enjoy far more than time flying nowadays as a busy working royal and father of three. Already it’s clear that his passion for aircrafts has passed down to at least Prince George and Louis.
They are believed to have played a game of “name the aircraft” with their father whilst watching a flypast from the Buckingham Palace balcony back in May. Over the years William and Kate have also commented upon their son’s interest in flying at various engagements.
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The future King will probably be thrilled if they take to the skies themselves and he reminisced with former colleagues at RAF Benson about his “glory days” as a pilot.
He said, “I miss the Search and Rescue – glory days. I miss the Sea King flying around, because when I hear it, that noise, as it flies past. We had, obviously, the US State Visit the other day. Seven aircraft flying over. Sea King comes in, I was like ‘There she is’, that noise went straight to my heart.”
Whilst William does still “keep on top” of his flying, it’s been almost a decade since he stepped down from his job as a helicopter pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance in 2017. It was then that the Wales family moved from Anmer Hall as their main base to Kensington Palace and William and Kate became full-time working royals.
Before that, the Prince of Wales was with the Search and Rescue Force before he left the Armed Forces in 2013.
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Many members of the Royal Family have served in the RAF, British Army or Royal Navy and as Prince George, Charlotte and Louis are all high up in the royal line of succession it’s possible they could too one day.
Who knows? Maybe their own “happy place” could be the cockpit of a helicopter or an airplane in the future. Their father hasn’t turned his back on flying and some of his escapades have gone down in family history. As per The Telegraph the Princess of Wales’s father Michael Middleton is said to have shared a hilarious anecdote about his son-in-law’s pastime during his Father of the Bride speech.
“He also mentioned the day William landed the helicopter in the garden and how it nearly blew his roof off, and spoke of how brilliantly William fitted into his family,” one of the Waleses’ wedding guests claimed.