Prince William paused to reflect on his early days with Kate Middleton during a recent visit to Wales — and the memory was all the sweeter as the couple settles into their new home.
The remembrance came on Monday, Dec. 1, when William addressed attendees at the Wales Investment Summit in Newport, according to PEOPLE.
“Wales was the first place Catherine and I made our home together,” William said. “When you make a home in Wales, you join a family of three million people, and the sense of warmth and belonging is what makes Wales unlike anywhere else.”
William was referring to the farmhouse on the island of Anglesey where the couple lived between 2010 and 2013.
At that time, William served as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot at RAF Valley, and Kate even carried out her first royal engagement from there prior to their 2011 wedding.
It was a foundational chapter: the pair welcomed their eldest son, Prince George of Wales, into that home and experienced the early juggling act of parenthood, royal duties, and military life.
Kate Has Previously Commented on Living in Wales
While both have expressed how beautiful and special the place is, Kate opened up about a time when it wasn’t the easiest.
She described in January 2020 how she had just welcomed their first child and felt alone, as William was working. Kate made the comments while she visited a children’s center in Wales.
“I was chatting to some of the moms, I had just had George and William was still working with search and rescue, so we came up here when George was a tiny, tiny little baby, in the middle of Anglesey,” Kate said.
She continued, “It was so isolated, so cut off, I didn’t have my family around me, he was doing night shifts, so if only I’d had a center like this at a certain time.”
William & Kate Recently Moved
Their nostalgic remarks come just weeks after William, Kate, and their three children — George, Princess Charlotte of Wales, and Prince Louis of Wales — moved into Forest Lodge, a stately eight-bedroom Georgian mansion tucked into Windsor Great Park.
The property, a considerable upgrade from their former residence at Adelaide Cottage, is widely regarded as the royal family’s new “forever home.”
Forest Lodge offers space, privacy, and long-term stability for the family, which is a fitting contrast to their modest farmhouse beginnings on Anglesey.
Its historic elegance and sizable grounds symbolize a major milestone in their journey, but as William’s recent words prove, the emotional value of a home is far less about walls and more about memories.
