The relatable yet surprising place Kate Middleton and the Wales kids 'hang out a lot'

One thing we always seem to get from Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales during engagements and trips are intriguing insights about their family life.

This often happens when they’re chatting with fellow parents and Kate has opened up about the place she and her kids often spend time. She and the Prince were at the soft play section at Aros Hall, a community centre on the Isle of Mull, and she revealed the Wales kids are big fans of areas like this.

Soft play areas are designed as safe indoor playgrounds for children to run about in and let off steam. They’re also somewhere that parents can meet up and socialise and according to Hello!, Kate shared, "We hang out a lot at soft play. Mine absolutely love it."

Gilded Youth: An Intimate History of Growing Up in the Royal Family by Tom Quinn, | Was £20, Now £14.33 at Amazon

Presenting a shocking, fascinating and amusing account, Tom Quinn explores what it's really like to grow up in the Royal Family. He brings together historical sources with testimonies from palace staff and includes anecdotes about Queen Elizabeth and Prince William.

View Deal

Prince William has apparently been keen to get involved himself as he joked, "You still think you can do it yourself, but...", and gestured to his knees.

It’s surprising to learn that the Princess of Wales is regularly hanging out at soft play areas with Prince George, Charlotte and Louis. But it just goes to show that she and Prince William really are striving to give their children a more down-to-earth upbringing.

The Princess also reportedly remarked upon how much she wishes there’d been a soft play area or community centre for her to take Prince George to in the early days after becoming a mum. At this time the family lived on Anglesey, an island off the coast of Wales.

Forming connections with other parents is so important and Kate is said to have explained that she used to go to the café at Waitrose supermarket to get out of the house and see people.

This isn’t the first time that the senior royal has been incredibly honest about feeling isolated after welcoming Prince George. She said something similar when she visited the Ely and Caerau Children’s Centre in 2020.

"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 reflected.

"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 centre like this at a certain time."

Now, though, she and her three children are clearly making the most of the facilities close to them at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor. Their home is also much closer to Kate’s family which likely helps a lot too.

"You need to bring 'the village' together," she said at Aros Hall as she heard about how families gather and make friends there.

This is one of the community centres that the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Royal Foundation has supported the refurbishment of. Their visit to the Isles of Mull and Iona lasted two days and now the couple will be back at home in time for Princess Charlotte’s 10th birthday on 2nd May.