Prince William gets muddy planting trees - and tries farm cider - in Wales
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales (Prince William) got his hands dirty on Thursday, planting a Welsh oak and sampling farm-made cider in Monmouthshire.
He joined volunteers at Great Tre Rhew Farm near White Castle for a morning of digging and seed-collecting. The visit was with Stump Up for Trees, a local charity working to restore native woodland.
The Prince planted a Welsh oak sapling with the volunteers, getting stuck into the heavy ground himself. He also helped collect seeds from a field maple, the sort of hands-on job that keeps future woods growing. The work was reported by Hello!.
Then came the tasting. He tried a glass of homemade Great Tre Rhew cider, made on the farm. It was a brief pause. Then back to the trees.
Stump Up for Trees has planted 500,000 trees in the area over the past five years. It also keeps a nursery of 135,000 homegrown saplings ready for future planting. Those are big numbers for a volunteer-led effort.
William knows Wales well. On St David's Day in 2017 he visited Llanfoist Fawr Primary School in Abergavenny, where he joined pupils building a tower out of marshmallows, as reported by the BBC. Five years later, he and Catherine, then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, marked St David's Day by baking Welsh cakes with members of a youth club, according to the BBC.
What makes this stand out is how ordinary the morning looked. Muddy knees. Seed pods in a bucket. A sip of cider. For fans, this means a rare chance to see royal duty without the palace polish.
