The Earl of Wessex has just received his exam results and has announced he isn’t going to take a year out before going to Royal Agricultural University to study Rural Land & Property Management. However, his sister, Lady Louise, is currently taking a gap year after graduating from St Andrews University with a degree in English this summer.

She isn’t the first member of the Royal Family to take a year out to enjoy a few adventures. Both Prince William and Catherine undertook a gap year and went on a number of exciting adventures before meeting at St Andrews. In fact, the pair were just weeks away from meeting as they joined the same challenge programme, Raleigh International.

The future couple spent ten weeks trekking, helping locals and building in Chile, albeit a few weeks apart. Malcolm Sutherland, who ran both expeditions, has called the coincidence “absolutely crazy.” He continued: “For me, it was a normal assumption that everybody else would have realised what that connection was. I think a lot of people don’t realise there is that common connection there in their pasts.”

In royal biographer Katie Nicholl’s book ‘Kate: The Future Queen’, Mr Sutherland says: ” William coped very well, and what struck me about him was how normal he was.

“He said he wanted to be treated like everyone else, and he was. When you saw him cleaning the toilets, it wasn’t for the cameras, he really did clean the lavatories.”

The 18-year-old travelled to Chile, where he spent three months working on community projects with the expedition organisation Raleigh International.

During his time there, he helped build and decorate houses and playgrounds, and was seen painting and chopping wood, and he also worked on a dairy farm.

While The Princess of Wales would have followed a very similar programme, she spent the second part of her gap year studying at the British Institute in Florence and crewing on Round the World Challenge boats in the Solent.

The next part of Prince William’s gap year was certainly less glamorous than his future wife’s, as he spent it in the jungles of Belize with the Welsh Guards.

Ms Nicholl wrote in her book ‘William and Harry’ that the prince was placed in a “tough environment.” She explained how “he was taught how to kill and prepare his food. An exercise code-named Native Trail began with instructors slaughtering a pig, hanging it from a pole and butchering it.”

She added: “The soldiers, William included, were then given a live chicken to dispatch. They had to wring its neck and cut off its head and feet with a machete, pluck its feathers and gut it before cooking it over a fire, exactly as they would have to do if they were living off the land in a jungle war. They were shown how to make a termite stew – and then made to eat it.”

The sleeping situation was also a challenge. She wrote: “At night, William tried to snatch what little sleep he could in the rain in a hammock strung between two trees.”

In addition to Belize and his Raleigh Challenge in Chile, William also reportedly used his gap year to explore places like Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana and the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues.