Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
The Brits who’ve moved to the ends of the earth
Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud meets brave British families who quit the rat race for the most remote – and dangerous – places in his inspiring new series
Machete in hand, Kevin McCloud is sweating buckets as he hacks his way through dense tropical rainforest. No, it’s not his wildest Grand Design yet, or a new series of I’m A Celebrity..., but the presenter’s latest show in which he embarks on an adventure tracking down intrepid British families who’ve taken their dreams of escaping the rat race to the most extreme lengths.
It’s a long way from Kevin’s usual territory. Instead of watching on rather smugly as ambitious couples struggle to build their dream homes while keeping their fraying tempers from ruining their marriages, in Kevin McCloud’s Escape To The Wild he travels to some of the most remote places on earth to meet people who’ve left their humdrum lives behind for something far more exotic. He finds them living in the Central American rainforest, on the side of a volcano in Patagonia, on a Tongan island in the middle of the South Pacific and in one of the remotest places in sub-Arctic Sweden – and then mucks in to experience life as they do.
His encounters with these brave, some might say barmy, people makes for beguiling television, although Kevin admits he was daunted by the prospect of visiting some of the places the families have moved to. ‘These people haven’t just moved to Gloucestershire, they’ve gone to the other side of the planet and made their homes on the side of a mountain or in the jungle,’ he says. ‘But what is the reality of that?’
To find out, he set off on an extraordinary odyssey. Last week saw him visit Karyn Allen and her family who had relocated to the paradise island of Fofoa in the South Pacific, and in an upcoming episode he’ll be in the steamy jungles of Belize, a former British colony off the Caribbean coast of Central America. He is, he professes, entirely out of his comfort zone. ‘It’s not my natural habitat. I’m not Bear Grylls or Ben Fogle. I’m much older... and much grumpier.’
There, as darkness falls, he meets the Atkinson family, Alisa and Richard and their children, Alex, 13, Maya, 11, and Tati, nine. ‘ To be greeted in a place like this so politely by children speaking perfect Queen’s English is completely surreal,’ says Kevin. The family had lived in London, where Alisa worked in the theatre and Richard was a publisher, before they jacked it all in four years ago and bought a plot of dense virgin rainforest for £26,000. There they’ve built their very own Eden based around a two- storey house made entirely from recycled materials. They live a self-sufficient life raising chickens and crops, washing in rainwater and cooking over an open fire.
Despite the fact that they’re surrounded by poisonous insects – a particular phobia of Kevin’s – the children, who are taught both by their parents and in local schools, are allowed to run free. ‘They have a proper childhood here, old-fashioned country living,’ says Alisa. The children tell a horrified Kevin tales of killing snakes with machetes, ‘This is hardcore,’ he says. ‘ This is a place where chickens are taken by large snakes, where the children’s pet dogs have been eaten by jaguars in the night and where scorpions inhabit your bedroom. It’s a game of survival.’
In his attempt to understand the family’s motivation, Kevin helps them maintain their compound, keep the jungle at bay and source raw materials from a rubbish dump. In the process he suffers from heat exhaustion and is attacked by swarms of biting insects. ‘It was a real eye-opener,’ he says. ‘Alisa and Richard are like the pioneers who went off to Canada in the 19th century, having to encounter all the dangers that nature presents – wild animals, weather, other people. Their homestead is infested with termite ants and snakes, real-world threats we’re insulated from in Britain. But they have extraordinary strength of character.’
Alisa says, ‘In Britain everyone talks of living the dream, but no one is doing it.’ Her husband Richard adds, ‘What are people scared of? You’re only on this planet once. Make it magical.’ But while Kevin admits that the Atkinsons are thriving, he’s sceptical about such a dramatic change. ‘The rewards here are huge,’ he says, ‘but I don’t agree with Richard when he says, “Come to Belize, try it for six months, what have you got to lose?” B***** hell, you’ve got everything to lose. Your sanity, your money...
‘All the people I met, from Belize to Tonga to Sweden, are either heroes or lunatics. They’ve discovered a sense of purpose that eludes many of us in the civilised world. There’s a sense of joint enterprise and belonging, but there are huge risks associated with what they’re doing too. It’s hard work and if you’re not ready it’s a prison sentence. But the up side is they’ve found a bit of bliss, a corner of paradise.’
Zoe Brennan Kevin McCloud’s Escape To The Wild, Monday, 9pm, Channel 4.
‘This is a hardcore place – there are scorpions in your bedroom’