Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
REAL GOOD LIFE
Couple live on £1,250 a year by recycling, growing their food and ditching luxuries
A THRIFTY couple have spent two years living totally off the grid in an 18th century Cornish hilltop coastal fort, surviving on just £1,250 a year.
Sarah Simpson, 27, and Nigel Mepham, 44, live rent-free in Grenville Fort in exchange for tending the land in much the same way 1970s TV favourites Barbara and Tom did in The Good Life.
Second-hand solar panels provide electricity for the cabin Nigel built from scavenged timber, and the pair grow their own fruit and vegetables, making jams and preserves for the winter.
Sarah has made blackberry wine and nettle wine with foraged ingredients.
They also smoke fish, meat and vegetables on a hand-built contraption and forage for mushrooms, berries and herbs on the stunning Kingsand peninsula, where homes sell for up to £750,000.
When their terriers catch rabbits, the pelts are used to make blankets. Sarah, who taught English as a foreign language, and Nigel, who was an estate manager, like their little “luxuries” of chocolate, coffee and tobacco, and have worked a few days each year in security and stewarding to afford treats and essentials, such as petrol for their boat.
Sarah said: “It is hard. We have no running water and we dig compost toilets. But when you give up luxuries, you gain freedom and time.
“It is a pretty cheap existence without the stuff you tell yourself you need.”
Nigel said: “A lot of our time is spent just existing – gathering food, gathering wood, gathering water. We are pretty much living like they did in the 1930s.
“It’s not the lifestyle for everyone, but it’s better than the rat race.” The couple met two years ago at a campsite where Sarah was living in a tent to save money and Nigel was doing odd jobs.
She said: “I realised I was in a beautiful setting. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t need that much any more.”
She was then making about £10,000 a year teaching, while Nigel earned around £5,000 a year from security work.
They gave it all up to take up the rent-free offer from the Rame Conservation Trust, which manages the fort.
They have become recycling experts, and Nigel trawls through skips to find bits and pieces which can be given a new lease of life.
He said: “I’ve always been a bit of a magpie. Every day people are burning usable stuff, burning wood that’s still got 20 years of life in it. The first cabin I built, all I had was a saw, a hammer and some reused nails. I’ve built five now, and lived in tree-houses and teepees.”
An iphone given to Nigel by a friend and Sarah’s old laptop are their only mod cons, and they spend £10 a month to get access to the internet.
Most evenings are spent reading, playing chess or playing guitar, although they can be out at sea tending lobster pots at all hours, depending on the tides.
They are due to finish their stint at the fort at the end of the summer, but are building a new floating home for themselves, their five dogs and four chickens.
The “Noah’s Ark”, made from huts mounted on a barge, will have a chicken pen and vegetable garden and be moored on the River Tamar.
Nigel said: “I’ve wanted to build a raft to live on ever since I read Tom Sawyer.”
It’s hard. We have no running water and dig compost toilets SARAH SIMPSON THE REAL LIFE BARBARA GOOD