Leaving the rat race for the good life

It may not have always been plain sailing but the couple, played by Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall in BBC sitcom The Good Life, did what many other middle-aged professionals dreamed of doing, turning their backs on the urban grind for subsistence living and a more relaxed way of life.

By this time next year, it is expected another 200,000 harassed Britons will have followed their example and abandoned their hard-earned careers in pursuit of a simpler, more fulfilling lifestyle away from the rat race.

TV programmes such as Channel 4's No Going Back are fuelling the nation's dreams of escape and of having more time to do those things few have the energy for after a 50-hour week and daily commute.

Not everyone has the courage to embrace a complete change of lifestyle often bringing with it a sharp drop in income.

However, research suggests the ranks of the "downshifters" - those who escape the city for the countryside or ditch their high-pressure careers to work fewer hours - will soon swell to three million, or ten per cent of the working population.

The figure is expected to reach almost four million by 2007.

Rob and Fran Hall made a life-changing move from the South Coast in 1999.

For 13 years they raised their family in a semi-detached house in Lancing, Rob working as an electronics engineer in Worthing, Fran commuting to her job as a teacher in London.

Now their life in the wilds of North Yorkshire could not be more different.

Rob, 33, said: "We looked at life and thought, 'this isn't right'. There has got to be more to life than stress and aggravation and office politics and busy busy, rush rush rush."

"We got ourselves a few chickens for our little semi in Lancing and the eggs just tasted so much better than any we had had before." A visit to the South of England Show at Ardingly prompted an interest in rearing pigs and hardened their determination to escape.

Rob said: "We realised if you could do it in Lancing, you could do it anywhere. We just thought, 'what are we waiting for? Let's just do it'.

"We had a look around North Yorkshire - we have friends up here - and found a place quite quickly. That was it, really."

They moved lock, stock and barrel to a little bungalow in the remote village of Ellingstring, near Ripon.

Rob said: "When we got here, the land was in a right state but we have spent the past three years turning it into some good grazing land.

"I don't know what we would have done without the help of the local people here. Everybody has just been wonderful to us."

Rob's previous life is now little more than a distant memory as he immerses himself in a new world of lambing, milking and breeding seasons.

He rears a pedigree herd of rare pigs, selling the surplus for meat, and also keeps sheep, goats, chickens and ducks.

Rob, who had no background in farming, said: "Seasonally it is hard work. Lambing time is very busy, delivering little kids at all hours.

"We've done it with lots of advice from various experienced farmers and occasional mad panic calls to a local vet. I work at a farm in the village and take in as much as I can.

"Things have certainly changed beyond recognition. We really feel we are at the raw edge of life now."

His wife teaches at a primary school in Leeds, 42 miles away. In summer she helps milk the goats before leaving for work.

Fran, 41, who was brought up near East Grinstead and trained in Chichester before taking a job at a school in Brixton, said the family had needed to get away from the belief that everything revolved around money.

She said: "I was commuting for about four years and it was not very enjoyable.

"We realised the whole South-East was too congested to breathe."

Since their move in 1999, both her husband and their youngest daughter Amber, eight, have stopped relying on inhalers as their asthma disappeared in the pure Yorkshire air.

Rob said: "We were down in Sussex a couple of days ago and you can actually taste the air down there. There is a marked difference in Brighton.

"I love Sussex, I was born and bred there and lived there nearly 30 years but it's not the Sussex I remember.

"Up here people say hello to each other in the street and there is a sense of community."

With almost a quarter of British men working more hours than the European legal limit and half of all British workers believing their job damages their health, the trend towards downshifting is set to continue.

Experts say it is driven by the recognition that time is a commodity every bit as valuable as the latest must-have material possession.

Rob said: I can certainly understand why more people are following this path.

"People's confidence in money has been crushed recently. They've seen pensions go up the spout, stocks and shares go up the spout, and all these excuses.

"We're all very aware of what is going on in the world and are sick of being taken for a ride by big companies, being told profits are going up but sorry, no dividends are being paid out this year.

"It may sound a bit airy-fairy but I think people are looking for some quality of life that doesn't exist in the outside world, that is not reliant on or limited by the pound sign.

"Of course moving up here has affected us financially but we do all right. We get by. The cost of living is less up here and we don't have to buy most of our meat. Trading and bartering is a way of life.

"In any case, I don't think you can measure quality of life in pounds."