Italy – Tuscan Hills – George & Sophie

Ben heads to Tuscany to visit British couple George and Sophie who breathed new life into a Tuscan farmhouse. Ben discovers how George's adolescent desire to live a self-sufficient existence seeded an ambitious plan to create a lifelong project and how a chance encounter enabled Sophie to find what seemed improbable. Ben travels into the heart of the stunning Casentinesi Forest National Park to join his hosts and their young children in their progressive off-grid home, a three km walk to the top of a mountain. Their continuing renovations of the ancient, ramshackle buildings sees Ben put to work in return for his stay as he embraces honey collecting, tends their extensive vegetable garden, makes homemade pizza and gruelling repairs on the track up to their house so they can get a vehicle to it, and deals with their wayward cow who destroys all their crops.