When the Grubert family decided to give up the rat race and build a fully sustainable eco-community in Ireland eight years ago, there were quite a few raised eyebrows. Today their way of life is seen as a model for our future...
"I suppose we're doing The Good Life thing but on a bigger scale."
Tony Grubert is a controlled man, a man who prefers understatement. He is standing in an Irish Eden, 148 acres of tumbling stone, cataracts of water, views of wild beauty.
These 148 acres in West Cork are the property of the charity Tony established after giving up his executive house and lifestyle in Essex in order to implement his 'Good Life thing'.
At the turn of the millennium, Tony, his wife Helen, and their sons, Daniel, 21, and Ben, 19, left behind middle-class normality in England to a chorus of incredulity.
"Friends thought we were bonkers," Helen recalls.
It isn't hard to imagine the gossip. The Gruberts were trading in a comfortable house - "you couldn't imagine anything more normal" - in pleasant Leigh-on-Sea for a run-down farm.
They were sacrificing the thoughtless ease of turning a dial for their heat, or jumping in a car for their pre-packaged vegetables, on an altar of green idealism.
They were disrupting their children's education and social life. There were all sorts of good reasons not to take the gamble.
And yet, says Helen, "I didn't hesitate. When you look back at these things you think, 'Why didn't I hesitate?'
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