BBCLiving on an island with about 140,000 other people can feel different – boundaries are more rigid and it can feel insular to some.
But for Gavin and Lucy Roberts, their off-grid home on a cliff on the Isle of Wight feels like “paradise”.
Looking for peace, meaning, and a new start to his life, Gavin says he bought the overgrown plot of land after a landslip occurred in the 1990s.
“We’ve nearly got a 180-degree view of the sea, there’s nothing around in a sense but the natural world. I mean, it’s magic really,” he says.
Radio Solent’s Tom Stroud visited the couple and their son Bo at their smallholding Permaculture Island in Niton Undercliff to find out more.
We love to live by the sea,” says Lucy. “We’re very fortunate living on an island, obviously our back garden leads right down to the sea, hearing the waves and surrounded by nature.”
Gavin, who has lived in the village for about 35 years, says their smallholding is in an area where some of the cliffs are considered unstable and “occasionally activate”.
“We wouldn’t be here, actually, without that because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford this site,” he says.
“I paid £6,500 for this site, it was undesirable.
“I was living in a van at the time and I was starting to desire some land and just to get off the road as well.
“How I’ve gone from where I used to be – ‘just above a park bench,’ we say – to here, is just remarkable to me.
One of the couple’s pigs gave birth to eight piglets about five weeks before our visit.
“I sleep well at night knowing that I’ve got animals around me,” says Gavin.
“I’ve got trees and plants around that supply my food, I’ve got food in the pantry. I’ve got electricity, we’ve got our own solar electric supply and a community of people that look quite like us.”
Gavin and Lucy say they manage on a budget of £100 a week and with a sense of freedom most cannot imagine.
But they are also living in the shadow of climate change, on a cliff edge that is slowly falling away.
But Gavin says he thinks it will be a case of needing to relevel their buildings at some point rather than “everything is going to fall off the cliff and into the sea”.
But the dad-of-one says he sees “an opportunity in everything”, adding: “To me, it’s just part and parcel of life.”
Lucy adds: “Of course, we’re living on a type of edge here. I think one bad winter – and I’m talking excessive, a really bad winter – you might see some movement [of the homestead].”
Gavin remains philosophical.
“In life, a lot of the most amazing things are fleeting, I’ve got more faith in this land than I do our economy,” he says.
Lucy echoes: “There’s worse things that we could be worrying about. I would take that risk.”
