Adam Hay-Nicholls

Living off grid isn’t for the faint-hearted, says Adam Hay-Nicholls, but, for some, it can be a life-changing (and saving) experience.

I managed to find the bolthole of my dreams through the magic of Google Maps. This wasn’t some ethereal getaway inspired by the pages of travel magazines or Grand Designs, this was a real place burned into my memory from more than 30 years ago. But I had no idea where it was until I stumbled on it.

Northumberland, that’s all I knew. A two-room log cabin on the most glorious grouse moor you’ve ever seen, miles from civilisation or even a track you can get a car up. I’d stayed there, aged eight, with my mother in the summer of 1989. It belonged to a close friend of my great aunt Margaret. His father, an army doctor during the First World War, had built it in the 1920s as a haven, I would later discover, to escape the terrors of his post-traumatic stress. I suppose in a similar vein that’s why my great aunt suggested it for a break. My dad had dropped dead a few months earlier, and abluting in a cold stream does help take one’s mind off things.

It was the most wonderful holiday and I’d never forgotten it. Then, all these decades later, with some satellite Columboing and a lengthy traipse across the heather to an uncertain destination, I struck upon it again. It was exactly as I remembered; a time capsule in the trees, with a small fireplace, sepia portraits, century-old biscuit tins, a crystal radio set, and a library of National Geographics dating from before the Moon landing. I left a note and the owner got in touch, inviting me to return this past August.

In addition to enjoying the wild location, it seemed to be the perfect place in which to write. I had a book deadline approaching, and decided to knuckle down here. Only problem; no electricity. Typewriter? This biography wasn’t going to get nailed with inky ribbons, Tip-Ex and no internet. Also, there’s no running water and no loo, but I knew I could easily survive that for a week, treating stream water with purification tablets, cooking on my gas camping stove, and doing what bears do. I’d live off instant noodles and warm myself with the log fire and a hipflask full of King’s Ginger.

The field mice mostly left me alone, although a rat or stoat helped itself to some cocktail sausages by gnawing a large hole through a freezer bag. Pleasingly, despite being in the most remote spot in England, I had excellent 4G and could hotspot the internet to my laptop. I used a portable power station the size of two car batteries to keep my computer and iPhone going, charging it via a fold-out solar panel. Those were my essentials in order to earn a living. Everything else I could do without.

Secluded cottages have long served reclusive artistic types well, particularly painters, poets and pop stars. For baby boomers, the chap who really put the idea on the OS map of ditching the bright lights for the croft was Paul McCartney. Macca and family moved up to Scotland’s Kintyre peninsula in 1970 to escape The Beatles.

Intriguingly, Sir Paul’s occasional song writing partner Kanye West (neither of their best work) has followed suit. He purchased a ranch in Montana from which to record the Ye album and battle his bi-polar disorder. David Bowie saw out his autumn years in the wilderness of the Catskill mountains, where he produced Heathen. Famous musicians have always been able to call the geographical shots, but then the pandemic came along, and two and a half years later many of us are still able to work from home. Bosses and clients have become flexible. Most meetings are now virtual. Digital technology is in rapid advance. Culture has changed. We can be Bowie if we want to be.

In 2020, a friend of mine who is a senior Downing Street advisor – let’s call her Mary – abandoned her flat in Clapham for a bleak bungalow in the Borders which was snowed in for months on end. From here, she dictated Covid strategies over Zoom. She still hasn’t returned to the capital, yet I’m pretty sure the snow has melted. She and her boyfriend have adopted a Brazilian street puppy who no doubt has had an even more extreme transition to make, trading Ipanema for Innerleithen.

Another chum with whom I used to make a Formula One magazine, Adam Carbajal, quit flying around the grand prix circuit to buy a plot on the Hawaiian island of Maui and live in a yurt. He used a small petrol generator for power, built a water catch system with a 500-gallon capacity (it’s pretty rainy on his part of Maui), heated his water via propane and powered the pump with solar. In this environment, he was still able to produce quality magazines for publishers back in Europe. He spent seven years in that yurt until finally finishing the building of a proper house right next to it, in which he now lives. The land and construction came to £385,000. It’s now valued at £1.14 million. It only required seven years of doing his business in a bucket.

Others have maintained their jet-setting ways while embracing a minimalist life. Take investor Nicolas Berggruen, who has 100 properties in Berlin but, until relatively recently, didn’t have a place to call his own. Dubbed ‘the homeless billionaire’, he didn’t even possess a watch or a car. He kept his meagre possessions in a paper bag, and slept on his Gulfstream – the one luxury he couldn’t dispense with.

In the age of the influencer, some have managed to turn their off-grid lifestyles into a commercial enterprise. Foster Huntington was a designer for Ralph Lauren in New York, but jacked it in to journey round America while living out of a van. He is credited with beginning the #vanlife movement on Instagram, taking breathtaking photos of his travels for brands like Patagonia and making stylish books showing off-grid life. Meanwhile, thirtysomething architects Dan Deckert and Kika Mevs left Atlanta to sail the world with a small electric sailing boat named Uma. They’ve launched a successful YouTube channel and are currently anchored off Spain. Their lifestyle is financed by ‘donations from social media patrons’ and platform advertising revenue.

Far from exhausted by the rustic travails, I left Northumberland energised and yearning to return; wondering whether, if the energy crisis grips the nation harder still, I ought to think about living off the land and sun.

Laurence Manchee worked in finance in London, Hong Kong and Singapore. Now he lives in rural Portugal. Passionate about sustainability, he’s built a yoga retreat and teaches permaculture and agroforestry on his 52 acres. He’s self-sufficient, able to “live like a king on £11,000-a-year.”

The pandemic lockdowns brought into focus what’s important to us, what we really need. For many, space, independence, family and fresh air have taken precedence over salaries, shopping and the rat race. Others are looking to escape more hardcore situations. Julius Strauss was one such chap. He was an accomplished war reporter for the Telegraph. Like my cabin’s creator, PTSD caught up with him. Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone; the straw that broke the camel’s back was a school massacre in Southern Russia, where 186 kids were killed. “I thought ‘I can’t do this anymore’. I needed a change, and the idea of Canada came up”. He and his girlfriend bought a ranch in the middle of nowhere, and Julius became a grizzly bear guide. The wilderness, he thinks, saved his life.

Barrister and naturalist Charles Foster took his fascination with wildlife to greater extremes. He decided to live as a badger, an urban fox, a red deer, an otter and a swift, in order to see the world through their eyes. This involved spending weeks under the earth in a sett in the Black Mountains and scavenging the bins of east London at night – on all fours.

Mr Foster’s idea of living off-grid probably strikes you as odd. He might be described as one of Britain’s greatest living eccentrics. But you needn’t eat worms or sleep in a bird’s nest to change your way of living for the wilder. A hut in the Pennines, an axe and a sleeping bag is as good a place to start as any. Or a yurt, a boat, or the Mull of Kintyre. Sometimes you just need to cut loose.