Article on the Financial Times 27th December 2003 - Steve talks about leaving London to pursue a life abroad.

Faith Glasgow meets people who have successfully turned their backs on the rat race...

Anyone old enough to be watching telly at 8.30pm in the mid:1970s will remember The Good Life, in which the spin-offs from Tom and Barbara Good's woolly self-sufficiency got right up the noses of their neighbours, suburban stockbroker stalwarts Jerry and Margot Leadbetter.

The BBC's classic sitcom captured a clich?d rejection of the rat race and a return to the land, in that case a back garden in Surbiton. But times have changed enormously since then, and factors such as London property price premiums, increasingly flexible working practices and particularly the rise of consumer technology have all helped to revolutionise the whole concept of the good life. Certainly, some people do still yearn for an entire change of direction. But others are able to reinvent their lives simply by moving away from the cramped, congested confines of the capital and either teleworking from home or finding local opportunities to continue their career.

Realising the good life is not an easy exercise, especially if you are trying to sell one home, buy 'another and sort out employment all in tandem; consider selling, renting for a while in the new destination (or the old), and then buying at leisure, Ultimately, however, it's a matter of a firm decision to leave, with clear goals for your new life. As shown by the following stories of former Londoners, with the courage of their convictions, things tend to work out in the end.

A holiday to the island of St Martin's 'in the Scilly Isles, off band's End, in 1982 was the start of an enduring love affair with the place for Toby Tobin-Dougan. During the 1980s he commuted into Soho, central London, where he was a photographic printer; but he was drawn back to the Scillies almost every year.

In the recession of the early 1990s, the advertisers for whom he worked were hard hit and h1s turnover plummeted; at the same time his marriage fell apart and the family home was sold. "I just lost interest in the business," he recalls. "On returning from a trip to the Scillies I decided I'd had enough, sold it to my right hand man and ran away from London altogether."

With the exception of the island of Tresco, which is privately owned, the Duchy of Cornwall owns the freeholds on almost all the properties in the Scillies, which means that it's almost impossible to buy a home there. Tobin-Dougan spent some time renting rooms from St Martin's residents, and eventually won a tender to rent his present home from the Duchy. "Only one or two buildings a year come up for rent, which means that young people or incomers tend to lodge with others until something turns up," he explains.

During that time, he worked locally as a fisherman and then in the island's hotel, where he learnt how to make bread. Thus began his second career: "I decided to supply the local campsite from home, but after two years it was out of control

the living room was full of sacks of flour and I was getting up at 2am to knead, so I realised it was time to do things properly."

He took his business plan to the Duchy, which eventually provided him with a crumbling granite barn and the money to renovate the building: "Four of us turned an abandoned barn into a fully equipped .bakery in 14 weeks," he recalls. "English Heritage imposed strict conservation criteria - we had to use the same tiles, replace the same ships' timbers in the roof, and make copies of ' the original door and windows." The Duchy charges him about 5 per cent of the] restoration cost in rent, ] working out at under ?4,000 ] a year.

Five years on, Toby Tobin-Dougan's organic bakery is 1 booming. Outside the tourist season, he delivers hot bread

to the locals and runs residential bread making courses. He keeps free-range hens, ducks, pigs and turkeys, nips between the islands on his boat and rows in the Scillies' gig races. "When my mum heard I was coming down here, she said I was 'running away from reality'. But I see it as running towards reality - of the right sort," he says.

Like Tobin-Dougan, Steve Walker's decision to leave the capital was grounded in growing disillusionment with his job, this time in a small IT start-up company; he also hated the London transport system. But he started the ball rolling with no clear destination in mind, simply looking for new jobs outside London, and then outside the UK - until he and his partner Hazel decided to "turn the decision on its head, decide specifically where and how we wanted to live, and take it from there."

They rapidly whittled the choice down to Barcelona. "I'd already fallen in love with the city on past visits - it's under two hours' flight away from family, friends and business clients, yet it has sea, mountains and a northern European mentality to business and I can cycle into the countryside in 15 minutes," he says. "It is still a big city, but I like the culture and food, and the Catalan attitude to life."

He has rented his Tufnell Park flat out through a lettings agent and intends to hold on to it as a long-term investment for capital growth. Meanwhile, the couple rent a small flat in central Barcelona for ?650 (?450) a month. From nearby offices Steve Walker has set up his own IT-based business, catering for UK companies looking to outsource web design and database design.

He employs minimal staff and uses video conferencing technology to stay in close touch with his sub-contractor network. "it means I provide the same service as UK counterparts but with a 30 per cent pricing advantage," he says. "And working within a more compact city means I can still take a couple of hours out at lunchtime for a cycle ride or a swim in the sea."

For many wannabe good lifers, Sophie Spyropoulos's experience is perhaps easiest to identify with. She and her partner Jez Verity lived in south-west London, worked in PR, and enjoyed the buzz of their social and cultural life in the capital - until they became parents. "We realised we weren't enjoying London as we used to - I seemed to spend most of my time in traffic jams trying to get to the supermarket," says Spyropoulos.

Her partner came from Yorkshire and they. both liked that county, so they started looking in estate agent windows up there, but without success. Three years ago they decided to sell their three-bedroom terrace and move into rented accommodation in London. That meant that when they found a developer trying to find a buyer for a wrecked barn in a big field just outside Harrogate, they were able to act as cash buyers. "It cost slightly more than we had sold for, so we were pretty stretched, but the developer was keen to get a buyer and he let us choose a new kitchen and bathroom for free," she says.

The barn is big, beamed and beautiful; it has five bedrooms and stands in about a third of an acre - a scenario hard to imagine from the confines of a three-bed terrace. The family have started growing their own vegetables, and the two boys attend the village school.

Even work has fallen into place: when she told them she was moving north, Spyropoulos's PR agency suggested she open a branch up there, but she felt it was a rather half-hearted offer, and when a large marketing firm in Leeds advertised for someone to set up a new PR division, she applied for and got the job. Her partner currently freelances at home and looks after the kids.

Her greatest bugbear is the 45-minute drive to work each day. "We spend astronomical sums on cars up here, whereas we hardly spent anything in London," she says, "but the house and our lifestyle compensate for that."