Otley family are living their Tuscan dream

So it’s probably just as well that Richard and Sarah Turnbull waved goodbye to the English property market and took their dream of self-sufficiency to Tuscany instead.

The couple, who lived in an Otley semi, found their inspiration for a new life in the Yorkshire Dales – but it was in Italy that they made their dreams come true.

For more or less the same price as their unremarkable home in Yorkshire, they were able to pick up a 15-acre olive farm in the beautiful Tuscan countryside. And now, six years on, they are living their dream and sharing it with Channel 4 viewers.

But it was countryside closer to home that first fed that dream.

“It has always been something we talked about,” Richard said. “The kind of place that inspired us was Appletreewick, where we used to go camping.

“I used to pack my tent when it was a nice day and go up there. There was that feeling of getting away from it all.”

A combination of English property prices and the yearning for a challenge led the Turnbulls farther afield and to an infinitely better lifestyle.

“We had a semi on Bradford Road in Otley and for almost a straight swap we got a 15-acre olive farm in Tuscany,” said Richard.

“Along with that there was the challenge. In England you know how everything works, you know the gripes and whinges and that the weather is rubbish. We needed a break from that. Yes, we could have done the same in England, but it would not have been as big a challenge.”

Since their momentous decision to start a new life in Italy, the Turnbull family have become familiar to people around the world with the highs and lows of their struggle for self-sufficiency captured forever in the Channel 4 series No Going Back: A Year in Tuscany.

Now the cameras are revisiting them to catch up on what has happened since they were last filmed five years ago.

When viewers last saw the Otley family they had just reached the end of a turbulent first year in which they had to take out huge loans, harvested their olives for a back-breaking 12 hours a day, suffered crop-destroying bugs and put up with £30,000 worth of renovation headaches and an outdoor organic toilet.

When they left Otley in 2002, armed with just a smattering of Italian and a basic knowledge of gardening, their son, Gregory, was three. When the cameras caught up with them a year later they were loving their new life despite the teething problems, and there was an addition to their family – Marco. As their story is taken up again in The Great Italian Escape, Marco is now five and has been joined by two younger brothers Vittorio, three, and Leo, nine months.

Richard, 42, says it is the perfect place to raise children. With Gregory just three when the family left the UK, they have known no other life.

Speaking Italian at school and nursery and English at home they switch effortless from one language to the other.

“Their Italian is fantastic, way better that ours will ever be,” Richard said. “They go to school and speak Italian and they come home and speak English.

“They are just coming to the end of a three month summer holiday, so they are not complaining about Italy at all.

“Sarah and I have got nuts and bolts Italian – we can clunk through a conversation and put up with the wincing we get from other people – but we wouldn’t impose it on the children.”

The boys are so fluent they argue and fight among themselves in the language of their adopted country.

Gregory already helps his teacher to give the English lesson at his school.

Gregory has learned that being bi-lingual can have some lucrative advantages. As well as helping his teacher to deliver English lessons at school, he translates for other Brits having building work done when they need to go into town to buy supplies.

“He has got a nice little business there,” Richard laughed.

The youngster appears to share the same entrepreneurial spirit that took his parents from their comfortable lives and successful businesses in England to start from scratch in a new country where they could barely speak the language.

The Turnbulls wanted a challenge, but they soon realised they had taken on more than they had bargained for.

“The first six months were when we very quickly realised we were so out of our depth,” said Richard, “and we were going to have to get to grips with things like schools, healthcare, buying a car, as well as 15 acres of land and getting some money.

“When our dream bubble was burst, every single one of those things was a mountain.”

“We didn’t have money from week to week and didn’t know where money would be coming from.”

But, even during the most difficult of times, they never considered giving up, he said.

“The only time people fail is when failure becomes an option – and it has never been an option even in the darkest days.”

He said: “They can show you physically struggling, but when you are mentally struggling as well it is very difficult.

“But there has absolutely never been a time when we have thought ‘maybe if we just went back to England for a while’.”

To say it was a steep learning curve would be a bit of an understatement.

“We have climbed an awful lot of mountains in the last six years,” Richard said. “There are times when it is a nightmare and you are pushed to your limit. But I don’t think there will be any scenes of us packing our bags and heading back to Yorkshire.”

Now they have achieved many of their goals and are reaping the rewards of their hard work. “We are able to do the things we have always dreamed of doing,” Richard said.

He added: “We have got four children now and that is a challenge in itself. We still need to earn money, even more so than in the past.”

The first series showed the Turnbulls struggling to open holiday accommodation on their farm.

But despite the incredible success which publicity helped to bring – the day after the first programme went out, the Turnbulls received 13,000 emails – the couple soon realised the life they had built was not the life they had yearned for.

“We did that for three years and it was tremendously successful but we got to the point where we realised it wasn’t for us,” said Richard. “When you have taken the bookings and got the money in the bank, you are a basically a cleaner. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what we went there for.

“We had reached the same point that we had got to in England where the money was there but the lifestyle was rubbish.” So they gave up the holiday business, but kept the farm and started all over again.

They now market their olive oil and other products online. And Sarah, 34, is following her dream of breeding horses.

Richard started a building business with an Italian friend, and later branched out on his own, doing building work and managing property renovation.

A successful DJ back in England, he restarted that side of his career after an Irish couple who were getting married in Italy saw the programme and asked him to do their wedding disco.

Soon one booking led to another, but in locations as far removed from the pubs and clubs of Yorkshire as it is possible to imagine.

“It has taken off fantastically well with English people getting married in Tuscany – but in these amazing villas,” he said.

In the latest series Richard is filmed performing at the impossibly beautiful Villa Vignamaggio – the setting for Kenneth Brannagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, and claimed by some to be the birthplace of the enigmatic woman known to the world as The Mona Lisa.

“Having played the pubs and clubs of Yorkshire, here I am in the twilight of my career playing these fantastic villas and castles,” he said.

Their website also features Tuscan properties for sale, and Richard has carved a niche for himself helping to find dream properties for others and giving them the help and advice they need to make their dreams a reality.

“I show people round properties all the time and I say if you are not awake at 4 in the morning planning what you are going to do with the back bedroom – if it doesn’t excite you – then it is not for you. It is exactly like a love affair.

“Different people have different dreams, but when you stand next to somebody and can almost hear their heart miss a beat because they have found the place they want to realise their dreams, it is fantastic.

“It’s a great feeling. It is almost like watching someone falling in love with someone else.”

The laws of instant attraction obviously applied to the Turnbulls themselves – they married just 18 days after meeting in Ilkley.

“We just went with it, and I would advise anyone to do the same,” he said. “I believe we only pass this way once and life is for living.”

l The Great Italian Escape is being shown on Channel 4 on Thursdays (repeated on Saturdays) and Sarah has written a book to coincide with the series which will be in the shops in time for Christmas. To find out more, or to visit their online shop, go to www.casadelsole.co.uk.