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Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild Season 6 Episodes
Season 6 Episode Guide
8 Episodes 2017 - 2017
Episode 1
Wilderness Island, Australia
45 mins
Ben enjoys visiting Wilderness Island, part of an otherwise uninhabited archipelago off Western Australia, which was named by its first-ever leaser Jim, a cattle ranch heir who decided against the family business after a paragliding fall chained him to a wheelchair for two years. Jim started its self-reliant only settlement, harvesting seafood, and built tourist cabins for cash income. Danish-Vietnamese guest Kim had a summer fling with Jim, had her own bad accident and returned to live with him. Now Ben helps install the missing link in their self-sufficiency: a desalination system to supply fresh water besides rare rain. The coast is exposed to frequent, violent cyclones.
Episode 2
Freedom Cove, Canada
45 mins
Ben travels by boat from Vancouver to spend a week on the desolate coast of British Columbia with Wayne Adams and Catherine King at Freedom Cove. The former forester cum sculptor and former ballet star built and excessively colorfully decorated there a complex floating home with gardens complex they still aspire to keep expanding. Ben helps Wayne with repairs, collecting and working-in drift wood and other 'recycled' materials, also for winter stocks, and angling their dinner, excited to see bald eagles snapping up their share of the fish.
Episode 3
Egypt
45 mins
In Egypt, Ben visits aging Canadian veterinarian Maryanna (then 67) nee Stroud, who left a North American luxury life after her Egyptian husband, businessman Ghabani, died, and settled in his native land. In a converted farm in the Saharan Nile fringe near the pyramids, she receives poor peasants in need of medical help for their animals, and provides a sanctuary to many adopted dogs and horses she considers her closest friends. They also consider the deplorable state of Egypt after the Arab revolution, with rising intolerance, some insecurity and the implosion of vital tourism, yet she's resolved to brave all risk there till death.
Episode 4
New Zealand
45 mins
Londoner Ben arrives by airplane on desolate Great Barrier Island off New Zealand's North Island, largely a nature reserve, where namesake Ben, one of the sparse inhabitants bought a coastal 76-acre forest to build his pragmatic version of a home alone. He bowed out of an academic career as brilliant chemist, feeling the 'politics' and futility of most research weren't worth spending his life on, and seeking contact with nature. His retreat and autonomy are limited, well-thought but still largely dependent on annual supply trips and occasional help from fellow islanders, hence he attends social gatherings, or rare visitors, who are expected to work with him, as Ben does admirably, on various projects and the never-ending maintenance and stock-building.
Episode 5
Andalucia, Spain
45 mins
Ben visits an English couple, Lloyd and his much older wife, who didn't study or visit the village in Andalusia where they bough an old olive mill to start breeding alpacas, which tell in love with seeing a neglected one in a French zoo. The southern Spanish region is specialized in olive trees, which they don't used, and unfit for breeding. Yet they keep struggling with the hopelessly rundown building and poorly improvised stables. The small herd can't generate profit, barely covers its cost, yet they keep soldiering on with extra income, like a book he wrote. Ben is made guinea pig at the latest project, hosting classes from local schools, which is hard even with an American expat school as try-out.
Episode 6
Guatemala
45 mins
Texan Mike Merrill, whose wife was tired of his ranting about traveling the world, abandoned a lucrative career as sound engineer to give it a go, having sold all their possessions. On the way, their marriage broke up and their paths separated literally. He settled again, for a long while, in his favorite region, the virtually lawless jungle hinterland of Guatemala. Ben joins him and an ever fluctuating band of drifters who volunteer for bed and meals to help him build on a hill a backpacker resort. However most of the work wouldn't be possible without the dirt-poor locals, who occasionally steal from Mike but also render tireless services, like carrying any supplies up the mountain on their backs, or as Ben assists floating a giant water tank for the showers down the wild river, where they fish by paralyzing machete-blows. Ben is puzzled and impressed, enjoying the smartly run adventure with legacy.
Episode 7
Missouri
45 mins
Ben spends a week deep in Missouri's 'Redneck Riviera', the Ozark Mountains. His aging wilderness host is Bo Brown, former pro musician in a successful bluegrass band, who needed to start a new life from scratch after the split left him without income. he spent his savings on a derelict home he meanwhile remodeled into a modern base for his survival courses, barely yielding enough to pay off his debts, but rewarding in terms of 'paying back the world'. Bo is very knowledgeable, although merely self-taught, but sort of trapped between conventional obligations and the contact with nature he so greatly enjoys.
Episode 8
Cambodia
45 mins
Ben joins and Englishman who, after a troubled past, left Europe for Phuket in Thailand, met and wed his local mate, and decided to settle with their family in the region. The Cambodian government awarded them free use of an otherwise uninhabited island in the South China Sea. Condition is they help the Cambodianl fishermen conserve marine wildlife there, which means taking on the means Vietnamese neighbors, illicit fishermen using destructive techniques and even pirates, who don't hesitate to use violence. Ben is amazed by their courage and helps with an action as well as sustaining the community and installing underwater protection.
