Not such a dolce vita! How a British couple quit the rat race to make olive oil in Italy... but found there was no place like home



When Cathy Rogers and her partner Jason Gibb quit their jobs to buy an olive grove in October 2005, their friends could barely conceal their envy.



Little surprise, given that they were pursuing the dream so many of us have of escaping the rat race.



With plans to run their own business selling olive oil, and with the warm Italian climate beckoning, Cathy and Jason seemed on a one-way trip to a life of true contentment.

Falling back in love with Britain: Cathy Rogers, Jason Gibb and daughter Rosie - the family moved to Italy to run an olive farm but found the 'grass was not greener' living abroad

'Everyone we talked to was envious,' says 41-year-old Cathy.



'Everyone started talking about the Italian dream and how they'd love to do the same.



'Looking back, it seems really bizarre, but no one questioned why we'd give up well-paid jobs that we enjoyed to move to the back of beyond and grow olives.



'Living in Italy seems to tap into a peculiarly middle-class desire. It was a given among our friends that we would have a much better life.'



It's a sentiment that will no doubt be echoed by thousands of Britons returning this week from holidays in southern Europe, their heads full of dreams about how they could carve out new lives in a sun-drenched Mediterranean country.



But, if a fresh start abroad is such a nirvana, why, less than four years after they moved to Italy, are Jason, Cathy and Rosie, five, as well as their new daughter Sorrel, back in London and living in a flat in grimy old Earl's Court?



It is a remarkable end to the wanderlust that saw them leave their old lives and seek out a slice of La Dolce Vita.



It started when Cathy and Jason were working for the TV company RDF, creator of such shows as Wife Swap and The Secret Millionaire.



Highly driven people - Cathy is an Oxford-educated medic and Jason, 37, has a doctorate in marine biology - they were desperate for a new challenge.



Their home was a stunning apartment and their lives were bustling with excitement - but they decided that something was missing.



'We enjoyed living in a big city, but it was a very shallow existence,' explains Jason.



'We both love food and wine. And we both longed to do something different with our lives, something we could actually touch. We plumped on the idea of buying an olive grove and producing our own olive oil.



'We didn't want to drop out - we just wanted to embrace a new way of life.'



So the couple decided to bite the bullet and move to Italy. Eager not to appear naive, they researched the project carefully.



They learned Italian and read endless books on olives. Cathy and Jason also realised that they would have to come up with a new concept if they were to make money, because the olive oil market is so saturated.



Drawing on the inspiration of their friend Craig Sams, founder of Green and Black's chocolate, they hit upon the 'adopt-a-tree' scheme - tapping into the foodie dream of knowing exactly where your food comes from.



'The idea was that people wouldn't just buy olive oil - they'd buy olive oil from their adopted tree,' says Jason. 'It made perfect business sense because customers pay as soon as they adopt a tree in advance of receiving the oil. So you avoid problems with cash flow - a real bane for many start-up businesses.'



All they needed was the perfect location. 'We saw at least 80 properties,' says Jason.

Stunning: The family bought a farmhouse in the Le Marche region on Italy's east coast

'Some had trees growing through the roof. We almost bought one beautiful farmhouse at a knockdown price until we discovered the catch. Thanks to quirky Italian property laws, the ancient uncle of the owner owned one of the bedrooms and could pop round any time.'



Finally, in 2004, they bought a farmhouse outside Loro Piceno, a tiny village in Le Marche, on Italy's east coast. Complete with 989 harvestable olive trees, it cost £190,000 and another £130,000 to renovate.



'It wasn't our dream home,' Jason admits. 'It was Sixties brick-built. We very much let our heads rule our hearts. We knew we were jumping into the unknown, but we thought we were prepared.'

And although it might not have been the ancient rambling farmhouse of a Bertolucci film, there's no doubt everyone they knew was convinced they were doing the right thing.



But things wouldn't be as straightforward as they had hoped. The first shock came before the couple had even moved in. Determined to be well prepared, they enrolled on a three-day course on olive pruning, run by the Italian government to encourage farmers in good practice.



Looking around nervously at their fellow 'classmates' in a draughty village hall, Cathy and Jason had never felt more out of place in their lives.



Hard work: The couple's first olive oil was a success and even sold in Selfridges in London (file picture)

The stares of amazement from wizened old men with weather-beaten faces didn't help.



As the locals gawped at Cathy, Jason and baby Rosie, in utter disbelief, it was obvious they couldn't understand what the neatly-dressed young family were doing there.



'Everyone else was over 65, hairy and half our height,' says Cathy. 'Their looks said it all. What on earth were we doing there?



'At that point I really began to ask myself what had possessed us to give up lucrative office jobs for this? And why would we try to make a living from olive oil when most sensible Italians would cut off their pruning hand to avoid trying to do that?'



The couple soon realised that their farmhouse had been cheap precisely because young families like themselves were deserting the countryside.



For ambitious Italians, the thought of tilling the soil was anathema.



But, buoyed up by the enthusiasm of friends and family, the couple refused to admit they might have made a terrible mistake. And so, in October 2005, they arrived at their new home - and found themselves hurled headlong into the reality of life on an olive farm. '

The first shock was the total silence,' says Cathy. 'It was so quiet it was spooky. I'd ever expected to miss the sound of police sirens and car alarms, but I did.



'Then there were the practical problems of living in a building site. Although we had spent 12 months before arriving paying builders to renovate the house - which had been uninhabited for ten years - it wasn't finished.'



The couple also found themselves falling foul of notorious Italian bureauracy. 'We were running an internet company but we weren't able to get a phone line in,' sighs Cathy.



'Jason drove into town every single day for months to send a fax to the company to plead for a line. We found ourselves driving out into the countryside with our laptop on our knees until we found an open broadband connection we could hook into. It was ludicrous.'



In fact the very things that make Italy such an enchanting place to go on holiday turned out to be hideously irritating when you actually live there.



'There's no urgency,' says Cathy. 'When you live a busy life in England, it's great to slow down when you go abroad. But if you are driven - as we both are - it's actually torture to live like that all the time.'



And, as the couple quickly realised, Italian sunshine is as much a myth as everything else.



'Our first year had the coldest winter there for a long time,' says Cathy. 'We were cocooned in thick fog for the first two months. We couldn't even see the hedge six feet away.



'We harvested our first olives in thick snow. We'd visualised ourselves shinning up trees in T-shirts while the sun beat down. Instead we were in wellies and wearing every piece of clothing we possessed.'



Working from dawn until dusk and with the help of their neighbour and his tractor, Cathy and Jason managed to harvest all their olives. 'Virtually every friend from Britain had promised to come and help with the harvest,' says Jason. 'But no one ever materialised. They were just too busy leading their normal lives back home.'



Despite the feelings of isolation, the business was a success from the start, due in no small part to their clever 'adopt-a-tree' scheme. The couple used a central olive press 20 minutes drive away to produce their oil.

A trip to Italy's capital Rome reminded Cathy and Jason how much they missed the hustle and bustle of London

Giant machinery crushes the olives - stones, skin and all - turning them into a greeny-mauve lumpy paste. A processor then separates water and pulp from the precious oil, which is poured into barrels.



But although their first olive oil was a huge success, even selling in Selfridges Foodhall in London, Jason and Cathy found it hard to feel content.



'The basic problem was that we were spending every second in each other's company,' says Jason. 'The romance disappeared.'



Doggedly, the couple soldiered on, and as the months passed, they found there were compensations. Once the neighbours got over the shock of their arrival, they became more welcoming.



Their Italian improved, and not before time for Jason who is vegetarian. 'My pronunciation was so bad that restaurateurs would look horrified when I explained I didn't eat meat or fish,' he says. 'They thought I was saying I didn't eat dogs or peaches.'



Rosie was installed in a nursery she loved. 'At the end of the day we'd get a sheet telling us exactly what she'd eaten,' laughs Cathy. 'It was so different from her nursery in London, where no one was bothered about food.'



Eager to fit in, the couple threw themselves into village life. Jason joined the local football team and Cathy joined the choir.



'It was an eye opener,' says Jason. 'Before important matches, the village priest would turn up to give us a blessing. But the biggest shock was in the dressing room.



'I'd been used to turning up in a scruffy old kit and heading to the pub straight afterwards without even bothering to shower.



'The first time I turned up I couldn't get over the other guys. They all had immaculately pressed kits, hairdryers and bags stuffed with male perfume and body lotion.'



In the choir, Cathy found herself learning how to sing English songs with an Italian accent. 'It was the only way I could fit in and not sound totally stupid,' she laughs.



'Mastering the Elvis Presley classic Can't Help Falling In Love was hysterical.'



With the business established and sales promising, the couple should have felt at last that they had made the right decision. But they didn't.

Home sweet home! The family returned to London because they 'yearned for the buzz and excitement of being in a big city'

'We had promised ourselves right from the start that no matter how dreadful things might be, we would stick it out for at least a couple of years, for pride if nothing else,' says Cathy. 'And we kept telling ourselves that once we improved our Italian, or made more friends, or sorted out the house totally, we would be happier.'



The couple had been in Italy for almost two years when they took a trip to Rome. And suddenly the scales fell from their eyes. Squashed into a packed and filthy underground train, they felt at home for the first time since they had left London.



It was a eureka moment. 'We realised what we'd both been missing - other people,' says Cathy. 'We yearned for the buzz and excitement of being in a big city.



'We'd looked for paradise where everyone tells you to find it - in a sun-dappled Italian olive grove. We actually found it on a stinking, crowded, graffiti-laden tube train.'



It was the beginning of the end of their Italian dream. Back home in Le Marche, they couldn't hide their discontent any longer. And, six months later, they moved to a rented apartment in Rome.



And when a few months later Cathy was offered the opportunity to return to her old company with a new job in creative development, she jumped at the chance.



But it was hard admitting to friends that their dream wasn't all it had been cracked up to be.

'We felt very sheepish about telling people we were coming home, and that it was the right choice for us,' says Jason.



Just before Christmas, the couple returned to London with Rosie and their daughter, Sorrel, 19 months, to a flat in West London. They have kept on the farmhouse and Jason still flies back to oversee his olives, but there is no doubt they are desperately relieved to be back in the concrete jungle.



And though they have forsaken their slice of Italian sunshine full-time, the business is thriving. A co-operative of local olive oil producers has joined the tree adoption scheme. And local artisans produce goods such as jars of jam and sun-dried tomatoes that are sold under the brand name Nudo.



'I've no regrets that we came back,' says Jason. 'Apart from anything else, we are incredibly lucky because following our dream could have cost us a fortune. We've taken a lot from living in Italy. Most of all it has taught us that the grass isn't always greener.



'I never knew how much I'd miss commuting into a bustling city. I love the buzz of the rush hour.'



Cathy agrees. 'Sometimes you have to leave somewhere to appreciate it,' she says. 'I've come back and fallen in love with England all over again.



'Italians are very complacent and, to be fair, they have a lot to be smug about. But, on the negative side, they aren't hungry and ambitious.



'It's fashionable to knock our way of life. That's all very well, but when being self- deprecating turns into self-loathing, it's very harmful.



'There was nothing more sapping than sitting in a house in the middle of the Italian countryside in the fog with no one but yourself to please.'



Something to consider when you sit daydreaming this week about how you would just love your summer holiday to go on for ever.



• The Dolce Vita Diaries by Cathy Rogers and Jason Gibb is published by HarperCollins at £14.99. Find out more abut Nudo at www.nudo-italia.com.



