Ben meets a Pembrokeshire family living on the side of a rugged mountain, where they catch and forage for their own food and salvage junk for homemade inventions. Ben helps them put their latest creations to the test in all weathers, and learns about the special global policy for utopian living that they have signed up to.

Ben Fogle meets a former film-maker who has made a home in the highlands of eastern Iceland, and set up a wilderness centre exploring 200 years of local history. Ben takes part in an ancient tradition where thousands of sheep that have spent the summer in the mountains are sorted, as well as bathing in a hot waterfalls, riding horses on the plateau, and smokes trout with dung.

Ben ventures off the wild coast of Northern Ireland to the tiny, remote and rugged island of Rathlin. He stays with 41-year-old Rauri Morgan, a former HR executive who turned his back on corporate life to move into an ancient family heirloom. Ben embraces modern-day foraging, ancient myths and legends, and eccentric property maintenance, and discovers that Rauri's paradise has been found in the most unlikely of places, but that there is more than meets the eye to both him and his place on the island.

Ben meets Jake Williams, a 70-year-old hermit living on the edge of a forest in the Cairngorms, who has made a home on the site of an ancient settlement and enjoys a diet of roadkill stir fry. Ben helps him with some wild gardening and gets a taste of his musical talents and mischievous sense of humour.

Ben Fogle meets an author in Co Galway on Ireland's west coast who has turned his back on both money and technology, experimenting with living using only what he can source from the land. His frugal lifestyle involves collecting water, sparse winter foraging, fishing, sheep-wrangling and writing by candle-light.