The BEST episodes of Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild
Every episode of Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild!
Adventurer Ben Fogle gets a taste of extreme escapism in this brand new series meeting those who have turned their backs on the daily grind. Each week, Ben spends time in one of the world’s most remote locations, meeting the people who now inhabit these inhospitable corners of the planet after leaving their ordinary lives behind. Our intrepid guide also wonders whether these extraordinary individuals and their incredible experiences might tempt him to move his own family out of London and away from the comforts of the city. Is it daring or downright crazy? Ben wants to discover the truth about life in tough, harsh conditions, where doing battle with Mother Nature is a daily reality.
#2 - Wales
Season 14 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/23/2021
Ben revisits Emma, who lives a completely organic and off-grid life in an overgrown Welsh woodland, and has managed to make herself completely independent from the outside world. Emma reveals how she has needed to adapt her lifestyle as she has got older, and introduces the others who have joined her. Ben helps them to construct a communal mud hut and learns about the building's spiritual purpose.
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#6 - Himalayan Foothills, India
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/7/2014
Ben journeys to the foothills of the Indian Himalayas to live with former fighter pilot, 69- year-old Steve Lall. Steve turned his back on high society, instead opting for a simple farmer’s life in the mountains. He has fought for decades to protect his tiny private wilderness. Ben joins this mountain-dwelling renegade and his family in their remote, isolated home, a steep 2km climb from the nearest road. He gets hands-on with their harsh subsistence lifestyle, from ploughing with buffalo, chasing monkeys and human intruders, to the more surreal grave digging and naked meditation. Ben discovers that the hardships of this remote location are also the key to its beauty.
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#7 - Namibia
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/21/2014
For the first time on New Lives in the Wild, Ben heads to Africa and the deep desert sand dunes of Namibia. He lives with 50-year-old Gideon David and his young family in the largest conservation area on the continent. Gideon is a master bushman who quit a city career in life insurance for the dry and dusty desert. Ben embraces the harsh and relentless work of farm life in temperatures pushing 40 degrees. He tends over 150 animals, repairs baboon damage to water pipes and even learns how to castrate sheep with his teeth! Ben also witnesses the reality of life when one has to think about raising children in these conditions, from hand-washing nappies to learning vital desert survival skills and hunting and eating oryx.
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#10 - Alaska
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/28/2014
Ben is no stranger to remote parts, but this trip to Alaska will test him to the limit. His only access to his hostsʼ home is via bush plane. If he were to walk, the journey would take ten days and would take him right through grizzly bear country. Ben joins married couple Mike and Fran Turner, who welcome him into their simple, self-built log cabin. He discovers how they have created a self-sufficient lifestyle by working the land and trapping the animals around them. Despite battling against forest fires in the summer and freezing conditions in the winter, the family very rarely venture back into civilisation. Ben takes every opportunity to get stuck into forest survival, battling mosquitoes and learning to cope with 24-hour daylight. The new river season is beginning and there is heavy labour involved. Deep in the woods, he chops trees, learns about trapping and deadly forest fires, feeds fish guts to the plants and even eats bear.
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#11 - Thailand
Season 7 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/9/2018
French-Canadian Julien lives in a remote Buddhist monastery in the jungle-mountains of Thailand, far off any conventional map. Ben learns how and why this former teenage student from the West stripped away all complications of a modern life for a primitive Eastern and religious existence, and how this choice affected his family.
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#17 - New Zealand
Season 11 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/21/2020
Ben meets Lucy, who left Britain to start a new life with her husband Tim on New Zealand's north island. They now live with their two daughters in a yurt beside a river in the middle of 25 acres of woodland they have transformed into a farm. Ben discovers how the forest provides the family with everything they need, getting a taste of their daily routine of chopping wood and foraging for wild foods. He also discovers how the couple are providing their children with an alternative education and the campaign of activism Lucy has embarked on from their wilderness home.
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#18 - Dorset
Season 17 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/14/2023
Ben joins Chris, a former paratrooper, in the beautiful county of Dorset on the south coast of England. Ben spends a week with Chris who, despite losing nearly everything, has spent the last five years walking the UK's coastline. Ben discovers what has motivated Chris and how he has turned his life around, found love and raised thousands for charity. Ben join Chris and his faithful dog companion, Jet, 27,000 miles into their walk where they've now hit the Jurassic Coast. And they're no longer alone – Chris met his partner, fellow hiker Kate and now they are parents to baby Magnus. Ben learns what Chris calls "the art" of living wild on the road, once as a solo experience, but now with a young family. He learns how to desalinate sea water and forage the nature around him, embraces river washing and charming local fisherman for food, while beginning to understand what it's like to "wild parent" and where this intrepid family are heading next.
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#20 - Croatia
Season 11 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/28/2020
As one of the world's most in-demand sporting coaches, 43-year-old Nikola Boric once travelled the world, welcomed everywhere he went. Now, he lives in a wooden cabin without electricity, water or heating, with just some pigs and goats for company. Experiencing Nikola's new life in the woods above the village of Kokocak on the edge of Papuk Nature Park, Ben tries to understand what drove Nikola to make a sudden decision to quit everything and retire to such a forgotten corner of the world, finding a new life of purity and self-sufficiency away from mainstream society.
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#21 - Arkansas
Season 12 - Episode 4 - Aired 6/16/2020
Ben Fogle reunites with a former medical student living in the woodlands of Arkansas. Ben discovers the impact a series of injuries have had on his physically demanding wild lifestyle, including a simple lapse in concentration that nearly cost him everything. However, none of this has prevented him honing his talents as a craftsman and embracing a life surrounded by nature.
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#22 - Ullapool
Season 15 - Episode 1 - Aired 3/30/2021
The presenter ventures deep into the Scottish Highlands to meet Iona and her young family on the near-10,000-acre wilderness estate that she grew up on. Whilst in their company, Ben drives cattle on horseback, digs out a dam to ensure the family's hydro-electricity supply and gets to grips with the annual deer cull, and hears how Iona's past prepared her for this extraordinary life in the wilderness.
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Season 10 - Episode 3 - Aired 11/12/2019
Ben meets Jaimie, an inventor who has built a unique home for his family on a remote island off the coast of Panama. Ben gets a taste of the unconventional family's daily routine, which includes scrubbing boat hulls, getting some exercise in a pedalo, hacking through the island's vegetation, and home schooling for the children. He also discovers the unusual family dynamics in the household and takes a look at some of his host's inventions, which include a computer game depicting his unusual life.
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