Main image: Nick looks over the cloud-filled Ogwen Valley after he moved to the mountains | Credit: Nick Livesey
When you’re powering through a night shift on coffee fumes or stuck on a standing-room-only commuter train, it’s tempting to imagine a different type of existence. One where you spend less time working, tidying and worrying, and more time strolling through heather or munching a sarnie beneath a summit cairn. Well, perhaps 2026 is the year to turn those visions of outdoor bliss into concrete resolutions. As the stories here prove, there are few obstacles to change that can’t be overcome with perseverance, tenacity and, of course, a borderline-obsessive passion for the outdoors.
‘I could never go back’
Growing up on a council estate in ‘90s Peterborough, Nick Livesey never had much of a relationship with the outdoors. “People from my socio-economic background just weren’t exposed to that kind of thing,” he says. “But I used to frequent the local library a lot, and I came across this coffee table book from the early 1980s called Wales by W.A. Poucher. I couldn’t believe my eyes. These were real mountains, and I was totally captivated.”
It took Nick another 18 months to badger his friends into a Lake District hillwalking trip – “and by then,” he says, “I probably knew more about the Lake District than most people, even though I’d never been up a mountain. We climbed Harrison Stickle, and it was the most transformative, amazing thing that’s ever happened to me. From that day, the mountains have been my absolute life.”
Nick has always had intense interests – a trait he now knows is part of his autism – but his obsession with the mountains developed into a love his describes as ‘almost spiritual’. He began taking a camera with him as a way of paying homage to the hills: “and I wanted to express to people, particularly people from my background, how transformative these things had been to me; I wanted them to get in on it!”
But this preoccupation with the mountains and capturing them on camera had consequences for his personal life. “I was living with this lovely girl just outside Corby, working as a warehouseman and climbing at weekends,” he says, “and it was wonderful. Unfortunately, my obsessive nature put paid to my relationship, because photography in the mountains was all I was thinking about. I was in the Rhinogydd on a holiday my own when she rang me up and said: ‘look, when you get back, you’re going to have to leave’. Obviously I was distraught, but in that moment I knew I was moving to Wales.”
Within a week, Nick had quit his job, packed up his things and driven back to Snowdonia. He had no job and nowhere to stay, so he split his time between the Peterborough Mountaineering Club hut and his car. He eventually managed to find a job at Moel Siabod Café and upgrade his sleeping arrangements to a caravan – but things didn’t get much better. “In summer it was like an oven, and you couldn’t open the windows ‘cos the midges would get you. In winter the pipes would freeze, so there was no heating or hot water. I didn’t have any books or any internet, I didn’t even want to go on the hills because I was so upset about splitting up with Lucie, and there were ghosts everywhere on the hills. But I said to myself: I’ll give it a year, and if it’s still not working for me then I’ll go back down south. That was twelve-and-a-half years ago.”
It wasn’t an easy journey, but Nick slowly began to feel like himself again. He started hanging out in local pubs, meeting new friends, getting back out into the hills. And he met some amazing people through his job, too, although he characterises himself as ‘the rudest waiter in North Wales’. “I didn’t know I was autistic at the time, but I was constantly overwhelmed, overstimulated. After about six years I started having panic attacks, and I realised I had to make a change.”
By that time, Nick was a Mountain Leader and he’d begun to receive recognition for his photography. He moved from a flat above the café to a his own ‘little white house’ a couple of kilometres away and set up a guiding company called Discover Secret Snowdonia. Now he combines photography and writing with introducing people to the mountains he loves.
“It isn’t all sunshine and roses living in a place like this,” he says. “It’s hard – winter’s hard – and unless you’re loaded, you’re going to find it really difficult at times. But I could never go back. There’s nothing for me in town whatsoever – I’ve forgotten how to cross the road! And if I died of a heart attack tomorrow, I wouldn’t have any regrets.”
- Nick is the author of Photographing the Snowdonia Mountains, available through Amazon
‘Moving gave us our lives back’
In 2008, Alison O’Leary and her late husband Jeremy were living a seemingly luxurious existence in central London. They had a place in Covent Garden and high-octane careers. “On the outside,” she says, “it looked like we had this great life. We had these big salaries and fancy job titles and flash holidays – all of the trappings of that kind of lifestyle.”
But the reality was very different. Alison and Jeremy barely saw one another. And neither of them had much opportunity to do what they really enjoyed – being in the outdoors – because they spent most of their non-working life completely exhausted. “We had this ‘come to Jesus’ moment one Thursday night,” Alison remembers. “It was about 8 o’ clock and we’d just got home, and it turned out we had no food in the fridge because there was no time for practical things like food shopping. We had to go out for dinner, which felt like a chore rather than a pleasure. And we sat opposite one another in this restaurant, completely knackered, and just said: ‘what on Earth are we doing? This isn’t living!’”
The couple decided they needed a complete lifestyle change. They settled on two shared values – peace and freedom – and began to search for a place where they could build their lives from that baseline. They found it on a post-Christmas trip to the Brecon Beacons. “We came to see this house while it was being renovated, and we didn’t even go inside,” says Alison. “We just looked through the windows and saw that behind the house is this mountain… you can walk through the garden, through a field, up that mountain and you’re in the Brecon Beacons. And we thought: this is it, this is the place, we’ll figure out all the other details as we go along.”
It took a couple of years to wrangle through issues in the planning process and make the move permanent. During that time, Alison retrained as a career and life coach and set up her own coaching business, while Jeremy found a role at a children’s hospice in Wales. They were travelling to-and-fro for a while between London and Wales – “but all I felt was energised,” said Alison, “because we were moving towards what we knew was going to be amazing.”
When they did finally make the move, it was life changing. “It gave us our time and our lives back. We’ve hiked most of the mountains in the Brecon Beacons. I’ve been able to pursue my passions and hobbies, like paragliding, gorge walking and gliding. I can do stuff that actually fills my soul – and it fixed my body as well. Before we moved, I was a chronic insomniac and I had ongoing digestive issues for about 15 years. I felt unwell for a lot of the time. But now I sleep like I baby and have zero health issues.”
In February 2024, Alison lost Jeremy very suddenly to a surprise terminal cancer diagnosis. With characteristic positivity, though, she focuses on the extra hours their move allowed them to spend together. “I would have felt very differently about what I’ve been facing if we hadn’t changed our lives. The time we had together over the last ten years is everything.”
And through both her own life experiences and her coaching career, she’s well placed to advise others looking to swap the 9-5 for an outdoorsy existence. “It’s a hard thing to do – but if you truly listen to what you need and make decisions based on that knowledge, it fundamentally transforms your life. And everyone should do that; because life is short, and you just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
- Find out more about Alison’s life change and her coaching offering at livetrue.co.uk
‘Every bit of the hardship has been worthwhile’
It’s one thing to make a lifestyle leap alone or in a couple, but quite another to do it with a young family. That’s what makes Jen and Sim Benson’s story so remarkable. In the autumn of 2014, shortly after the birth of their second child, they made the call to move out of their rental house and spend a year in a bell tent.
“I’d been doing a PhD and my income was a stipend, so that stopped and there was no maternity provision,” says Jen. “Suddenly I had no income and a new baby. Sim was out working all the time, I was on my own with two young kids, and we were putting everything into paying rent and bills… so something had to change.”
The couple were already experienced climbers, trail runners and campers. They also had a dream: to build a joint career around outdoor writing and photography. There was no way that would be possible while Sim was working all hours to make ends meet and Jen was alone caring for two young children. But freed from the shackles of rent and a single location, they’d have the opportunity to share childcare more equally and to build a professional portfolio at the same time.
“It worked pretty well,” Jen says. “We wanted to make it as comfortable and as homely as possible, so we bought a bell tent which gave us plenty of space – it was perfect for kids.”
“We mainly based ourselves at campsites,” adds Sim. “That meant access to toilets and water; and because we were starting our writing careers and were writing our second book [the first, Wild Running, came out a day after their son was born], we needed electricity and Wi-Fi.”
The family travelled around the UK, beginning in Cornwall and Devon and making their way north as spring moved into summer. They used the adventures they had along the way as a springboard for pitching articles and guidebooks; by the time winter came round again, work was building up and they had a book commissioned. After struggling through a few difficult months (“the weather was a lot worse that second winter!”) they were finally in a position to rent again. But this time, things were different. Spending a year under canvas had given them the financial breathing space they needed to focus their careers around family, lifestyle and the outdoors.
“It’s been a gradual process, but now we’ve written 14 books and we regularly appear in a lot of magazines and newspapers,” says Sim. “All those years being fully involved with the kids’ upbringing, seeing them grow and evolve, that’s where every bit of the financial hardship and the difficulties of living in a tent have been worthwhile.”
And the kids? “They don’t seem to have suffered any negative consequences!” Jen jokes. “Our daughter is 14 and she’s doing DofE and our son is a bit of an environmental campaigner, so hopefully it’s given them a really deep connection to the natural world and an understanding of the importance of that in life.”
- Jen and Sim’s most recent books include Ultra: The World Atlas of Ultramarathons and The Camping Bible: The Complete Guide to Life Under Canvas. Find out more at jenandsimbenson.co.uk.
‘By having far less, I actually have far more’
In her early twenties, Nic Roams’ life was organised around work, progress and routine. “I’d become part of the rat race, chasing job promotions and salaries,” she says. “Life felt dull and overly planned for me.”
And so she made a life-altering decision: to ditch the 9-5 in London and swap a conventional home for a self-build van conversion. With a background in HR and retail – and not a huge amount of DIY experience – Nic had to teach herself carpentry, plumbing and electronics on the job. It was a steep learning curve. But by 2018, she was heading to the Brecon Beacons on her very first van-cation without the ties of job and bills waiting at home. It was the start of a seven-year adventure that would see her completely re-evaluate her priorities.
“Initially, I left brick and mortar behind to live a more minimalistic life and travel the world as far as my wheels could take me,” she says. “Over the years, my reason for living an alternative lifestyle evolved based on what I learned while on the road: to want a life of freedom, where I get more time doing the things I love, and a life away from debt. I was able to build financial freedom this way – I have more disposable income per month, even though I earn far less. To me, time and independence is precious.”
During those seven years, Nic also learned that what she cherished most in life was a connection with nature. She had become a keen hiker, wild swimmer, forager and bushcraft instructor. And at the same time, she had begun to keep an eye out for a parcel of land that might support her real dream: an off-grid, largely self-sufficient home.
“That’s when I came across the cabin [in Snowdonia],” she says. “It was a little different to what I had planned, but it sparked something inside of me. It was residential, it was still a cabin – a little rundown, which is okay, as I love a project – and it had a modest garden where I could grow my own food.”
She bought the cabin in May 2025, and is currently in the process of renovating it into a ‘tiny, off-grid homestead’. “My goal is to make it fully off grid, just like my vans were. In seven years I didn’t need to pay a single electricity or water bill, as my 300w solar set up was enough to power everything I had. It’s a no-brainer to want that again. We do have a head start with our water being gravity fed from a private reservoir and of course the skills acquired over the years to make it happen. The only difference is the scale – larger projects = more money = more time.”
Nic is still finding plenty of time to “play outside” and enjoy outdoor adventures around Snowdonia. She refocussed her career around content creation early in her digital nomad days, but now she also teaches women wilderness skills such as foraging, fire-starting and natural crafts through her business Retreat Wild. It’s a complete 360 from her London commuting days.
“Life before the vans and the cabin, I felt disconnected,” she says. “Adulthood has a way of pulling us into work, progress and routines. I know they’re necessary, but it’s made us forget to enjoy what’s out there and good for us… nature. I really love the life I’ve created. Of course there are times when it’s harder, less convenient, but nothing has pushed me to the limits that makes me want to go back.”
Her advice to others is simply to follow your gut. “What we are taught to do and want in life isn’t always right for you. We are all individual people, meaning our wants and needs are too unique.”
- Find out about Nic’s bushcraft workshops and wilderness weekends for women at retreatwild.co.uk; follow her on Instagram @nicroams @retreatwild @cabincaban
