Back in 2017, Luke and I were fortunate enough to appear on BBC1’s Escape to the Country. At the time, we’d had enough of city life and were looking for a more laidback pace. Struggling for time outside work, Luke’s mother actually encouraged us to apply for the show.
Before we knew it, the production team got in touch and we were swiftly off to the Norfolk/ Suffolk borders to film. Our daughter Delores was very young at the time, so Luke’s parents actually ended up stealing Jonnie’s room as they’d come to babysit whilst we filmed.
Filming was fairly gruelling during the week as we had an awful lot to film, but we had such a laugh along the way.
When the episode aired the following year, so many of our friends and family saw us. It’s funny because even though it’s a BBC1 show, we assumed no one would have seen it!
The re-visited episode
During lockdown, we were asked by Jonnie if we fancied doing a revisited show. We’d been through some very tough times as a new business (owing to the pandemic) and thought it was a great opportunity to showcase our business.
Jonnie and the same crew came to film us exactly two years after our first filming. He hadn’t seen our new home, but he’d kept up with our progress over the years.
We had a great laugh filming with everyone again. One of the biggest highlights was seeing Jonnie taking baking lessons from Luke. I think he actually broke some of the equipment at that point. Everyone was roaring with laughter.
Our Escape to the Country revisited show aired almost 2 years ago to the day. It was a huge boost to our business and helped us to connect with new customers all over the UK. To this day, we still get stopped in the street and still receive phone calls from people that saw the show.
We were so sad to hear that Jonnie had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. It is fair to say that he and the Escape to the Country team were instrumental in our move. We have everything to thank them for.
Our thoughts and love go out to Jonnie and his family at this difficult time.