La dolce vita

 A couple who ditched the nine-to-five grind in Oldham for a new life in Italy have certainly achieved their dreams.

Mark and Julie Newman have taken part in grape harvests, mountain walks, bike racing and even pig killing (for the table) since leaving Springhead three years ago. Mark described their Italian idyll to Janice Barker.

Mark Newman used to be a desk-bound accounts clerk with a Manchester stockbroker.
Now he lives near the mountains above the Italian Riviera.

In a tiny village, Julie organises walking holidays while Mark does building contracting and helps a friend with cycling holidays.

He said: “As we speak, I’m sitting on my terrace with three eagles soaring above in the cloudless sky.

“Life is completely different to Britain — we don’t know what we’ll be doing from one day to the next.

“We are 20km up a valley from the coast, so the area doesn’t get many tourists. Those who do come here really want to get away from it all.”

The Newmans live in Molini di Triora, a village of 400 residents, where they have had a holiday home for eight years.

And Mark’s new life has been full of adventures.

He said: “They vary from a forest fire — which I inadvertently started and took two helicopters to extinguish — to big alfresco parties after the grape harvest with our neighbours.

“There was also the rescue of our friend Gianni who fell into the olive vat at the water mill to killing and butchering a pig with a neighbour and going searching and finding wild boar.”

Julie (46), a baker and confectioner, used to be part of the Oldham Ramblers, while Mark was a local racing cyclist. He sometimes still competes in Italy.

While Julie does her walking holidays, Mark concentrates on a property management service.

He said: “That can mean anything from just gardening, or full rebuilds and then renting properties out for owners.

“Last month, in a medieval mountain village called Triora, I was dismantling some scaffolding which was 10 levels high over a 40 metre width.

“That was because the scaffolding company had gone bankrupt and the owner was stuck with it for the last year or so, until I came along.

“I’d never done it before, but with my dad’s old BT hard hat and memories of a Meccano set in my youth . . . great!

“In between all that I help out with a mountain bike company, guiding or driving clients to and from Nice airport.

“People think it’s an idyllic life here, but it can be quite tough.

“First there’s the language barrier, then there’s the remoteness which can be a big shock. There is hardly any industry or commerce, so work is difficult to find. All the cultural differences are challenging too. It certainly makes me think of all the various immigrants to Oldham in a new light, especially when we encounter even some minor prejudice, not that we suffer much of that.

“We enjoy our life more here, certainly neither of us get into work on Monday wishing that it was Friday, with a weekend not long enough to recover from work stress.”

Mark even helped his friend Antonio, of the near-by village of Aigovo, to dispatch his pig on a day of torrential rain last October.

He described the operation: “The pig was stunned and had its throat cut, the blood collected and the carcass was taken by wheelbarrow to Antonio’s house where Julie, the only woman present, had been in the kitchen boiling huge kettles of water, which was poured over the pig to soften the bristles prior to shaving.

“After the bristles were off, we all had to heave to and lift the pig by its back legs and suspend it from a huge chestnut beam slung across the two buildings.

“From this position it was relatively simple to carve the forlorn beast into sections. Virtually nothing was wasted, the intestines being used to make black pudding from the blood, and any other offal either being saved for sausage making or, if unfit for human consumption, fed to the cats.

“Even the brain was saved to make brawn. The cuts of meat were either hung in the barn for curing as ham and pancetta, or placed in the freezer.

“The day ended in the late afternoon with a huge feast — although we had fish pie!

“Of course, we had to consume as much wine as possible as Antonio had just completed his grape harvest and was desperately trying to free up as many bottles as possible before the new wine was ready.

“The only man who got paid that day was Gianni, the butcher. Antonio made a great play by pulling out his trouser pockets, which of course were empty and said: ‘For you Marco, nothing’.

“Despite this, he’s given us lots of the meat over the last 12 months, vegetables — and wine by the demijohn.”