We’re paid to live on a remote island with no electricity or running water – mystery illnesses cleared up when we moved

A COUPLE who gave up their city lifestyle to get paid to live on a remote island with no electricity or running water say mystery illnesses cleared up once they moved.

Nurse Emily Campbell, 28, originally from Cork, Ireland, and her civil engineer boyfriend Daniel Regan, 30, met while both were living in London.

Emily spotted an advert to become caretakers of the remote Great Blasket Island, off the west coast of Ireland, the most westerly point in Europe while she was helping to renovate Daniel’s flat in Clapham, in the south of the capital.

Acting on a whim, she applied and beat thousands of applicants to land the unique job.

Since they have made the move, Emily’s health has improved and the pair are now questioning if they’ll ever be able to leave.

Great Blasket Island lies about two kilometres from the mainland and was inhabited until 1954 when living there became unsustainable.

Nowadays, tourists can hop on a ferry from the Irish mainland to take in the picturesque scenery.

Emily and Daniel run the café and three holiday lodges on the island to cater for the tourists but they can often go for days without seeing any visitors if ferries can’t make the crossing due to bad weather.

Along with their duties dealing with the café and lodges they also help look after the island’s seal population.

The pair are featured on Channel 5’s Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild with Emily telling the host that the sun “sets in November and doesn’t appear until February”.

Daniel and Emily have to stock up on hundreds of cans of food and often resort to “baked beans for dinner” if they are unable to get food from the mainland.

Daniel said: “To the west, there’s nothing until you reach Newfoundland in Canada.”

While it may sound an idyllic lifestyle there are some drawbacks – there is no electricity, with the only light coming from candles or stoves, and there is only fresh running cold water which comes from a spring situated above some of the cottages on the island.

Despite the challenges, Emily said their new life was less “emotionally draining” than when they were living in London.

She said: “I was burned out, my body was given stress signals”.

While living in London she worked as a children’s nurse at Great Ormond Street hospital and she said the stress had caused her eyes to become sore and red, with the skin around them, flaking off.

Despite seeing doctors and specialists, Emily was unable to get a diagnosis.

But having moved to the Blaskets, the illness disappeared.

Emily said that she would love to live there and grow her own food, but the harsh conditions on the island make that dream a tough one to make happen.

Also part of the couple’s duties on the island are to wrangle 200 sheep for farmers on the mainland that keep their sheep on the island.

Owners of the cottages and coffee shop Billy O’Conner and his partner Alice Hayes, hire new caretakers each year to look after the properties.

Daniel told  in February: “When we got offered an interview we were absolutely delighted to get to speak to Billy and Alice and were telling everyone.

“We had everyone crossing their fingers and toes and Emily’s mum even lit candles and had the rosary beads out.

“We applied in January when the job was advertised, and the excitement of the prospect really got us through the January blues.

“Before we had even received an interview, we were looking at buying snorkels and wind-up radios.”

He added: “Alice emailed us to offer us the position on a Monday morning and we leapt out of bed screaming with excitement.”

The couple left the island in October as it’s too cold to live there and they are now touring round Indonesia.