Celebrity Escape to the Country: 'You can have the best of both worlds' says Loose Women’s Kaye Adams

While filming her episode of Celebrity Escape to the Country, Adams was shown a selection of homes around Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park in Scotland, not far from her current home of Glasgow. “I thought I knew Scotland pretty well, but actually, just driving out to the Trossachs – Aberfoyle was the sort of main centre – I was just reminded how absolutely stunning it is. So beautiful. Really breathtakingly beautiful…” she says. “It really made me fall in love with Scotland again. Not that I needed to!”

“We’re really fortunate (to be) in this part of the world where you can be literally half an hour away from Glasgow, or Edinburgh, or Stirling, and be in wonderful countryside,” she adds. “So I just thought, well, you know what, rather than close my mind to it, I’d quite like to explore it.”

Escape to the Country in all of its formats has become a national favourite property programme thanks to the variety of homes it features, the possibilities it inspires in both buyers and viewers, and the way in which it showcases everything that the UK’s countryside has to offer.

This marks the second series of Celebrity Escape to the Country, following a popular inaugural series last year. Joining Adams on a quest for a pastoral paradise to call home are Olympic champion Linford Christie OBE, musician Alfie Boe OBE, broadcaster Anita Rani, pop sensation H from Steps, and entrepreneur and The Apprentice winner Tim Campbell MBE.

Each hour-long episode takes the celebrities out of their urban comfort zones, exploring the joys and challenges of finding the perfect, peaceful place to kick back in the countryside, as well as delving into the personal stories behind their decisions to swap the smoke for the sticks.

In terms of what she was looking for from a rural retreat, it was really the somewhat indescribable essence of home that Adams was trying to pinpoint. Anxious that she might not find it away from the big city, she says she was pleasantly surprised by the sense of community she found in less-populated areas.

“It’s finding somewhere that you feel comfortable in and that you want to spend time in. Maybe making changes in life, maybe having a bit more time for hobbies, maybe having a bit more time for spending time in the kitchen and stuff like that, that I haven’t particularly done until now,” she muses.

“So a house that you feel comfortable and at ease in was probably my number one priority, being in a less built-up environment, just to sort of get that change of scene – and also still having a sense of community. Because, again, I think that’s perhaps one of the things that I had worried about. If you were in a country setting, would you feel isolated and cut off? It was quite important to me to have options that would still make you feel that you could be part of the community.”

Buzzing local pubs and restaurants, places to engage with hobbies and meet new people, sports clubs, a proximity to loved ones, and plenty to do on the weekend are all elements of city living that urbanites yearn for – and often think are part of a lifestyle that can’t be obtained in a rural setting.

However, as Adams learned through her Escape to the Country experience, the two need not be mutually exclusive. “You could lead a genuinely country-based life and not feel cut off from the rest of the world,” she discovered. “I suppose that had been my slight nervousness, that if you don’t see yourself as a country person, are you going to feel cut off from the busyness of an urban life? It really did convince me that you can have the best of both worlds. That was really nice, actually. I think that was probably the biggest revelation.”

Celebrity Escape to the Country is on BBC One at 7pm on January 3 and available on iPlayer.