There's a sign hanging just inside the broad and battered front door of our ramshackle farmhouse that reads DEU VOS GUARD. On the day we bought our tiny patch of Catalonia a new friend who lives across the valley laughingly translated it as God Help You...'

So begins Martin Kirby's candid, compelling and often comic account of how he and his wife, a typical British couple with two young children, give up their careers, home and stable life in England to move to a small rundown mountain farm in Catalonia and turn it into a viable small-holdings business.

NO GOING BACK: Journey to Mother's Garden is an inspiring memoir and life-changing adventure in the tradition of Carol Drinkwater's THE OLIVE FARM and Frances Mayes' UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN.