Ben Fogle to buy island where he found fame

The island, two miles off Harris and the setting for reality TV series Castaway, is being put on the market, with an asking price of more than 2 million.

Fogle, one of the original castaways on the show in 2000, said earlier this week he had always dreamed of buying the island.

He said the price tag was a little high for a new father - his daughter Iona was born last week - but added he would be interested in "exploring Taransay opportunities with others".

Yesterday, he went further and said he had been in touch with a number of individuals to investigate the possibility of a consortium to buy the island.

"It could be transformed into a wildlife reserve, with sustainable lodges for guests," he said. "This could finally pay for its maintenance and upkeep, while also providing some much needed local employment."

He said the model could be the Alladale Estate in Sutherland, owned by Paul Lister, who has introduced wild boar and moose and wants to bring back wolves and bears.

Fogle said: "Taransay needs an owner who will love and care for her like a child. I think I know just the person. I'll be talking to my bank manager later."

While on Taransay, he said he spent each day exploring with his black labrador, Inca. "By the end of the year, we knew every rock, bog and loch on the island, which is about four miles wide and three miles long, navigating effortlessly across the Machair and along the beaches," he said.

"We would clamber our way up to the island's highest peak, Ben Raah, and look out over the Harris mainland. The view will stay with me until the day I die.

"Bleak, treeless and windswept, the island should have been a godforsaken place, but it was without doubt the most beautiful place I have been.

"The constantly changing weather and light altered the island like an artist's canvas. The talc-white sandy beaches and the turquoise waters were more striking than any Caribbean or Pacific island I have visited."

He has returned to Taransay several times, once, for the wedding of Tanya Cheadle, a fellow castaway, and Paul Overton, a producer for the series, and for his own honeymoon.

His latest visit was last year for a tenth-anniversary reunion for the original castaways.

He said: "It was in a sorry state. The wind turbine had long stopped turning, the deer fencing had collapsed, and the old polytunnels in which we had grown all of our fruit and veg were skeletal, stripped of their skin. The wild red deer desperately needed to be culled."The island is owned by farming brothers Norman and Angus Mackay, who live on Harris and are said to be selling for business reasons.

Taransay was once made up of three villages - Raa, Uidh and Paible - and had a population of 88, but numbers gradually declined. In 1961 there was only one family of five, the MacRaes, living in Paible, and they left in 1974. Since then, it has been used for sheep-grazing.