Review of The Salt Path ... by Philippa Linton

The beautiful South West ... my own photo of Tintagel, September 2018

I recently read Raynor Winn’s best-selling memoir The Salt Path.  This is her account of how she and her husband Moth became homeless … and decided to walk the 630 miles of the South West coastal path. 

The Winns lived on a Welsh farm for 30 years, renovating their beautiful home and raising their children there. They rented their barn out to holidaymakers. When Raynor was 50, disaster struck.  Moth had made a bad financial investment in a friend’s company and this ‘friend’ pursued him through the courts for full repayment.  Because the Conservative government abolished legal aid several years ago, Raynor and Moth had to represent themselves in court.  They lost.  They lost their home and their livelihood.  They had days in which to surrender their farm to the bailiffs, find homes for their cats and their sheep, and get out.   They applied for council housing but found the process so utterly demoralising that they took themselves off the list.  Added to all this, Moth had recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  Their two adult children were both at university.

With their lives in utter ruin, the Winns had nowhere to turn.  In their despair they decided they could do nothing more than walk the coastal path.  They set off with a tent and cheap sleeping bags crammed into their backpacks, and their only source of income a weekly payment of £48 in tax credits.  They had hardly any cash, and there were a few agonising days when they didn’t have enough to eat.   

I find it hard to believe that Raynor never wrote a book before.  She is a natural writer.  You experience every single part of their journey – the stones they walk on, their panting exhaustion, Moth’s physical weakness (although the walking seems to help his condition), the sun burning their skin, the smell of their sweat and their unwashed bodies, the salt in the air, the wind roaring over wild seas, the freezing cold of the nights as they cling to each other in their inadequate sleeping bags … you taste the sweet blessedness of ice cream when they have enough money to treat themselves to one, and the cool relief of swimming alone in a deserted cove. 

This is no bland, aspirational tale.  It’s raw and authentic.  It’s a brilliant book, and has deservedly brought Raynor fame.  She and Moth now live in Cornwall.  I imagine they are surviving the COVID-19 crisis as well as any of us are.  Raynor’s second book, The Wild Silence, is published this autumn.  I can’t wait to read it.

Raynor claims at one point that she doesn’t believe in God or a higher power, yet she has written a deeply spiritual book.  It's about the healing power of nature, the restorative power of becoming one with sea, land and sky.  It’s also about the power of love and the tenacity of the human spirit: it’s the strength of their marriage that help Raynor and Moth weather their ordeal.  The Salt Path also blows apart our preconceptions about homelessness: the Winns are a resourceful, articulate, professional couple who lost everything in material terms.  Hardly anyone they meet on their walk can cope with their honesty about their homeless status.  They meet their fellow homeless in the streets and woods of Cornwall.   

Finally, this book takes you on a profound interior pilgrimage – the soul stripped down to the bone, the niceties and cushions of life taken so easily for granted ripped away, with just the emptiness of sea and sky around you and your loved one (who is dying) at your side, both of you wondering where the path will take you.

This book inspires me as a Christian to strive for this kind of authenticity, beauty and honesty in my own writing.

I work for the United Reformed Church and am also a licensed lay minister.  Writers I like include J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, George Mackay Brown, Maya Angelou and Rosamond Lehmann.