The Salt Path - why we want to believe

If it’s true that Raynor and Moth pulled a fast one on me, I was very much up for going along with it.

My partner contemplates the horizon, or at least the next bit

I was on a Zoom call when the headline appeared on my phone, so all I had time to do was react and then push that reaction down into a neat bottle and bung the stopper in.

It blew straight off again.

No! Not The Salt Path. I want to believe! I don’t want to think about all the little things that make more sense now. That book means so much to me.

The movie made me cry. Not for the reasons you might think. Yes, it was sad. More than sad – tragic. And when we hear of tragedy, we hope for resolution of some sort, or at least for meaning. Nothing is worse than a narrative without a redemptive arc. Unfortunately, real life abounds in them.

I could say lots of things about the South West Coast Path and all of them would be true up to a point. All would be true for me. Your mileage might vary, but if we are going to start with data, then it’s pretty verifiable that there is at least 630 miles of it.

I’ve walked it. The whole thing, even the slightly rubbish bit through an industrial estate in Plymouth. It took ten years and by the end of it I needed a hip replacement. It’s tough. Even if you can afford a comfortable bed every night and door to door luggage transfers, it is hellish at times. I recall those times all too vividly (yes, Bude to Crackington Haven, I’m looking at you). That’s why it’s harder to contemplate going back and doing it all again than it was to start off the first time.

What else? It cost us a fortune, and while we didn’t rough it the way Ray and Moth did, we didn’t go overboard either. A dozen train journeys down from Manchester, about 100 nights’ accommodation and more cream teas than I want to admit to. Add all that up and gods, it’s expensive. And then there were the hours of planning my husband put into it. All those ferry crossings and out of the way places to stay.

Of course it was worth it. Even on the days when the rain soaked right through to your underwear. It was worth the broken wrist just outside St Ives, the sprained ankle on Lizard Point, the episodes of tummy trouble. The blisters. All that stuff. If you are a hiker, you will know.

I know what you’ll expect me to say next. That it was worth it for the moments when you reached the top of something and the view opened up, when the sun finally broke through, when you watched the soaring gulls and the unforgettable contrast of bright yellow gorse in bloom against a turquoise sea. It becomes addictive, but it’s doing you good. Who wouldn’t sign up to that? There comes a point when you realise the unbearable has happened several times, and you have survived it. When something as simple as water or a crunchy bar tastes like nectar and ambrosia.

That’s what makes you want to go back. That, plus the sheer simplicity of it. You have just one thing to do, put one foot in front of the other. And the views are to die for, when the cloud lifts. Foxgloves, seals, primroses, sea pinks: depending on the time of year, it’s all at your feet. Just don’t go too near the edge.

When we’d finished it, we wanted to do the whole thing again. We managed to get from Minehead to Barnstable (70 miles over 6 days. Difficulty: Challenging. This walk begins in Exmoor National Park and travels along the highest coastline in Britain….). Then life got in the way. Lockdowns. Cancer treatment. To be honest, I’ve already played fast and loose with the narrative there. We did that bit post lockdown and chemo, when I seemed to be getting better. It turned out that getting better was more complicated than I’d expected, and it just seemed impossible to go back and do any more.

It didn’t stop me longing for it. Life just seemed to be so much richer and more real out there. You only have to look at the photographs – I’m smiling, my eyes are full of vitality and life. That’s why the movie made me tear up. One scenic shot of Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson slogging up that little thread of sandy hope through a take-no-prisoners landscape, and life at any other peak of intensity just didn’t feel like bothering with.

Did the movie change anything? Yes, it got me off my backside and into the doctor’s surgery, where it turned out that I had a podiatry problem that could be fixed relatively easily and, with a bit of effort on my part, I could get some of those bits of my life back. Yesterday I managed 8k around a lake. It’s a start.

I don’t know yet if we will return to the path; even if we do it might not have the transformative effect I’d like to claim for it. Did it save my sanity, or my marriage? Probably not quite, but it helps to believe in these stories at times.

If it’s true that Raynor and Moth pulled a fast one on me, I was very much up for going along with it. It gave me hope. I hope nobody was foolish enough to set off on the same basis as an untested backpacker, though. It’s dangerous. I don’t use that word hyperbolically.

We all like a good story, but memoir is a slippery business. Life is complicated – narratives are generally simple. Where does organising your material become deception? What part does the editor play? Put too many qualifiers in and your story becomes unreadable, or at least less likely to be picked up at WH Smiths en route to a West Country holiday. Would the world be a better place if we heeded calls for a “Salt Path Law” and all memoirs had to come with a disclaimer? Should the holy books of major religions also have one? They sometimes perform a similar function.

I suspect that if the real Raynor and Moth have turned out not to exist, we will find a way to invent them. Pilgrimages and long walks have always inspired stories. Good and bad, factually accurate or otherwise, stories take on a life of their own and that changes people, sometimes in remarkable ways.

By the way, I know the movie got a few things wrong. It got places out of order. It relocated the bit where Moth stands up and declaims Beowulf to an enraptured audience from St Ives to Padstow. I even saw the logistics of filming the Minehead scenes, on the very day I set out with my partner to walk the Coast Path all over again. That’s enough to make anyone suspend disbelief. All those trailing wires and catering vans.

Nevertheless, that last scene left me with something in my eye, and it wasn’t just the wind. That gives it a truthfulness. Sort of.