Moving, life-affirming and inspirational, The Salt Path also provides a nuanced view of a region that has become a small-screen chimera…
Phrases like ‘rolling hills’, ‘world-class beaches’ and ‘areas of outstanding natural beauty’ will be very familiar to anyone who has watched documentaries and property shows about the southwest of England. For many of the people who live in the area, deprivation, poverty and concrete cancer are also everyday realities.
Raynor Winn’s 2018 book The Salt Path traverses a route between these two conflicting but equally valid perspectives. Personal betrayal and a deeply unjust legal system lie at the heart of the author and her husband Moth’s decision to undertake a 630-mile coastal walk from Minehead in Somerset to Poole in Dorset. A minor squall of miscomprehension whips up into a perfect storm of misfortune for the couple, as they find themselves homeless after 32 years of marriage and Moth is diagnosed with a rare, terminal brain disease. It’s a situation that would break most of us. Raynor’s way forward is in equal measures brave, foolhardy and desperate. ‘“We could just walk.” It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I said it anyway,’ she writes.
Part memoir, part travelogue, The Salt Path describes the rigours and elations of the pair’s journey along the South West Coast Path through Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset. Their various encounters with fellow backpackers and locals illuminate the best and worst aspects of human behaviour. For every exploitative landowner or tourist-trap cafe owner, there’s an act of casual kindness that gladdens the soul. The couple’s most severe experiences at the mercy of the weather or the terrain are redeemed by the beauty of nature’s unlimited colour palette and her rare spoils, such as peak-fruiting blackberries that have been brushed by salty sea air.
In relation to the dichotomous representations mentioned earlier, the counties they pass through aren’t simply chocolate-box idylls or isolated backwaters. The reality is far more complex and the book captures that beautifully. However, you’ll be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you’ve been a consumer of the various lifestyle shows focusing on Devon and Cornwall in recent years. The proliferation of such programmes was partly driven by lockdown restrictions, with television crews being unable to film in exotic climes with their accustomed ease and instead having to cast their staycationing gaze inwards.
Many of the resulting shows have been little better than advertorials. The worst are like a more artfully lit browse on the Rightmove website. Perspective has been thrown out of the designer bay window as TV companies regard the counties with the same avaricious glee as a seagull eyeing up a carelessly brandished Cornish pasty. Look at the pretty things, it feels like they’re saying, and they can be yours. Except they can’t – because like most programmes that sell a lifestyle, the cost is prohibitive to all but a few and the lifestyle doesn’t really exist anyway. There are occasional nods to reality, such as a passing mention of how locals struggle to get on the property ladder, yet even these are shallower than a rock pool.
The prime offender has to be Channel 4’s three-part series Finding The Cornish Dream, which was screened in 2022. Described by residents as being ‘in grotesque bad taste’, after seeing it the mayor of the county’s capital Truro questioned the wisdom of his decision to take part in it. Property porn has never been more hardcore. It was a crass, tone-deaf, real-estate brochure cosplaying as a TV programme.
Thankfully, the same can’t be said for the BBC’s Cornwall With Simon Reeve. All of the presenter’s documentaries exhibit a genuine warmth towards his subject, but he retains an open-minded approach that precludes easy conclusions. The two-part 2020 series and its 2023 follow-up Simon Reeve’s Return To Cornwall deal with multifaceted truths, rather than cartoonish fantasies. However, this isn’t a charcoal-grey rendering of the county. The colour and joy of the area are still there in plastic spades. St Ives Bay is still bathed in a unique light. Hope isn’t extinguished.
Like the food bank founder in the programme who continues to help struggling families the day after his wife’s death, The Salt Path proves there are life-affirming beacons during the darkest of times. So take your eyes off the unattainable prize for a moment and just watch.
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (Penguin). Also available as an Audible audiobook. Cornwall With Simon Reeve and Simon Reeve’s Return To Cornwall (both iPlayer)
