# The Salt Path

The Salt Path is a 2018 memoir, nature, and travel book by Raynor Winn. It deals with the theme of homelessness and the true nature of home in the face of the unpredictability of life. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Wainwright Prize and the Costa Book Awards, and won the 2019 RSL Christopher Bland Prize. The action takes place in South West England, mainly describing a long-distance walk along the South West Coast Path. The book was universally welcomed warmly by critics. A 2024 film adaptation of the same name has Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in the lead roles.

## Book
### Narrative

   I ... shivered inside the one-season super lightweight sleeping bag. Morning didn't come soon enough, and I was out moving as quickly as I could. But not as quick as a hairy Labrador/spaniel/terrier that dived through the sand, knocked the water off the stove and jumped into the tent, rummaging through the bags. Moth sat up as the hairball leapt all over him. 'There's no food in here, mate.' He bounded out again chasing his master's whistle, skidding sand behind him. 'It's not a campsite, you know. You can't camp here. It's disgusting, sleeping in public.' 'Yes, good morning, lovely day again.' The dog owner stomped on, as the hairball bounded after him.
Raynor Winn (Ray) and her husband Moth, diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration, become homeless after a friend's business runs into trouble; he successfully sues them for their farmhouse, which he falsely claims they offered to his business as a guarantee. Almost penniless, but receiving a little money in tax credits each week, they decide to walk the 630-mile (1,010 km) South West Coast Path. They discover that a rucksack feels a lot heavier when you are fifty than when you are twenty. They buy cheap rucksacks to replace their own antique ones.
They take cheap sleeping bags, a light tent from eBay, thin waterproofs, a lot of instant noodles, and hardly any money. The first night, on the edge of Exmoor, they take half an hour to put up the tent. The next day, aching all over, Ray develops an enormous blister, and they treat themselves to the only cream tea on the trip.
Another day, desperate for cash, they try to find a cash machine in a pretty village. Moth is mistaken for the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, who is also walking the path somewhere, and treated with humour when he denies it.
Gradually they learn how to cope with the vagaries of a long-distance walk, hills, heat, cold, rain, navigation, and the curious people, landscapes, and wildlife they encounter as they go. The hard exercise somehow helps with Moth's stiffness.
One night they stay in a campsite run by a ragged bearded man who takes pity on their aches and pains, and gives them something to smoke that fills them with relaxed bliss. Walking past the outdoor Minack Theatre and surprised by the crowds, they are given tickets by a couple in a Land Rover.
After the first section of the walk, Ray takes a job wrapping sheep fleeces, something she had done on a small scale on her farm. She finishes the intense first day's work covered in green slimy lanolin from the wool, her arms aching: and gets up at 5:30 am the next day to do the same.
On the last day, after walking the whole path in two sections, in two successive summers, they meet a stranger who offers them the tenancy of a flat, right where they are, at Polruan.

### Route

Moth and Ray Winn walked westwards from Minehead, Somerset via Exmoor and the north coasts of the counties of Devon and Cornwall to Land's End. From there they walked eastwards along the south coasts of Cornwall and Devon to Dorset, finishing at Poole Harbour.
| 1 | Minehead |
| 2 | Combe Martin |
| 3 | Westward Ho! |
| 4 | Hartland |
| 5 | Bude |
| 6 | Tintagel |
| 7 | Padstow |
| 8 | Newquay |
| 9 | St Ives |
| 10 | Land's End |
| 11 | Penzance |
| 12 | Kynance Cove |
| 13 | Falmouth |
| 14 | Gorran Haven |
| 15 | Polruan |
| 16 | Plymouth |
| 17 | Salcombe |
| 18 | Brixham |
| 19 | Dawlish Warren |
| 20 | Sidmouth |
| 21 | Lyme Regis |
| 22 | Weymouth |
| 23 | Lulworth |
| 24 | Poole |

### Publication

The book was first published in hardback by Michael Joseph in 2018, and in paperback by Penguin Books in 2019. It has original cover artwork (Cornish Path) in woodcut style by printmaker Angela Harding. Harding told the NHBS conservation group that the artwork was based on her own personal experience walking the South West Coast Path and camping in Cornwall when she was younger. The text is accompanied by an outline map of the South West Coast Path showing the main towns along the route.

## Reception

Sam Wollaston, writing in The Guardian, comments that the story "sounds very gloomy. The book isn't though, nor its writer." Instead, the book is "funny, sometimes uplifting", as it weaves its story around the boundary between life and death. P. D. Smith, reviewing the book in the same paper, writes that "Their journey is filled with as many ups and downs as the undulating cliff-edge route." Smith adds that the "wonderfully uplifting and touching" book is full of "wry humour".
Kirkus Reviews notes "Many people's uncharitable reactions to their homeless state—one would think they were lepers"; but that there were equally often "unexpected gestures of generosity". It comments that Winn's prose is at the outset "mercurial", taking time to "settle down and achieve simplicity and clarity of observation". The review expresses doubt about the credibility of some of the "vignettes" describing coastal nature and "the enchantment of moments in the wild", but suggests that these will be forgotten as the reader comes to "admire the couple's fortitude and resiliency."
Canon Mike D. Williams of Exeter Cathedral writes that the book is made by the quality of its writing, and the stories of the people that Ray and Moth meet: "Those who treat them as tramps, those that show kindness and generosity." He notes how Moth several times shares his "meagre rations" with other hungry and homeless wanderers. The book is, he writes, about the coast path and its people, but its central theme is "the courage, resilience and grit of two people who, out of love for each other, keep putting one foot in front of the other."
The neurologist Rhys Davies, in Advances in Clinical Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, commented that they did not often review best sellers, "still less travel books", but added that The Salt Path had "a neurological twist", given Moth's diagnosis. Mentioning the value of laughter as "the best medicine", he describes the book as a tale of "the indomitable human spirit". He finds the Winns a powerful case for "the benefits of positive action and of physical therapy, even for the ghastliest of neurodegenerative conditions." He recommends the book to clinicians and patients alike.

## Awards

The Salt Path was shortlisted for the 2018 Wainwright Prize, and the 2018 Costa Book Awards in the biography category. The Costa judges described it as "An absolutely brilliant story that needs to be told about the human capacity to endure and keep putting one foot in front of another." In May 2019 The Salt Path won the inaugural RSL Christopher Bland Prize. The book was a Sunday Times bestseller in 2018. In September 2019 it was the number one bestselling book in UK independent bookstores.

## Impact

In March 2018, BBC News showed an item about Moth and Raynor Winn's journey from crisis to coastal path. By 2022, The Daily Telegraph reported that Raynor had sold over a million copies of her books. The Salt Path was followed by two more books, The Wild Silence (2020) and Landlines (2022). The Wild Silence both continues the story, telling how the couple get the opportunity to rewild an old farm in Cornwall, and brackets The Salt Path with prequel detail of how they came to lose their farm. In 2024, BBC News ran an item about the couple's intention to walk the 185-mile Thames Path to publicise Moth's neurological condition, corticobasal degeneration.
Deborah Sharman, a social work educator at the University of Wolverhampton, compares and contrasts Winn's autobiographical account of homelessness with the work of Adam Burley, a clinical psychologist who focuses on homelessness in Scotland. Sharman notes the Winns' social situation and their determination to avoid dependence on friends or "the system." Sharman compares this choice to be independent to the relational approach to providing care by Burley. She states that he argues that the health care system itself appears "'phobic' about developing dependency, actively striving to make people independent and in so doing continues their isolation and inability to function."

## Film adaptation

In 2023, a film adaptation of the same name began filming with Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in the lead roles. It was premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September 2024. The UK release date is 25 April 2025.