By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews!
Because The Salt Path was a book chosen purely for its cover, I didn’t even realise this was a memoir until I started reading. Instinctively I balked, but it quickly turned into an unputdownable read and one that will surely stay with me for a very long time.
Raynor Winn and her husband Moth lose everything due to a bad investment and a friend’s betrayal. After years of fighting in the courts which drains them of funds, the court then requires them to hand over the Welsh farm where they have raised their children in order to cover the debt of the failed business venture. The very next day, they learn that Moth has a rare and incurable degenerative brain disease, one that would first destroy his body, then his mind and end with his being unable to swallow.
With nowhere to live and unwilling to become a burden to friends, Raynor makes the crazy decision to pack what’s left of their world into a couple of rucksacks and walk the Southwest Coast Path. It’s a path which starts in Minehead, Somerset, travels down to Land’s End, the southernmost tip of Britain and then heads east along the southern coastline, ending in Poole. Six hundred and thirty miles of rough terrain.
They set off in the heat of summer carrying 17 pounds of weight apiece, the last of their money (roughly $150) in their pocket and with the promise of $60 (ish) dollars being deposited into their account each week by the government. What follows is a truly remarkable story of their journey.
Because they can’t afford to stay in campsites they must wild camp, which means they frequently find themselves setting up camp in places they probably shouldn’t and leaving at first light, careful to leave no trace of their ever having been there. Sounds simple enough, but it leads to some pretty funny situations.
Occasionally they do splurge on a $15 per night campground for the luxury of a hot shower as well as splashing out on the odd fresh, hot pasty (this is the Cornish coastline after all) as a welcome break from the monotony of a steady diet of rice, noodles and fudge.
As you can imagine their journey is filled with as many ups and downs as the terrain they are walking. The weather, be it rain or blistering sun, often proves problematic, food disappears faster than it should, medication runs out and the coastline often proves more arduous than they anticipated. In the beginning Moth’s joints scream with pain and he frequently cannot get out of his sleeping bag until late morning. Moth was warned by his doctors not to assert himself and I can’t imagine this strenuous trek is anything close to what they had in mind.
But along the way they learn to love the freedom of wild camping, the beauty of the landscape around them, swimming in the sea under a moonlit sky and embracing the random kindness of strangers.
The Salt Path is a nature story, a love story and an inspirational story of bravery and sheer determination laced with lovely prose and gentle humour. In the end it proves to be one of those rare occurrences where a seemingly bizarre and irrational decision that defies the odds, turns out to be a powerful, life changing positive.
On the final page Raynor says this: “Bad things had hit us in the face like a tidal wave and would have washed us away if we hadn’t found ourselves on the path. Our journey had drained us of every emotion, sapped our strength and our will. But then, like the windblown trees along our route, we had been re-formed by the elements into a new shape that could ride out whatever storms came over the bright new sea.”
