Tower and Town, October 2019 (view the full edition)Raynor Winn“The Salt Path”
Every year the Lit Fest chooses a book for Book Groups to read and discuss and then come to meet the author. This is this year’s choice and has proved so popular that it became one of the first events to sell out so there are some disappointed readers. Nonetheless it is a book to read! It is an uplifting memoir about a couple who embarked on the South West Coastal Path after becoming homeless. The day after Raynor and Moth ( her husband) found out that they were going to lose their Welsh farm, Moth was told he had a rare degenerative disease. What do you do when you are in your 50s, have lost your worldly possessions and been diagnosed with a terminal illness? Naturally you decide to walk the South West Coastal Path from Minehead in Somerset, through North Devon, Cornwall and South Devon to Poole in Dorset. A 630 mile walk. Their children said they were insane, but as their world collapses, the coastal path gives them a purpose and offers them the hope that they might find some kind of future. Their journey is filled with many ups and downs – intense cold, wet, hunger and physical pain but is also filled with optimism and the freedom of wild camping, swimming in the sea in the moonlight and surviving for days on fudge and pasties. Raynor’s writing is filled with the deep endearing love she has of Moth, history of the landscape they are moving through, insights into the natural history around them and humour. It is a wonderfully touching book which was shortlisted in 2018 for the Costa biography award. Virginia Reekie |