The Salt Path

  Raynor Winn

  * * *

  THE SALT PATH

  Contents

  About the Author

  Map

  Prologue

  PART ONE – INTO THE LIGHT

  1. Dust of Life

  2. Losing

  3. Seismic Shift

  4. Rogues and Vagabonds

  PART TWO – THE SOUTH WEST COAST PATH

  5. Homeless

  6. Walk

  7. Hungry

  8. The Corner

  PART THREE – THE LONG FETCH

  9. Why?

  10. Green/Blue

  11. Surviving

  12. Sea Dancers

  13. Skins

  14. Poets

  PART FOUR – LIGHTLY SALTED BLACKBERRIES

  15. Headlands

  16. Searching

  17. Cold

  PART FIVE – CHOICES

  18. Sheep

  PART SIX – EDGELANDERS

  19. Alive

  20. Accepting

  21. Salted

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Since completing the South West Coast Path, Raynor Winn has become a regular long-distance walker and writes about nature, homelessness and wild camping. She now lives in Cornwall with her husband Moth and their dog, Monty. This is her first book.

  For the team

  Prologue

  There’s a sound to breaking waves when they’re close, a sound like nothing else. The background roar is unmistakable, overlaid by the swash of the landing wave and then the sucking noise of the backwash as it retreats. It was dark, barely a speck of light, but even without seeing it I recognized the strength of the swash and knew it must be close. I tried to be logical. We’d camped well above the high-tide line; the beach shelved away below us and beyond that was the water level: it couldn’t reach us; we were fine. I put my head back on the rolled-up jumper and thought about sleep. No, we weren’t fine, we were far from fine. The swash and suck wasn’t coming from below, it was right outside.

  Scrambling through the green-black light in the tent, I tore open the flaps. Moonlight cut across the cliff tops leaving the beach in complete darkness, but lit the waves as they broke into a mess of foam, the swash already running over the sand shelf ending only a metre from the tent. I shook the sleeping bag next to me.

  ‘Moth, Moth, the water, it’s coming.’

  Throwing everything that was heavy into our rucksacks, shoving feet into boots, we pulled out the steel pegs and picked the tent up whole, still erected with our sleeping bags and clothes inside, the groundsheet sagging down to the sand. We scuttled across the beach like a giant green crab, to what had the night before been a small trickle of fresh water running towards the sea, but was now a metre-deep channel of sea water running towards the cliff.

  ‘I can’t hold it high enough. It’s going to soak the sleeping bags.’

  ‘Well, do something, or it won’t be just the slee …’

  We raced back to where we started from. As the backwash headed out I could see the channel flattened to a wide stretch of water only a foot deep. We ran back down the beach, the swash landing far above the shelf and rushing over the sand towards us.

  ‘Wait for the backwash then run to the other side of the channel and up the beach.’

  I was in awe. This man, who only two months earlier had struggled to put on his coat without help, was standing on a beach in his underpants holding an erected tent above his head with a rucksack on his back saying, run.

  ‘Run, run, run!’

  We splashed through the water with the tent held high and climbed desperately up the beach as the swash pushed at our heels and the backwash tried to draw us out to sea. Stumbling through the soft sand, our boots brimming with salt water, we dropped the tent down at the foot of the cliff.

  ‘You know, I don’t think these cliffs are stable. We should move further along the beach.’

  What? How could he be so careful at three in the morning?

  ‘No.’

  We’d walked 243 miles, slept wild for thirty-six nights, eating dried rations for most of that time. The South West Coast Path guidebook stated that we would reach this point in eighteen days, and directed us towards delicious food and places to stay with soft beds and hot water. The timescale and comforts were all out of our reach, but I didn’t care. Moth ran up the beach in the moonlight in a ripped pair of underpants that he’d been wearing for five days straight, holding a fully erected tent above his head. It was a miracle. It was as good as it gets.

  The light started to break over Portheras Cove as we packed our rucksacks and made tea. Another day ahead. Just another day walking. Only 387 miles to go.

  Part One

  * * *

  INTO THE LIGHT

  Tell me about a complicated man.

  Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost …

  Homer, The Odyssey

  1. Dust of Life

  I was under the stairs when I decided to walk. In that moment, I hadn’t carefully considered walking 630 miles with a rucksack on my back, I hadn’t thought about how I could afford to do it, or that I’d be wild camping for nearly one hundred nights, or what I’d do afterwards. I hadn’t told my partner of thirty-two years that he was coming with me.

  Only minutes earlier hiding under the stairs had seemed a good option. The men in black began hammering on the door at 9 a.m., but we weren’t ready. We weren’t ready to let go. I needed more time: just another hour, another week, another lifetime. There would never be enough time. So we crouched together under the stairs, pressed together, whispering like scared mice, like naughty children, waiting to be found.

  The bailiffs moved to the back of the house, banging on the windows, trying all the catches, looking for a way in. I could hear one of them climbing on to the garden bench, pushing at the kitchen skylight, shouting. It was then that I spotted the book in a packing box. I’d read Five Hundred Mile Walkies in my twenties, the story of a man who walked the South West Coast Path with his dog. Moth was squeezed in next to me, his head on his knees, his arms wrapped around in self-defence, and pain, and fear, and anger. Above all anger. Life had picked up every piece of ammunition possible and hurled it at him full force, in what had been three years of endless battle. He was exhausted with anger. I put my hand on his hair. I’d stroked that hair when it was long and blond, full of sea salt, heather and youth; brown and shorter, full of building plaster and the kids’ play dough; and now silver, thinner, full of the dust of our life.

  I’d met this man when I was eighteen; I was now fifty. We’d rebuilt this ruined farm together, restoring every wall, every stone, growing vegetables and hens and two children, creating a barn for visitors to share our lives and pay the bills. And now, when we walked out of that door, it would all be behind us, everything behind us, over, finished, done.

  ‘We could just walk.’

  It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I said it anyway.

  ‘Walk?’

  ‘Yeah, just walk.’

  Could Moth walk it? It was just a coastal path after all; it couldn’t be that hard and we could walk slowly, put one foot in front of the other and just follow the map. I desperately needed a map, something to show me the way. So why not? It couldn’t be that difficult.

  The possibility of walking the whole coastline from Minehead in Somerset, through north Devon, Cornwall and south Devon to Poole in Dorset seemed just about feasible. Yet, in that moment, the idea of walking over hills, beaches, rivers and moorland was as remote and unlikely to happen as us getting out from under the stairs and opening the door. Something that could be done by someone else, not us.

  But we’d already rebuilt a ruin, taught ourse
lves plumbing, brought up two children, defended ourselves against judges and highly paid barristers, so why not?

  Because we lost. Lost the case, lost the house, and lost ourselves.

  I reached out my hand to lift the book from its box, and looked at the cover: Five Hundred Mile Walkies. It seemed such an idyllic prospect. I didn’t realize then that the South West Coast Path was relentless, that it would mean climbing the equivalent of Mount Everest nearly four times, walking 630 miles on a path often no more than a foot wide, sleeping wild, living wild, working our way through every painful action that had brought us here, to this moment, hiding. I just knew we should walk. And now we had no choice. I’d reached out my hand towards the box and now they knew we were in the house, they’d seen me, there was no way back, we had to go. As we crawled from the darkness beneath the stairs, Moth turned back.

  ‘Together?’

  ‘Always.’

  We stood at the front door, the bailiffs on the other side waiting to change the locks, to bar us from our old lives. We were about to leave the dimly lit, centuries-old house that had held us cocooned for twenty years. When we walked through the door we could never ever come back.

  We held hands and walked into the light.

  2. Losing

  Did we begin our walk that day under the stairs, or the day we got out of a friend’s van in Taunton, to be left in the rain on the side of the road with our rucksacks on the tarmac? Or had the walk been coming for years, waiting on our horizon to be unleashed on us only when there was absolutely nothing left to lose?

  That day in the court building was the end of a three-year battle, but things never end the way you expect them to. When we moved to the farm in Wales the sun was shining, the children were running around our feet and life was spreading out ahead of us. A derelict pile of stones in an isolated spot at the foot of the mountains. We put every ounce of ourselves into its restoration, working on it through every spare moment while the children grew around us. It was our home, our business, our sanctuary, so I didn’t expect it to end in a dingy grey courtroom next to an amusement arcade. I didn’t expect it to end while I stood in front of a judge and told him he’d got it wrong. I didn’t expect to be wearing the leather jacket the kids had bought me for my fiftieth birthday. I didn’t expect it to end.

  Sitting in the courtroom, I watched as Moth picked at a white fleck on the black table in front of him. I knew what he was thinking: how had it come to this? He’d been close friends with the man who was making the financial claim against us. They’d grown up together, part of a group of friends; riding their trikes, playing football, sharing teenage years. How had it come to this? They’d stayed close even when others had fallen away. As they grew into adults and their lives took them in different directions, Cooper moved into financial circles that few of us understood. But Moth kept in touch regardless, remaining friends. Trusting enough that when an opportunity arose to make an investment in one of his companies we took it, putting in a substantial sum. The company with which the investment was made eventually failed, leaving a number of unpaid debts. The suggestion that we owed money had crept in insidiously. At first we ignored it, but over time Cooper became insistent that, owing to the structure of the agreement, we were liable to make payment towards those debts. Initially, Moth was more devastated by the breakdown in a friendship than by the financial claim, and the dispute rumbled between them for years. We were convinced that we had no liability for the debts as it was not specifically indicated in the wording, and Moth firmly believed that they would eventually work it out between themselves. Until the day when a court summons for payment arrived in the post.

  Our savings quickly ran out, eaten up by solicitors’ fees. From then on we became litigants in person, just a number amongst the unrepresented masses, something the government had created in their thousands when they announced the recent legal aid reforms, leaving us with no right to free representation as our case was classed as ‘too complex’ to qualify for legal aid. The reform may have saved £350 million a year, but left vulnerable people with no access to justice.

  The only tactic we were able to employ was to stall, and stall and stall again, playing for time, while all the time in the background contacting lawyers and accountants, trying to find some written evidence that would convince the judge of the truth: that our interpretation of the original agreement was correct, and we had no liability for the debts. Without a barrister on our side we were constantly outmanoeuvred and a charge was registered against the farm as security for payment of Cooper’s claim. We held our breath, and then it came: a claim for possession of our home, of the house and the land, of every stone we had carefully placed, the tree where the children played, the hole in the wall where the blue tits nested, the loose piece of lead by the chimney where the bats lived. A claim to take it all. We continued to stall, making applications, requesting adjournments, until we finally thought we had it, the shining white light of a piece of paper that proved that Cooper had no right to make the claim, as we didn’t owe anything. After three years and ten court appearances, we had the evidence that could save our home. We’d sent copies to the judge and the claimant’s barrister. We were ready. I wore my leather jacket, I was so kick-ass confident.

  The judge shuffled his papers as if we weren’t there. I glanced at Moth, needing some flicker of reassurance, but he stared straight ahead. The last few years had taken their toll; his thick hair was thinning and white and his skin had taken on a waxy, ashen appearance. It was as if a hole had been cut through him; a trusting, honest, generous man, this betrayal by such a close friend had shaken him to the core. A constant pain in his shoulder and arm ate at his strength and distracted his thoughts. We just needed this to be over, to get on with normal life, and then I felt sure he’d get better. But our life would never be that kind of normal again.

  I stood up, my legs loose, as if they were underwater. I held the piece of paper like an anchor in my hand. I could hear seagulls squabbling outside with agitated distracting calls.

  ‘Good morning, sir. I hope you received the new evidence which was supplied to you on Monday.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘If I can refer you to that evidence—’

  Cooper’s barrister rose to his feet, straightening his tie as he always did when he was about to address the judge. Confident. In control. Everything that we weren’t. I was desperate for a lawyer, begging for one.

  ‘Sir, this information which you and I have both received is new evidence.’

  The judge looked at me accusingly.

  ‘Is this new evidence?’

  ‘Well, yes, we only received it four days ago.’

  ‘New evidence cannot be proffered at this late stage. I cannot accept it.’

  ‘But it proves everything we’ve said for the last three years. It proves that we don’t owe the claimant anything. It’s the truth.’

  I knew what was coming. I wanted to freeze time, stop it there, never let the next words come. I wanted to take Moth’s hand, to get up and leave the courtroom, never to think of it again, to go home and light the fire, to run my hands across the stone walls as the cat curled into the warmth. To breathe again without my chest tightening, to think of home without fear of losing it.

  ‘You can’t produce evidence without the correct judicial procedure. No, I’m going to proceed to judgement. I will give possession to the claimant. You will have vacated the property in seven days’ time, by nine a.m. on that day. Right, we’ll move on to costs. Is there anything you wish to say about costs?’

  ‘Yes, you’ve made a complete mistake, this is all wrong. And no, I don’t want to talk about costs, we’ve got no money anyway, you’re taking our home, our business, our income, what more do you want?’ I gripped the table as the floor fell away. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

  ‘I’m taking that into consideration and dismissing the claim for costs.’

  My thoughts were drifting, running for safety. As Moth mo
ved in his chair I could almost touch the smell of hot dry gravel and fresh-cut boxwood as it whispered from his jacket. The kids had grazed their knees on that gravel learning to ride their bikes, and skidded on it as they drove out on their way to university. The roses were in full flower, hanging over the box hedge like cotton-wool balls; I’d be dead-heading soon.

  ‘I request the right to appeal.’

  ‘No, I’m denying the right to appeal. This case has gone on for far too long; you’ve had plenty of opportunities to supply evidence.’

  The room was shrinking, the walls closing in. It didn’t matter that we had only just found this evidence, or that it contained the truth; it only mattered that I hadn’t submitted it in the correct way, that I hadn’t followed the correct procedure. What would I do, what would we do, what would I do with the hens, who would give the old sheep a slice of bread in the morning, how could we pack a farm in a week, how could we pay for a hire van, what about the families who had booked holidays, the cats, the kids? How could I tell the children we’d just lost their home? Our home. Lost, because I didn’t understand the procedure. I’d made a simple, basic error: I hadn’t made a request to submit further evidence. I didn’t know I needed to. I’d been so happy, so sure, I just sent it in. Wasted my perfect piece of paper, with the perfect white truth. And now we had lost it all. Penniless, homeless.

  We closed the courtroom door behind us and walked down the corridor, stiff, silent. I glanced at the barrister in the side room and kept walking, but Moth went in. No, Moth, no, Moth, don’t hit him. I could feel all the anger, all the stress of the last three years. But he held out his hand to the barrister.

  ‘It’s all right, I know you’re only doing your job, but it was the wrong decision, you do know that, don’t you?’