The Salt Path Read online

  ‘You’ve lost a bit of weight actually, and you were never ugly.’

  ‘We’ll have to eat noodles all week.’

  ‘I know, but we’ll survive. If we can survive Duckpool, we can survive anything. But we can’t run out of water again.’

  We left Bude with enough twenty-pence packs of noodles to last a week and a lot of water. Walking out of the genteel holiday spot, past the retired ladies’ tennis club, past the strangely folded rocks and the tower on the headland. The path felt remote now. Without money, we had moved into a world apart. It was nearly dark when we found the corner in a field of thistles, ate noodles and slept.

  10. Green/Blue

  Dawdling along the gentle path from Bude towards Widemouth Sand, a table appeared unexpectedly between the gorse and thistles, offering a selection of books for ten pence each. We only had Beowulf to read and it was too much of a temptation. Amongst some trashy paperbacks, Moth picked out Robinson Crusoe in hardback. We left pennies and a beach pebble in the honesty box to offset the weight and dipped down on to the beach, crowded with surfers and sandcastles.

  We’d found that cafés don’t charge for hot water, so we stood for a moment in the gleamingly clean, air-conditioned café and ordered two mugs of hot water, taking them outside before we dipped a teabag in. We watched families on the beach while cancelling the direct debit for the insurance, using all of the phone credit to do so.

  A group approached from along the shoreline. Some walkers stroll, some limp forlornly, and some stride with purpose, but these were yompers. They yomped. Dressed in the walking uniform as issued by all outdoor suppliers: quick-dry trousers with important pockets, even quicker drying T-shirts, and wide-brimmed bush hats. Their packs were lightweight, but big enough to make them backpackers, not daypackers. The serious group of four sat on the table next to us, rapidly taking out wads of money and queuing for drinks.

  ‘Hurry it up, John, you’re taking too long.’

  It seemed only polite to talk to fellow long-distance walkers, although they obviously had a tight schedule. Moth queedled back in his chair.

  ‘All right, boys, are you doing the path?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Great. Are you doing the whole thing? Looks like you’ve come from the Poole direction.’

  ‘No and yes.’ They fixed their eyes on the table.

  ‘Hurry up, John, we need to go.’

  Moth, never one to acknowledge a brush-off, carried on.

  ‘So, doing it lightweight then. Bet you’re covering some miles in a day?’

  ‘Yes.’ They cracked. ‘Three days: Padstow to Hartland Quay.’

  ‘Wow. So where are you heading today?’

  ‘Hartland Quay.’ He stole a glance at our packs, and my grubby, ripped frock. ‘Daypacking, are you?’

  Moth was visibly suppressing a self-satisfied smirk.

  ‘No, we’ve come from Minehead.’

  ‘On the bus?’

  ‘No, walked the path, wild camped. Heading down to Land’s End.’

  The older member of the group turned briskly round, annoyed by our presence.

  ‘All very well in this weather, but blindly irresponsible. What will you do if the weather turns?’

  ‘Put a coat on.’

  ‘John, it’s taking too long, let’s go.’

  We watched them march over the headland, heads down, metronome. When we stood to leave, Moth had grown; his shoulders were a little straighter as he lifted my pack for me to put on.

  ‘We’re not running away, or hiding, you know. We should actually be proud of ourselves for doing this. Let’s carry on.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Two miles further on we realized I’d left my fleece behind and had to retrace our steps in the hope that it hadn’t been taken. The man behind the counter handed it over.

  ‘The waitress picked it up, said it belonged to the old backpackers. We think it’s great what you’re doing. Good luck.’

  We walked away, glowing. This wasn’t just about being homeless; we were achieving something. Even if we were old.

  Beyond Widemouth, pronounced Widmuth by the locals, the path put us into a trance, but then became just painful. Looking ahead it rolled into an endless succession of headlands disappearing into an infinity of blue and green. Blue – green – blue – green. Or for variation green – blue – green – blue – blue – blue – green – green – blue. It came and went in waves of up and down, up, up, down, down, down, steeply up, really steeply up, really very steeply up. Down, down, green, blue, green, up. Tent up, noodles, sleep, noodles, tent down, squat in the bracken, walk. Green, blue, up, green, down.

  Crackington Haven was picturesque, and we dawdled for a while watching two women eat a cream tea at ten thirty in the morning. When they’d devoured the last crumb and sucked in the last of the sloppy strawberry jam, we moved on. I worked on a business plan for turning virtual eating into a weight-loss tool. Up, up, down, green, blue, blue, green.

  We got into Boscastle at five minutes to five, and nearly made it into an outdoor shop to buy a new bootlace, but the door shut before Moth’s foot could stop it. He knotted the broken lace together and walked up the street. This village is famous, or infamous, for the floods of 2004, which washed away shops, cars and people, leaving the village devastated. I had thought it would be a friendly, welcoming place, happy to be rebuilt and back in business. But instead it was shut, everyone rushing away to put sandbags out just in case. The chip shop was open, but even a bag of chips was out of our price range, so we carried on and camped on an old hill fort just above the village. Tent up, noodles, sleep, noodles, tent down, squat in the bracken, walk. Green, blue, up, down, down, green.

  Paddy Dillon eats spinach for breakfast, wears a hair shirt and sleeps on a bed of nails, obviously, because he walks from Bude to Boscastle in one day.

  Green, blue. This coast is rugged, rock stacks standing defiantly against the power of the Atlantic. The Ladies’ Window coming and going as the waves rushed in and out of the rock arch. Hot and sweaty, cold and shivery. The wind picked up and dark clouds poured in from the west. Sweating. Up, down, green, blue. I stopped to pee in the undergrowth and it burnt like acid. Head pounding, body aching. Next stop and I’m peeing blood. Blue, blue, green, rocks.

  A queue formed through the Rocky Valley as a family in flip-flops struggled to negotiate the boulders. The phone rang as rain began to drop, heavy and determined. We sheltered under a rock overhang. It was Rowan, on her way to a late-summer job in Croatia but stuck in Venice. She thinks she’s missed the connecting bus. Before, when I was a parent, we’d have sent money to put her on a flight, make her safe. But now, just a helpless friend, I sheltered in a rock crevice, useless, hopeless, pointless, and talked to my daughter, stranded in a foreign country, alone. She talked and talked, panicking; the warning for a failed battery sounded …

  ‘It’s okay. The bus is here. I hadn’t missed it; it’s just late. Love you, Mum, be safe …’

  I curled up on the rock ledge and sobbed. Moth held me, stroking my hair until I could breathe again.

  Paddy says ‘ignore the Camelot Castle Hotel’ and just look straight ahead, but it looked like an oasis to me as I shuffled into Tintagel. Moth put our packs in a corner of the lobby and ordered a jug of water.

  ‘You need a doctor. Stay here, I’ll see if I can find a campsite, put the tent up, then I’ll come back for you.’

  ‘Don’t need a doctor, just need to drink loads, and sleep. I’ll come with you, I’m supposed to look after you.’

  ‘Stop, just stop. I’m not Rowan; I’m not Tom. Don’t be my mother. Just let it be, Ray. And stay here.’

  I curled into the armchair and slept. I half opened my eyes and thought I saw a knight on a horse. Then slept again. When I woke, Moth was back.

  ‘I saw a knight; am I hallucinating?’

  ‘Probably, or dreaming. Think all this King Arthur nonsense has got to you. There’s a campsite at the end of the road, tent
’s up, let’s go. It’s got showers that don’t need tokens.’

  ‘We can’t pay.’

  ‘I know.’

  Wind ripped in from the west, roaring through the grey broil of cloud, hurling the cumuli east into Devon long before their water burden hit the ground. I stood outside the tent in the darkness and let the wildness in. Swirled up, bound up in the storm’s ecstasy, part of a cycle of molecules without end. Contained, boundless, imprisoned, set free.

  I’m a farmer and a farmer’s daughter; the land’s in my bones. The end of August: September was coming when I should have the sheep penned in the corner of the field. Catching and upturning each one, trimming the hooves, dosing for worms, preparing the ewes for the ram. Turning the earth, ready for sowing the winter corn, autumn preparing for spring, in defiance of the winter to come. I’m cut free from that connection, from the meter of my existence, floating lost and unrooted. But I can still feel it.

  As a child I was sent to the field to collect a ewe and her newborn lamb, to carry the lamb for the ewe to follow, to bring them both safely to the shelter; I picked the lamb up but realized the ewe was about to give birth to a second. So I waited, lying on my back in the wet spring grass, clouds rushing overhead, the ewe only feet away, giving birth, as the first lamb found its feet. I knew then that I was one with everything, the worms in the soil, clouds in the sky; I was part of it all, within everything, and everything was within my child’s head. The wild was never something to fear or hide from. It was my safe place, the thing I ran to.

  Our land gave that to our children. Growing like saplings in the storm, bent by it, but strengthened at the core, rooted but flexible and strong, running free in the wind, but guided by it. Now our land was gone, would they keep what it had given them? I’d feared I would lose it, that tie to reality, when our land was lost. Sitting in the grass, wet air rushing past, roaring overhead, the dangerous, self-willed, uncontrolled, wild strength of the wind filled me up. Caught by the storm. Held up. Bonds rebound, chelated. Released. Regained. I could never lose it; I was as much the storm as I was the dry dust and the high-pitched call of the oystercatchers. All material things were slipping away, but in their wake a core of strength was beginning to re-form.

  We left the far corner of the campsite after two nights. Feeling slightly weak, but well enough. Walking confidently past the reception and not looking back.

  Tintagel and its Arthurian legends behind us, we paused by St Materiana’s church to drink more water. The phone rang again. Rowan. She’d been offered a job with a PR company in London and they needed her to start straight away. How would she get back? She was already on the train; she’d worked it out for herself.

  11. Surviving

  Slate quarrying marked the way in patches. It was the forerunner of things to come, the inescapable evidence of man’s need to take everything he can. Even the spoils of the destruction were taken to create the Cornish banked walls. In Wales a drystone wall like this, cambered in on both sides with soil in the middle and a hedge grown on top, is called a clawdd. But here, with zigzag patterning in the laying of thin stones end on end, the spoil created the ‘curzy way’ walls. They gave a sense of moving to another zone, another way of living, another way of generations fighting to hold the wild at bay. We walked on, between the wall and the sea, in the strip of wilderness that was ours.

  The path dropped quickly down into the narrow inlet of Trebarwith Strand. The patchy white clouds were inviting, but the storms had left the sea raging, forcing itself violently on to the rocky shore. A tiny café offered a cone of chips for a pound. We had five pounds seventy-five left, so rashly ordered two, plus two mugs of hot water, and sat down amongst the surfers, just out of reach of the waves. Poseidon reared up, and then fell away, a Rottweiler on a retractable lead.

  The path had a steepness that kept my nose close to the ground, passing gardens filled with fishing nets and buoys, until eventually at the top we passed a couple eating huge pasties, with a scruffy whippet/lurcher/greyhound patiently waiting for crumbs. One whole, large pasty each. Next to them two enormous backpacks.

  ‘Hey, backpackers.’ He nearly choked on the pastry in his rush to greet us; probably, like us, he’d found there were few of us around.

  ‘You too.’ We stopped for a moment to exchange the usual wayfarer details. They’d started in Tintagel and were heading as far as a week would take them. When they asked where we were heading, Moth told them with confidence that it would be Land’s End, and maybe further. Buoyed by their astonishment that we were tackling the entire north coast, we walked on with a spring in our step.

  We carried on through open grassland, where plump white mushrooms were starting to show, gathering a few, with handfuls of tart, unripe blackberries through wooded valleys.

  A collie dog stood facing the bracken, barking. We passed it and stroked the friendly face, before it returned to barking. There was no one with it. We looked around the cliff top in fear that its owner might have fallen off, but saw nothing so carried on. Looking back into a steep-sided cove, there were people on the sand, but apparently no way in. Had they come by boat? Suddenly a boy jumped out from the undergrowth on to the sand below, followed by the dog. There must be a secret tunnel. We didn’t have the energy to explore, so carried on, in and out of deep combes until the sun began to dip and the sky lit into peach, lemon and mauve. We pitched the tent on Bounds Cliff and ate noodles with mushrooms as the colour faded into starlight, and the gulls called their long night calls.

  We were packing the tent away when a group of old people in smart multi-pocketed shorts marched up to us.

  ‘Brace yourself; we’re going to get our first bollocking for camping where we shouldn’t.’ Moth put his best ‘granny’s favourite’ face on, while I tried to look away.

  ‘Where’s the coastal path?’ a red-faced man gasped demandingly between breaths.

  ‘You’re on it.’

  ‘No, this isn’t it. Coastal path, on the coast. We’re going to walk to Tintagel.’

  ‘This is it. It’s not on the beach, it’s here on the cliff.’

  ‘Well, are there any more hills like that one?’

  ‘Six or seven? Don’t know, I lost count.’

  ‘Well, forget that then. We’re going back.’ They turned around and stomped away grumbling. ‘It should be called a cliff path, not a coast path.’

  Port Isaac used to be a fishing village. The owners of the few boats on the beach would tell you it still is. But the thousands of visitors who come by car and bus trip know it’s the village where Doc Martin lives. We threaded our way through the narrow, heaving streets, crowds of people trying to take selfies with Doc’s house in the background. A whippet/lurcher/greyhound bounded through the crowd, knocking telephones and ice creams flying.

  ‘Simon, oi, Simon, catch the dog, will you?’

  Moth caught the dog’s collar and hung on to him until the pasty couple made it through.

  ‘Knew it was you. We knew it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Knew it was you. Answered to your name, didn’t you?’

  ‘Only because people have called me it before.’

  ‘Yeah, course, ha, your mum.’

  ‘Look, stop now. Who is Simon?’

  ‘Simon Armitage.’

  ‘Who the fuck is Simon Armitage? We’ve been hearing the name since Combe Martin and we still don’t know.’

  ‘God, you’re good, aren’t you? Keeping it hidden. We’ll catch you out, though. Don’t forget we’re on your trail.’

  Moth handed back the dog and we struggled through the hordes and up the hill out of the village, where a group of smart elderly ladies were gathered.

  ‘Simon, Simon, can we have a photo near the Doc’s house? Two birds with one stone, so lucky!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ooh, Simon, what a great Doc impression. Good luck with your walk.’

  I followed Moth as he pounded on ahead, marching up a steep gorse path without looking
back until I gasped up behind him and had to call a halt.

  ‘Why’s it annoyed you so much?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just want to know who this person is; he could be anyone.’

  Rising and falling between gorse and stone, with the sea booming always. A rhythm of pain and hunger, mellowed into ache and thirst, softening eventually to just a booming rhythm. Needs slipped away as the winds chided the water and the gulls guided us forward. Fishermen used to live in Port Quin, but now it seems a lost collection of weekend homes. Rumour has it the fishermen went to Canada, chasing a better haul, leaving their lobster pots to rot as garden ornaments. The views behind marked the miles passed, but the views forward were shortening, heading inexorably towards another corner, another drop south.

  The sun lowered, painting the tiny islands of the Mouls in a low September light as we dropped off Com Head. A kestrel that had hung in the sky for an endless time quietly landed on the fence ahead, the early-evening sun lighting his back in a russet glow. We hesitated before passing, not wanting to disturb him. As if sensing our indecision, he lifted off, circling and then landing on a rock just behind us. We carried on. The edge of an arable field was a possible campsite, but, fearing for the groundsheet on the stubble, we kept walking and found ourselves at dusk on Rumps Point.

  There used to be an ancient fort here, looking back towards Tintagel headland and away into the Atlantic. If there had been a King Arthur he would have put his castle here, not amongst the trinkets and pasties further east. Here, where he could see his enemies coming from every side. A secret place of forgotten stories. We hid the tent behind the grassy mounds of the old earthworks, on an active rabbit warren, and climbed to Rumps Point as the sun slipped away, leaving only deep unnamed colours.

  In the darkness we ate the last pack of noodles. We had water, but no more food. I contemplated hunting rabbits. It would be nothing new: Dad and I had shot rabbits, hundreds of them, as they ate the corn in swathes, destroying a whole year’s crop in a week. We filled the freezer, sold them to butchers, made stews, pies, skewers, pâtés, soups, sandwiches, until no one could face rabbit again. I lay in the darkness thinking about making a snare, but had neither the energy or enough gas to cook a rabbit if I caught one. I woke in the night to the sound of them tearing and chewing grass. From the volume of the snuffling, it could have been a big stew.