The Salt Path Read online

  On the way back to the campsite, we spotted a poster in a gallery window. Simon Armitage. A poet. Walking from Minehead to Land’s End, doing readings along the way. Doing one here in St Ives on Sunday. Free. Fully booked.

  ‘Well, at least we know who he is now.’

  ‘Looks nothing like you though.’

  ‘What can I say, maybe people are just drawn to my poetic nature.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  We spent the evening hanging out in the shower block, washing our clothes and playing with the hairdryers.

  Da da da da Pirate FM. I tried to complete my St Ives ditty without much success.

  ‘A Tribute to Simon Armitage

  Seagulls, seagulls everywhere,

  In my hair.

  Pasties, pasties everywhere,

  In the bird.’

  ‘Ray, that’s complete crap.’

  ‘No, it’s iambic heptameter.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  Part Four

  * * *

  LIGHTLY SALTED BLACKBERRIES

  Spoilt for choice – which one to throw,

  which to pocket and take home.

  ‘The Stone Beach’, Simon Armitage

  15. Headlands

  It was one of those mornings that are just too perfect. Crystal-bright light from the moment the sun broke the horizon. The headland of Godrevy sharp green, and Trevose visible on the horizon with stark clarity. It couldn’t last; these mornings always descend into a mess of cloud at the very least, often far worse. But we’d discovered that the campsite charged twenty-five pounds a night and we knew we couldn’t stay another day.

  From Clodgy Point the green light stretched east, but in the west towering white-topped cumuli were gathering, breaking to send forerunners rushing by on the rising wind. The path led on, into a wilderness of headlands: Hor Point, Pen Enys Point, Carn Nuan Point and on out of sight. Headlands and the Atlantic, craggy, primeval, and foreboding. Always another headland. We walked on, the west becoming darker, broken rock falling into the sea, white foam beginning to build as the water took on the growing density of the lowering cloud. A hidden land of weather and rock, remote and isolated. Unchanged through millennia yet constantly changed by the sea and the sky, a contradiction at the western edge. Unmoved by time or man, this ancient land was draining our strength and self-will, bending us to acceptance of the shaping elements.

  The ground breaks and heaves, pushing up boulders, turning the path into a spew of sharp, impassable rock. We scrambled on, through, around, over, behind. The sky met the land; we met the sky. Water passed through everything, through clothes, swelling out of boots. The sea roared on the rocks somewhere to the right, but we didn’t see it; the rain ripped past leaving a grey, hanging wet air, so dense that there was little hope of following the path amongst the rocks. With no way to set a point ahead to make for, we stumbled on through the giant scree, giving in to the possibility that we may be destined to wander the boulder fields forever, in a wet grey Hades.

  At some point, without knowing how, bowed by the wind, at one with the rain, I realized my feet were on open ground; they had instinctively refound the path as it climbed to Zennor Head. The rocks gave way to bracken as we squelched on, eyes fixed on the path, afraid to let it go. Eventually it flattened and I looked up, finding myself face to face with two elderly Germans, the first people we’d seen all day.

  They were just as grateful to see us.

  ‘Oh thank God. We thought we would die here. We have passed this place three times now. Where are we?’

  You thought you would die? I thought I had died. Moth took a sodden Paddy Dillon out of his pocket and delicately peeled the pages apart as we stood in a circle, all trying to dry reading glasses on wet clothes.

  ‘Where are you heading?’ asked Moth.

  ‘Zennor. We have a room booked at the Tinner’s Arms.’

  ‘Down the hill then and follow the road inland.’

  They turned away and within two metres had disappeared into the fog.

  ‘Tinner’s Arms?’ The thought of a warm, dry pub was irresistible.

  Our legs dragged from exhaustion along the tarmac road, our packs were now twice the weight and draining streams of water, but the flat surface was heaven after the boulders.

  The legend of the Mermaid of Zennor tells of a beautiful woman with a magical voice, who occasionally visited the church. One day she came and set eyes on Mathey Trewella, who was duly entranced and left with her, never to be seen on land again, except maybe once out at sea, when the mist was rising in the west … or so the girl in the Moomaid of Zennor ice-cream shop in St Ives had told us. Apparently, in memory of the couple, the villagers had carved a mermaid on to the wooden pew where she had sat, and it was absolutely not created by a marketing-savvy, fifteenth-century congregation who had just invented a vanilla dessert.

  So when St Senara’s church appeared out of the fog we had to go in. And there she was in all her fish-tailed glory. We were just considering sheltering in the church for the night when the door was flung open and two men with backpacks with efficient waterproof covers marched in. The larger of the two beelined straight to the carving, turned and looked down at it.

  ‘Well, there it is.’

  He then swivelled round and marched out, taking the smaller man with him before he had even reached the carving. Yompers.

  We found some stools in a dark corner by the bar of the Tinner’s Arms, peeled off the waterproofs and ordered a pot of tea. The Germans waved from the other side of the room, already tucking into huge plates of food. I hung my red socks over the edge of the table and the water from them drained into the pool beneath the rucksacks. We were soon so hot that we began to steam, obscured in a dark corner by our own fog.

  The door flew open and the two men from the church marched in, followed by four others. No longer wet, they were showered and wearing clean dry clothes. We waited for them to announce what they were doing; backpackers just can’t help themselves, sooner or later they have to tell others what they’re doing. It didn’t take long.

  ‘We’re walking the coastal path. Minehead to Plymouth. We must be in Plymouth in two weeks max. This is our eighteenth day, so on schedule.’ The big man was the spokesman.

  ‘Why are we doing it? Well, charity of course. No one would do it and not support a charity, that would be just downright indulgent. We have back-up; the support van follows, of course.’

  This is the point in the conversation where any other walker would come out of the woodwork and the room would convivially discuss walking stories. The Germans had already gone and the other occupants clearly weren’t walkers. Well, actually, we’re doing the path too. No, not for charity, just thought we’d go for a walk. Do we have back-up? No, just our rucksacks. Camping? Yes, that’s right and yes, the tent is absolutely saturated. Where are we staying tonight? Haven’t the slightest idea. We decided against it and ordered another jug of hot water from the fog. They marched out at ten o’clock to ‘get an early night, ready for an early start’.

  At eleven o’clock it finally stopped raining and the fog lifted slightly. We put our wet clothes back on and headed out into the dark. A field by the side of the road seemed like a good spot, but the compost heap gave it away as the end of a garden. We’d spotted a bare patch on the headland and headed back up to that. A scramble through the bracken and we were into a field, the lights of a farmhouse just far enough away to risk it. The wind picked up while we mopped the tent out with a wet towel, so we sat in the field hoping it would dry enough to unroll the sleeping bags. Wet and shivering, eating rice and tuna at one in the morning on an exposed headland. Rising through the wet air from the cove below the low, moaning calls of seals; then fainter, slightly further away, a reply. Calling to each other through the black, wet night:

  ‘Fucking wet over here.’

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘Sick of that bloody mermaid. Won’t she ever shut up? I can’t get any sleep.’

 
; Or they could just have been seal calls; it was hard to tell. Either way, as I got into a wet sleeping bag in a wet tent on a windy headland and listened to seals in the night, I was grateful that I wasn’t on a piece of cardboard behind the bins in a back alley.

  Cows that have been grazing on a rich pasture make a particular gassy noise. And it was right by my head. If a cow was belching right by my head, it meant her hooves were right next to the tent: one missed step and she’d be tangled in a guy rope or, worse, put her foot through the fly sheet. I tried to whisper quietly.

  ‘Moth, Moth, there’s a cow right outside.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, she’s right outside.’

  ‘Ignore it, she’ll go away.’

  I couldn’t ignore it and tried to open the zip slowly, so as not to scare her and cause her to jump into the tent. It’s impossible to open a tent zip quietly. Then I tripped over the stove and fell on to the wet grass. The cow had already turned and was walking slowly away, grazing, utterly unconcerned. Steam rose from her back and in the cold, still air I could see her breath as she wandered away into the mist, joining the herd of apparitions at the edge of the fog. I listened to them tearing grass, chewing, belching, breathing in the wet half-light of a moon somewhere out of sight. The seals continued to call, low and repetitive, occasionally silenced by the sharp cry of an oystercatcher. I pulled the sleeping bag out and wrapped it around me as a glow began to shape the eastern horizon, illuminating the headlands one by one, until the moon was dimmed and the fog began to lift. The gull calls changed to daylight volume and lights came on in the farmhouse.

  The clouds had lifted far enough to make out the lump of Gurnard’s Head and the headlands in between, but the sky still hung low and grey, threatening to stay if the wind didn’t resist. The path passed through a ravine cut by a small stream, the banks filled with flowers, as if all the gardens of Zennor had shed their seeds into the water, to be caught up by the damp soil and bloom in profusion in a wild, hidden garden.

  And on to another headland. We sat on a bench and ate a wet fudge bar, listening to voices and marching feet.

  ‘I damn well don’t care about your blisters. We’ll pass Land’s End tonight, on schedule.’ They marched by, oblivious to us, and were gone. Land’s End today? We were days away from the question mark of Land’s End, the big ‘what then?’

  Two other figures wound their way up a tiny track from Pendour Cove and on to the path next to us. Old men, stooped, of similar size and age. One fully dressed in boots, waterproof and woolly hat, thin with a sunken, grey complexion, carrying a bundle of clothes. The other, slightly younger, in swimming trunks and flip-flops, a towel draped round his neck, carrying a Tupperware box. As they got closer, the movements, the shape of their heads and the bickering made it obvious they were brothers.

  ‘Good morning. Are you off for a swim? We’ve just been. Well, I have – he won’t take his boots off. Don’t know what he thinks will happen if his skin sees daylight, maybe something will fall off.’ The swimmer was also the talker. The other brother just stood quietly with a half-smile.

  ‘Perfect air this morning. Warm and damp, great for the skin. A drop of cold salt water, a warm mist, I keep telling him, keeps illness at bay and keeps you young.’ He held out the Tupperware box, half full with glistening, ripe purple fruits. ‘Do you want a blackberry?’

  The blackberries we’d picked along the way had been small, tart and sharp, so I took one only out of politeness, but when I put it in my mouth it was like no blackberry I’d ever tasted. Smooth, sweet, a burst of rich claret autumnal flavour, and in the background, faintly, faintly, salt.

  ‘You thought blackberries had passed, didn’t you? Or you’ve eaten them and thought you didn’t like them. No, you need to wait until the last moment, that moment between perfect and spoilt. The blackbirds know that moment. And if the mist comes right then, laying the salt air gently on the fruit, you have something that money can’t buy and chefs can’t create. A perfect, lightly salted blackberry. You can’t make them; it has to come with time and nature. They’re a gift, when you think summer’s over, and the good stuff has all gone. They’re a gift.’

  He put his arm around his brother, now shivering and pale, obviously ill.

  ‘Let me carry my clothes, old boy, and we’ll get you home by the fire.’ The other brother just smiled and they walked away into the ravine.

  We ate handfuls of blackberries, winding our way towards Gurnard’s Head, our hands stained purple.

  The sky came down, sucked up the sea and dropped in on the land, turning us into slithering mud bodies sliding along the broken rocky path. Huge, crashing rollers battered the headlands, as the rain battered us. Water ran through not-waterproofs, through clothes, collected in boots and shot out again in jets of muddy, sweaty soup. By mid-afternoon we gave up, put the tent up in a field, changed our wet clothes for slightly less wet clothes, ate rice, played I spy (a very limited game in a tent), played what to do after Land’s End (a very limited game when there are only two options: carry on or don’t), enacted Beowulf (a very limited game of ‘who’s got the biggest sword?’ and not advisable in a tent), then slept for twelve hours.

  A bright light crept into the tent, a brighter light than we’d seen for two days, but it didn’t matter if it was light or not: my stomach was twisting in blackberry cramps, shocked by the huge volume of fruit after weeks of rice and noodles. I squatted by the side of a curzy wall with purple relief and watched white fluffy cumuli track across a blue sky. Then I spotted her. A woman, sitting on a stool, head resting against the flank of a cow that was eating from a bucket. What was she doing, sitting in a field milking a cow? Was I ill, hallucinating, or caught in a Tess of the D’Urbervilles time warp? No one sits on a stool to milk a cow any more, especially in an open field. Then she waved at me. Oh fuck, she’d seen me squatting in her field. I’d reinforced the local belief that visitors are uncivilized, soya-milk-drinking heathens.

  ‘Moth, get up, we need to go.’

  The path flattened and curved slowly down to Portheras Cove. Our clothes were drying in the wind as we followed a stream towards the beach. A Border collie rushed by, leaping from rock to rock, followed by a small woman with blond-grey hair, so long that even in a plait it was below her waist.

  ‘Hi, are you walking the path? Where are you heading?’

  ‘Land’s End, or maybe beyond.’

  ‘Not far now then. Where have you come from? Are you camping?’

  ‘Minehead, and yeah, we’ve wild camped most of the way.’

  ‘I can tell; you have the look.’

  ‘The look?’

  ‘It’s touched you, it’s written all over you: you’ve felt the hand of nature. It won’t ever leave you now; you’re salted. I came here thirty years ago and never left. I swim here every day, and walk the dog. People fight the elements, the weather, especially here, but when it’s touched you, when you let it be, you’re never the same again. Good luck, wherever your path takes you.’ She followed the dog and disappeared effortlessly over the headland.

  ‘Is this coast the land of sages and prophets? They seem to be around every corner.’

  ‘Salted. I like that. Flavoured, preserved, like the blackberries.’

  ‘Sun’s warming up. Let’s dry our stuff.’

  The contents of the packs lay spread around us on the rocks, lightly steaming in the midday sun. Items that had seemed alien but acceptably practical when we bought them weeks ago were now like family. We saw all their quirks and failings, infuriating as they were, but each item was something we couldn’t live without, something we’d defend to the last. Even the paper-thin sleeping bags that we were coming to hate were as essential as an annoying sibling. The rough granite absorbed the heat, reflecting it back, warming our damp, wrinkled skin, soothing aching muscles, and we woke from a midday nap in late afternoon. I stood up stiffly, burnt skin creaking, as crisp and dry as the kit on the rocks. I started to repack things. The sleep
ing bags and charity shop jumpers were warm and dry at last; if only they could hold that heat into the night.

  ‘Shall we just stay here tonight, move on tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah, why not? I’m going for a swim.’

  Moth stretched into the deep water as it shelved away beyond the beach. His body was thinner than I’d ever seen, bright white inside his dark T-shirt tan. The muscles moved across his back, not strong as they had been after summers of building clawdd walls, making hay and digging ditches, but leaner and more defined than they had been since the shoulder pain and muscle wasting began. He swam, reaching his arms forwards in a front crawl, a full rotational stroke, out into yet deeper water, the sunlight dropping lower, lighting the darkening water with golden streaks. Then, in the dark blue and wine gum hues, a darker grey, a smooth grey, arching, diving and reappearing. And another, and a third: bottlenose dolphins working their way closer to the shore. Moth had spotted them and stopped swimming, bobbing still in the water as they crossed the bay, an occasional nose or tail flipping as they curved silently through the sea, hard to distinguish them from rising waves. They were the water, the falling, running sea, of the same element. They left with the tide and the light, slipping towards the horizon and the deep ocean.

  The Cornish population of bottlenose dolphins, unlike those of Wales and Scotland, are offered no specific spatial protection. The numbers in this area have halved in the last ten years, whereas in other areas they have stabilized. To receive local protection, they must be recognized by statutory conservation bodies as resident, but without sufficient study they can’t be declared resident. Scientists found, as an absolute proof of residency, that bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay were speaking with a different dialect to those in Ireland. Therefore, without doubt these dolphins were local as they were speaking Welsh. Unquestionably, the pod in Portheras have profound clotted-cream accents; what more evidence is needed?