The Salt Path Page 6

  Moth made it back up the hill, gathering a few stray coppers along the way.

  ‘So how much have we got left then?’

  ‘Nine pounds and twenty-three pence.’

  ‘And when do we get some more money?’

  ‘Day after tomorrow, I think. Two packs of rice and something to go on it, do you think? Or supernoodles?’

  ‘No, anything but noodles.’

  We came out of the shop with a slightly heavier rucksack and two pounds seventy in the purse. But we did have a Mars bar each.

  The first time I saw Moth across the sixth-form college canteen I was eighteen. He was wearing a white collarless shirt as he dipped a Mars bar in a cup of tea. I was mesmerized. Afterwards, hanging out of the third-floor window with my friends, we watched him walk through the grounds: old army trench coat flapping in the wind, riding boots up to his knees. I couldn’t think of anything else. Weeks passed before he spoke to me, weeks of hiding, watching from a distance, behind bookshelves, in shop doorways, in the bushes. All I could think about was him. And sex. Then he spoke to me, and it seemed that was all he thought of too.

  A teenage crush grew into a friendship that had us running in the grasp of its passion through adult life. A life I hadn’t known existed, down roads I would never have taken, through days on wind-scoured moors, weeks of screaming resistance at CND rallies, music festivals and pizzas in the park, as he swept me into his eco-warrior life, and talking, talking, talking, in a conversation without end. Years passed with our legs entwined, in endless chatter and laughter. While our friends changed their relationships with their clothes, we needed nothing else. Through our thirties and forties, we watched as couples around us fell into a grey state of companionship, defining themselves by their Saturdays spent shopping or watching the match, and fizzling inevitably into break-ups. And all the time we lived with a passion that didn’t die.

  Hobbling homelessly through Lynton, there was still something about the way he ate a Mars bar that could lift my spirit in an instant. But months ago, a doctor had given him a drug called Pregabalin to stop the nerve pain in his shoulder, and it had changed everything. Just another loss. Still the closest a friend could be, but an unapproachable physical gap was emerging.

  ‘Can’t beat a Mars bar.’

  ‘That’s a fact.’ The chocolate-tinged memories made me forget all about the dog.

  Out of Lynton the path narrowed to the edge of the hillside, until it became a right-angle bend on a cliff edge. This was our most exposed point so far and we nervously rounded the corner to come face to face with another Australian striding fearlessly along.

  ‘Hi, guys, you’re loaded up, where you going?’

  ‘Land’s End, if we make it.’ We still didn’t feel confident enough to say all the way.

  ‘Wow, well, good on ya. You’re only as old as you feel. Good luck.’

  I always thought I’d aged quite well. I’d made it to fifty without going grey, or too wrinkly.

  ‘How old did he think we were?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, apparently we’re as old as we feel.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘I feel like I’m fucking eighty some days, I’m so fucking tired. I hurt, everywhere.’ Moth threw his pack down and squatted on the rocks. ‘Can’t tell if I feel half asleep, or wide awake. It’s like my head’s in fog and I’m walking through treacle. This is the most bollockingly stupid thing we’ve ever done. I want to lie down.’

  Stunned, I sat on the narrow path next to him. He’d grown to know this illness over time as it crept up so slowly, namelessly. It hadn’t given him the anguish of a suddenly inflicted disease. There’d been a few moments of complete negativity since the hospital, but not many and I wasn’t ready for it. Over the years, we’d coped with the practicality of each ailment as it came, but the reality of this diagnosis and the mental wear of living with chronic pain had been deliberately brushed under the carpet. And here we were, rucksacks on our backs at the Valley of Rocks, with no carpet. The sea broke against the base of the cliffs leading up to Castle Rock. We watched in silence. Rhythmically, repeatedly, white against black, white against black, white against black. A group of wild goats, disguised by the scrub and rock, leapt across the path close by, their long hair blown by the wind as they disappeared below, rugged, shifting, the landscape made mobile in the flow of their movement.

  I was transfixed.

  ‘Wow, did you see those goats? Huge horns.’

  ‘Not still thinking about that Mars bar, are you? What you sitting here for anyway? Let’s go. We’ll stop soon though, I’m knackered.’

  I hauled him off the ground and we carried on.

  The busy Valley of Rocks behind us, a tarmac road led through wide-open parkland to a large country house. Green flat grass everywhere.

  ‘I know it’s early, but we’ll have to put the tent up soon, I’m so tired.’

  A placard near the house proclaimed it a Christian estate. Anyone could stay here and be ‘renewed and refreshed’ by God, for a starting price of £120, and absolutely no camping or fires or loitering, or dogs off leads, and definitely no tramps.

  Passing out of the parkland into a valley we could hear shouts and laughter. Down in the hollow below us a Christian youth camp prepared for an evening of entertainment. A DJ in an open marquee tried to interest a group of teenagers in a quiz. Christian or not, they were still teenagers and were more interested in sneaking into the bracken. The smoke from the barbecue brought sausages up to the path, and the first real snatch of hunger took hold.

  ‘What are we eating tonight?’

  ‘Rice and a tin of mackerel.’

  ‘Do you think they’d notice if we just walked in and ate a burger?’

  On and on through the bracken until we stopped looking for a clear patch and threw the rucksacks over a fence, putting the tent up in a grazed field. From Crock Point we could see the last of the light stroking Duty Point in pink and blue. The sea was breaking on the rocks beneath as we finish the mackerel and rice.

  ‘Needed some bread with that. Sssh, what’s that?’

  ‘Fuck, I bet it’s the farmer coming to throw us off.’

  The scrambling rustling noise got closer as we prepared ourselves to pack the tent away and move on. The bracken broke apart and two teenagers squeezed through the hedge, twigs in their hair.

  ‘Er, well, hi, we’ve just been to the … beach, but we’re going back to camp now.’

  ‘Good, better hurry up, or the burgers’ll be gone.’

  6. Walk

  We’d expected extremes of weather while we were on the Coast Path, British weather. Wind, rain, fog, occasional hail even, but not the heat, the burning suffocating heat. By lunchtime we’d crawled out of the shade of Woody Bay into an intensely hot afternoon. We shared a cereal bar and banana looking west across some of the highest cliffs in England. Near vertical faces rising as high as eight hundred feet and stretching away to the Great Hangman, at 1,043 feet, the highest point on the whole of the South West Coast Path. But between us and the Hangman was a series of savage rises and falls, which even Paddy admits are steep. From the cliff top to near sea level, from sea level to the cliff top. And repeat. This was why I’d wanted to start in Poole. Then it got hotter.

  ‘We brought sunscreen?’ My nose was throbbing in the heat.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Should we wait for it to get cooler?’

  ‘If we do we’ll be stuck on the cliffs when it gets dark. I think we’ll be lucky if we find a flat spot here.’

  ‘Oh dear. We’d have loved this when we were thirty.’

  ‘Old as you feel?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Legs, hips, shoulders screaming, we reached the top on the other side of the valley and turned towards the sea cliff. The rock path reflected the heat back at our burning faces in waves. A blue wind lifted beneath my rucksack and with my arms outstretched I could fly; the freedom of the height took my breath away. My eyes were watering, m
y skin burning and in the distance the coast of Wales seemed further away. Every corner was a wash of vertigo and exhilaration. Moth walked with a lean away from the sea and towards the cliff, but I had heather and salt air in my veins and flew with the gulls.

  On a smooth stone ledge before another gorge rollercoaster, we met our first backpackers. They looked very young, fresh and efficient, in their matching blue hiking shorts and neat crisp backpacks. But they were backpackers: I felt connected, had to know everything about them.

  ‘Where are you camping? Are you doing campsites or wild?’

  ‘We’re wild camping, but it’s mad. We get to about six o’clock and all we can think about is flat ground. We couldn’t find anywhere last night and ended up on that piece of grass in front of the pub in Lynmouth.’

  ‘Where are you heading?’

  ‘Combe Martin, so we’re finished today. We’ve only got the weekend and I’ve never wild camped before, I’m ready for a shower.’ The girl had bouncy brown hair and looked squeaky clean to me. I suddenly felt very self-conscious and moved downwind. ‘What about you, where are you going?’

  I looked at Moth; where were we going? After yesterday I wasn’t sure, but he replied as if he still knew.

  ‘Land’s End. Who knows, depends on the weather, maybe further.’

  ‘That’s amazing, you’re so lucky to have time.’

  We watched them stride out along the cliff and waved as they passed the headland. So lucky to have time. I put my hand on the back of Moth’s arm as his hand rested on his hip belt. His skin was hot to the touch and pink below the line of his T-shirt sleeve; same skin it had always been, but wrinkled above his elbow in a way I hadn’t noticed before. Did we still have time?

  Moth had a hat: a green canvas hat that sat on the top of his head like a cake tin, but a hat all the same. How could I have come without one? I could feel my scalp burning and watched my nose pulsate out of the corner of my eye. We thought we might make the Great Hangman by evening, but it was still a way off. The coastline’s deceptive. A viewpoint in the distance seems to be just around the corner, but inevitably the headland in the foreground will be hiding combes and bays and even entire stretches of moorland in between.

  ‘My head’s on fire. Have you got a bandana or something?’ We headed out on to Holdstone Down; it was late afternoon but the sun was still hot.

  ‘You should have said – with all that hair I never think about you needing a hat. I’ve got the old hemp one in my pack.’

  I shoved on the beaten-up hat with its skinny one-inch brim, bought long ago from a hippy market in Ibiza. It held the heat from my boiled head and soon I felt ten times hotter.

  Sitting on a bent hawthorn branch, I watched the sun set behind the Hangman and away into the west. The tent was pitched low amongst the gorse and heather where Moth scribbled in a notebook. We’d eaten rice and a tin of peas, but hunger wasn’t far away. I swung my feet over the dry bare soil beneath the branch, and then it hit me. A shard of stone made a perfect tool and I dug and dug. Perfect.

  ‘Moth, Moth, come and look what I’ve made.’

  He rolled on to his knees then stood up slowly.

  ‘What? I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Idiot, look, it’s a long drop toilet.’

  ‘Oh God yeah, ha, me first.’

  I heated up the last bag of orange meatballs. We’d have more money tomorrow and could buy rations in Combe Martin.

  ‘Second dinner, we’re turning into hobbits.’

  It was almost dark when the sound of marching came from the east. Four twenty-something boys with immense full backpacks romped by at a march.

  ‘There are more of us out there then. Did you see all that kit? Bet they’re doing the whole thing.’ Moth watched them pass. I knew what he was thinking: that he used to be like that.

  ‘Bet they’re heading for Combe Martin, catch the pub before it closes.’

  ‘No, don’t make me even think of a beer, there’s only enough water left for tea in the morning.’

  Down, down, down into Combe Martin, a pretty little Devon village on the beach, with supposedly the longest village street in the country, winding two miles inland up the narrow valley. We wandered around the beach area with one focus: a cash machine. Finding nothing but trinket shops and a café, we tried the tourist information office hoping they’d point us in the right direction. Inside three old ladies were lined up behind the counter; they looked up at us, whispering, smiling and nodding.

  ‘Moth, you speak to them, you always have a way with old ladies.’

  ‘That sounds really dodgy.’

  We dropped our packs by the door.

  ‘Ladies, I wonder if you can help us. We’ve been looking for a cash machine, but it seems we’re out of luck. Could you possibly direct us?’

  The ladies shuffled, nudging each other, giggling.

  ‘Of course, it’s a pleasure to help. Just go to the grocery store up to the left. They’ll do cashback for you, Mr Armitage, but they weren’t expecting you yet.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not Mr Armitage.’

  The ladies looked at each other conspiratorially.

  ‘No of course not, that’s okay, our secret, we won’t say a word.’

  Moth looked back in bemusement as the three ladies waved to him. We put our packs on and left.

  Supplies in the rucksack, twenty-five pounds still in the purse, chips in our hands, sitting on the beach leaning against the rocks in the heat of the day, nose burnt to a frazzle: it could be any ordinary day on the beach. Living in Wales within a drive of the sea, we’d had many of those. Long days of sand-covered kids, blow-up dinghies, tuna sandwiches, digging holes, rock pools. They’d grown up free to roam the woods, the mountains, the beach. Even now, after they’d been gone for a few years, whenever I felt sand beneath my feet it was with a slight twinge of loss. I had to get over that or it would be a totally dismal summer.

  A little boy ran up the beach with a bucket of water for his sandcastle moat; his sister grabbed at the handle, wanting to be the one to pour the water. From nowhere their father leapt up, grabbed the boy and hit him.

  ‘I’ve told you, don’t fight with your sister.’

  The boy wriggled away and hid behind a rock. The mother stood up.

  ‘Did you have to do that?’

  ‘He’s got to be shown.’ An angry dad, teaching his child to be an angry boy. Strange how the beach seems to bring out the best and the worst in people.

  ‘I was going to say let’s have a swim, but I think it’s time we moved on.’ Moth was on his feet, dusting sand off his pack.

  ‘Yeah, time to go, Mr Armitage.’

  The day got hotter and hotter as we trudged through the sharp rises and falls beyond the village. The pack was much heavier with its new supplies and I dragged along through the dust, following Moth’s heels along the path, his feet barely seeming to lift from the ground either. The heat was unbearable. Unexpectedly, a campsite appeared, oasis-like, from the haze ahead of us. The Coast Path passed right through it.

  ‘What do you think, should we see how much it costs? We could just rest, not have to look for a spot to pitch tonight, have a shower.’ The look on Moth’s face said, I’m not asking, I’m begging.

  ‘We can ask.’

  The site was busy with families, children, bikes, old couples and dogs, lots of dogs.

  ‘That’s fifteen pounds for a tent.’

  ‘Fifteen pounds? It’s a small tent, we could squeeze in a corner.’

  ‘Fifteen pounds, any size.’

  ‘But we haven’t even got a car, we’re just walking the Coast Path.’

  ‘Well, you should have said.’ The site attendant pointed at a cardboard notice by the door. ‘Five pounds each for backpackers.’

  Ten pounds. We’d got enough dried food to nearly last the week. Moth sat on the plastic chair, wiping his face with a blue spotty bandana.

  ‘Okay, just one night.’

  The showers were hot
and free-running with no time limit. I relaxed into the heat and maybe it was something to do with tiredness, or a second of just letting go, but I couldn’t stop crying. I gasped into the running water as I shed a layer of skin and sweat, bitterness, sadness, loss, fear. But only a layer. Whining self-pity: I couldn’t afford to let it in.

  I dried myself as well as possible on the super-thin, quick-dry towel and rummaged in the tiny toilet bag for a toothbrush. The toothpaste, a hair bobble and a tampon fell on to the floor. A tampon? I picked it up in shock. I’d packed a few, expecting to need them anytime soon, but as I held it in my hand it suddenly struck me that in the melee of our lives over recent times I hadn’t realized that it had been over three months since I’d actually used one. Really? What to do in the menopause: become homeless and walk 630 miles with a rucksack on your back. Ideal. Plenty of weight-bearing exercise: at least I wouldn’t have to worry about osteoporosis.

  We left the campsite clean and rested, but the path to Ilfracombe wound on in a relentless mess of up and down, in and out and heat, and we were quickly as tired and dirty as we had been the previous day. The town was heaving with a mid-season swell of pushchairs, polyester and walking aids. The smell of food was torture, every corner had a new edible choice, but the campsite indulgence meant we could only look.

  An old couple with a King Charles spaniel passed by in a bluster of straw hats.

  ‘In all the years we’ve been coming here, I’ve never seen anything so shocking. It’s not right.’

  At the end of the harbour, people were standing around taking photos. The great thing about not preparing for a journey, not reading about every place before you visit, is that things can still take you by surprise.

  ‘Jeez, that’s big.’ A huge bronze and steel statue rose twenty metres into the air, towering over the harbour. More polyester rushed away, tutting and shaking their heads. Moth picked up a leaflet discarded by someone who’d left in a hurry.