The Salt Path Read online

  ‘Says her name’s Verity, and it’s by Damien Hirst. How did he get away with that? Mind you, he’s supposed to already own a studio and a house here, isn’t he?’

  ‘What’s it representing anyway?’

  ‘Apparently truth and justice.’

  ‘Justice? Could tell him a thing or two about justice.’ The statue is a cross-section of a pregnant women. One side whole, the other side showing the baby in the womb. She’s holding a sword aloft and the scales of justice behind her back. ‘No wonder she’s hiding the scales. Hide the truth behind a front that distracts the eye. It’s a true representation of British justice. Anyone can have it, if they can afford to tip the scales.’

  ‘That’s so true.’ An old man was sitting on a bench next to us, smartly dressed in polished shoes. We paused for a moment to chat. He was a retired Gurkha, who had stayed in Britain because he had served Britain and the Queen throughout his career. ‘But now I am not so sure. We live near here and our daughter wanted to build a bungalow for us in the garden, so that we could live in it now we’re old, and she could live in our house so she could care for us. The council, however, do not think that’s appropriate to the character of the town. A friend of mine tells me that Hirst is planning to build a housing estate for hundreds of houses on a farm he owns on the edge of town. If this statue is an example of his design, we can be sure they will not be Victorian villas. But if it is true, I do not expect him to have a problem with planning permission either.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he will.’

  We shared a bag of chips and left Ilfracombe as quickly as we could, camping on the hill with the lights of the town still shining below. The next day was an exhausting drag. Had we not been so tired it would have been a day of endless photos and admiration of amazing views, but we could only focus on moving our feet.

  ‘What’s that blob out there?’ I could see something in the sea that hadn’t emerged from the haze before.

  ‘What blob?’

  ‘West, down the coast, where the land runs out.’

  ‘Looks like an island.’

  ‘Could it be Lundy already? Bet it is, Wales is getting further away so where the coast runs out must be where it turns south.’

  ‘Such a long way off.’

  Walking along cliff tops, ankle deep in the seed heads of wild flowers, should have been a delight, but as we passed Bull Point Moth became slower and began dragging his leg oddly. The miles crawled by. I picked some wild thyme and dandelion leaves and stirred them into rice, as the sun set. Woolacombe arrived the next morning: our ninth day walking. According to Paddy Dillon we should have been here four days ago. His timescale seemed to bear no relation to our days. After being driven by the tide on to the leg-draining soft sand of the upper beach, it was a relief to reach solid ground on the cliffs that led to Baggy Point. Even in our foggy, exhausted state, the view took our breath away. A long way out, but Lundy was now in full view and beyond it the coast of Wales curled to the north, then slipped out of sight. Was I relieved to let it fall off the horizon, or did I need it, still tangible, still real? I couldn’t answer. And away, away to the west, at least forty miles away, Hartland Point, where the coast would take its second dramatic turn south. As the sun started to dip we put the tent up in the wild flowers and ate more dandelions.

  ‘Mum wouldn’t let me eat these when I was little; she said they’d make me wet the bed.’

  ‘The amount of times you get in and out of the tent every night, I don’t think it can make any difference.’

  ‘Shall we get the bus around the estuary, skip Barnstaple and Bideford?’

  ‘We could, but it’ll be days before we get more money, and the Braunton Burrows looks really interesting: massive sand dunes made of windblown shells.’

  ‘Okay, but if you’re in too much pain or your leg’s hurting, or you’re too tired, we’ll cut in for the bus, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Under the sunburn, black rings were spreading beneath his eyes.

  The white, granular dunes rolled away down towards the Taw estuary, a fine shifting gravel like ground coral, not really like sand at all. The Burrows seemed to stretch on forever, one of the largest sand dune ecosystems in the country, covered in vegetation and humming with insect life. As we walked on I didn’t see much of the view, most of my attention being taken by large pieces of skin peeling from my nose, and I passed more than a mile cross-eyed, trying to pull bits off. Moth was shuffling through the shell sand, watching his feet, when suddenly as if out of a desert haze we were confronted by a fully kitted-out commando, a real-life camouflage-clad, gun-hugging soldier. I’ve never been so close to that much camo paint, and didn’t know how to react: whether to fall on the floor with hands behind my head, stand to attention, run away. What?

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t go any further today, you’ll have to turn around and go back.’

  ‘We can’t go back, we’re going forwards.’ What a stupid thing to say. But Moth seemed unfazed.

  ‘Hi, mate, what are you up to here? Manoeuvres or something?’

  ‘That’s right, sir, and you can’t go through.’

  A big group of twenty soldiers streamed over the dune and collapsed on the sand as a canvas-backed truck pulled up.

  ‘We can’t go back, Moth’s not well, we’re going to Braunton to catch the bus. We won’t be able to make it if we go back.’ Did I look desperate enough?

  ‘Stay there, I’ll see what can be done.’ Seconds later the soldier returned with a canteen of water.

  ‘Don’t move from that spot and we’ll take you out with us when we go. Didn’t you see the sign that says the dune’s closed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t move.’ The soldiers threw their kit into the truck, lifting their immense packs and waist belts as if they were nothing; they took mine and added it to the heap. Close-up, the soldier looked like a boy.

  ‘What’s this? Call this a pack? Feels like a handbag.’ They were all laughing. Then they picked up Moth’s.

  ‘Piece of cake. We pack more weight than that in the shower.’ Raucous laughter as we were bundled into the back of the truck, the canvas rolled down and we bumped away. They might have been more disciplined and in better physical shape than many, but it was soon obvious they were just a truck full of young men having a great time. In the heat of the back of the vehicle I realized that any day now these boys could be in a war zone, within a few weeks any one of them could be injured or dead. Young lives over before they’d barely begun, and for what?

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Can’t say, sir. In fact, best not to mention this to anyone.’ The truck bounced along, hit tarmac, then shortly after ground to a halt. ‘Okay, out you go.’

  The truck disappeared around a bend in the road, but I kept my fingers crossed for the generous men inside, hoping they stayed as full of life as they were at that moment.

  The bus took us to Barnstaple, and then we changed on to another for Westward Ho! I felt as though I was cheating, and didn’t understand why.

  We arrived in Westward Ho! disorientated by the unexpectedness of it and surprised by its greyness. The exclamation mark had made me expect something spectacular, but nothing I was seeing quite matched the ostentatious name. Paddy says the town is named after a novel by Charles Kingsley, including the exclamation mark. Maybe the book’s more interesting.

  The break in the trail had left us feeling disconnected and slightly lost. Moth was irritable and, regardless of the dwindling pound coins, he needed a beer. We found ourselves sitting in a dismal bar overlooking a concrete walkway where children dodged waves as they broke over the sea wall. Moth drank his beer in silence and I held a glass of iced water to my head.

  ‘Pub quiz, guys, take part, it’s fun, there’s prizes.’ A round little man in a waistcoat forced a pen and paper on us. ‘Only fifty pence to enter and you could win ten pounds first prize. Can’t go wrong.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Moth, that’s
fifty pence.’

  ‘What can you buy with fifty pence, and what if we win?’

  The little man managed to rustle up three teams, so was about to make a serious loss.

  ‘So, let’s start with TV.’

  ‘I told you this was a waste of money.’

  ‘And on to sport; in Formula One racing …’

  Why are we here?

  ‘Who was the captain of the Black Pig?’

  Moth jumped in his seat and scribbled on the paper: Captain Pugwash.

  ‘And last of all, what went up in 1961 and came down in 1990?’

  I’ve got this one, I’ve got this one: Berlin Wall. Maybe I shouldn’t have been grumpy over fifty pence.

  ‘The winners with the ten-pound prize are … the family at the bar!’

  They took their ten pounds and immediately handed it back for another round of drinks.

  ‘And in second place, taking five pounds: the backpackers.’

  We rushed to get our rucksacks on and collect our winnings.

  ‘Another drink for the winners?’

  I kicked Moth below the bar, and he glanced at me with narrowed eyes.

  ‘No, sorry, we’ve got to make a move.’

  Diddley-dee, diddley-dee, we skipped our way back to the path. The waves broke over the wall behind and in front, but somehow missed us. Buoyed by our win, and the unfounded thought that maybe things were going in our favour, we escaped from Westward Ho!, singing the Captain Pugwash theme tune. Diddley-dee, diddley-dee. It was always going to be a short-lived high and we couldn’t find anywhere to camp, so resorted to trampling a patch of bracken and thistles on a slope, in the dark. Gravity took control of the synthetic sleeping bags and we woke in the night curled in a pile at the door of the tent. The sea was very close, booming into the ground, more of a sensation than a sound. We piled the rucksacks by the tent door and propped our feet on them, knees locked, virtually standing.

  Hobbling around the thistle patch in the grey morning light, knees refusing to unlock, we realized that we’d camped on an overhang of stone and clay, where the sea scratched away at the earth in the hollow below. A patch of land nearing its end, about to relax into oblivion.

  Heat climbed up over the cliff and bound us in a cloak of airless, flat suffocation as we headed out on to Greencliff. Black rock sliding away into the sea, in layers of dark molten exposure. This seam of blackest black runs from Bideford to the cliff edge and fades into fingers running out to sea. It used to be mined as fuel to fire the lime kilns that scattered this patch of coast, turning Welsh limestone into fertilizer and building materials. Now Bideford Black is used as an artist’s pigment, fuelling the cash tills of trendy art galleries.

  And it got hotter. My nose was glowing red, the new skin burnt before the old skin had shed. Moth was stumbling more often and for the first time tripped and fell, grazing his arm and leaving him shaken.

  ‘I’ve got to stop. Can you get the water?’ He drank, trying to satisfy an unquenchable thirst, until there were only two inches of water left. We’d filled the bottles in the bar in Westward Ho! and used most of it overnight, but now were quite some distance from a tap, unless we diverted inland in the hope of knocking on someone’s door.

  ‘Shall we carry on? It looks like we’ll cross a stream near Babbacombe Cliff.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  We shuffled on, as Moth got slower and I became increasingly anxious. By the time we crossed the dry stream bed, the afternoon had become a burning shimmer. No shade, no trees, just cliff top, sea and sky. At three o’clock Moth dropped his pack and lay on the ground.

  ‘I’m done, I’m just done. I can’t do this. I feel shivery.’

  ‘Do you think you’ve got sunstroke, or are you just exhausted?’

  ‘I want to go home, get in my own bed and never wake up.’

  I lay on the grass next to him and stared up at the sky. Don’t even think it. Don’t let the thought in. I sat up, found my glasses and read Paddy’s map.

  ‘We’re nearly at a little ravine, think it’s called Peppercombe. There’s a stream there and trees, so we can get out of the heat. You’ll feel better if you cool down.’ The heat had built until I could feel all the moisture evaporating from my body, turning me to parchment. We couldn’t stay there.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Well, I’ll leave my pack here then and just go and have a look.’ I walked away from him; without the weight of the rucksack I had springs in my boots and balloons on my shoulders, but anxiety didn’t let me appreciate it. Don’t let this be real. Don’t let him be getting worse, please don’t. Let it just be the sun.

  A stripe of green trees and undergrowth followed the narrow valley towards the sea and the sound of water. Crouched by the side of the clear-running salvation, I splashed the icy coldness against my burning skin, feeling sure I could hear it hiss. I drank over and over from my cupped hands, before filling the two-litre bottle to the brim and heading back up the hill.

  ‘You have to come down. It’s so cool under the trees, you’ll feel a lot better. Only half an hour and you can drink this, when the water-purifying pill has done its thing.’ I didn’t tell him I’d drunk a pint before even considering bacteria.

  We dozed the afternoon away under the green shade until a black ball of hair leapt into the stream, followed by five others.

  ‘That’s the way, jump in and cool down, boys.’ The owners of the pack of spaniels stood on the bridge, efficiently dressed in pockets, hats and walking poles. So glad I’d already filled the water bottles.

  ‘Well, hello there. What a pleasant afternoon. Come far, have you?’

  ‘Not far today, it’s been very hot.’

  ‘Yes, rather warm. Where are you off to then?’

  ‘Land’s End.’ Poole still isn’t coming out of my mouth. Just the thought of it seems ridiculous.

  ‘Land’s End? Oh, Land’s End.’ The tall brisk man looked at the woman with a nod. ‘I heard you might be coming this way. We’re from south Devon; heading home tomorrow, so unfortunately we won’t be able to see you. Unfortunate, that. Well, must go, hope it’s a profitable journey. Let’s go, boys.’ A tidal wave of black left the stream and bounded up the road, heading inland.

  ‘Profitable journey? We’re meeting some odd ones.’

  ‘Too right. Let’s go down to the beach – it’s getting cold under these trees.’ I instantly regretted leaving the path as the track to the beach headed sharply downhill, which meant we would eventually need to climb all the way back up.

  A beach of smooth, sea-worn stones sat above black rock that slid down into the low tide. The sun-warmed cobbles soothed our aching muscles as we sat in the shade of some scrubby vegetation, sheltered from the early-evening sun that still burnt our red skin. The sea swayed, syrup flat, in a moment of indecision before its inevitable return. Moth was shivering, but burning hot, his joints aching and feeling nauseous.

  ‘What if this is it, what if I’m dying?’

  ‘You’re not dying; it’s probably sunstroke. Anyway, this thing isn’t going to hit you in the afternoon and you’re dead by tea.’

  Knowing the blackness was coming, waiting in the background, had put him on constant alert; every rustle in the grass was his nemesis creeping up. We knew it wouldn’t be sudden, that we were on a downward slope with a long way to run before we reached its end. We were both nervous all the same. I had thought, in the days after leaving the farm, when we were packing rucksacks and preparing, that walking together over a vast distance would give us the space to think things through. Time to talk about the huge loss we were feeling, and calmness to try to face a future not with CBD in it, but carved out by it. But I hadn’t thought much at all, and we’d mainly talked about food and the heat, or the rain. I’d plodded along as if my head was in a paper bag, thinking of nothing, just taking it out occasionally to shake it around and see if there was anything inside. Putting one foot in front of another in a metronome of blankness was strangely sati
sfying and I didn’t want to think. But as Moth struggled on, one thought had crept in; how stupid it was to be doing this, the irresponsibility of dragging him here. Clearly he was getting worse. If we weren’t walking, he wouldn’t be going through this daily muscle-grinding torture. I hardly dared to look in the guidebook; from the tiny glimpses I’d taken, I could see it would soon get harder. What if by suggesting this insane trip I’d accelerated the CBD? It would be my fault. After all, the consultant had said, ‘Don’t tire yourself, or walk too far, and be careful on the stairs.’ All I’d thought about in those days of planning was leaving Wales, running away, forgetting that we’d lost our home, that our family was spread all over the country, that Moth was ill. I once heard a lecture by Stephen Hawking, when he said, ‘It’s the past that tells us who we are. Without it we lose our identity.’ Maybe I was trying to lose my identity, so I could invent a new one.

  ‘Have you taken the Pregabalin today?’ Moth had been prescribed this drug, not for its use as an antidepressant, but for relief from nerve pain. It seemed to work, but I didn’t know how it could relieve pain and not have the antidepressant effect. He certainly seemed slower since he’d taken it. Less pain, but less Moth.

  ‘No, I took the last one at Baggy Point. I forgot to say: have you got another box?’

  ‘No, you’ve got them.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Oh shit. Why didn’t you say? We’ll have to get some more. We can walk back to Westward Ho! and get the bus to Barnstaple, see if your GP can send a prescription.’

  How could we have forgotten them? As I thought about it, I could see them sitting on a bag in the back of the van ready to be put into the rucksack. Completely forgotten after the encounter with angels. There could be a town inland, a chemist within a short walking distance, but we would never know. Paddy Dillon’s great little guidebook contains copies of Ordnance Survey maps covering the entire South West Coast Path, fantastically comprehensive and detailed; you couldn’t want for anything better. The drawback is, they only cover roughly half a mile inland. Our world had become this narrow passage, with half a mile of land to our left and a wet infinity to our right. The path covers vast tracts of English coastline and only a few places can be considered remote, but on that beach it was as clear as the salt water running over the Bideford Black that civilization exists only for those that can afford to inhabit it, and remote isolation can be felt anywhere, if you have no roof and an empty pocket.