Raynor Winn – The Salt Path

Raynor Winn’s ‘The Salt Path’, published in 2018, two years after completing the South West Coast Path, many parts of which will be known to BRC members, has become an international bestseller and probably one of the best known books about a long-distance walk published in recent years. The harrowing circumstances which led to the walk being undertaken in the first place are vividly described at the start of the book and as they are an essential part of the story I have no wish to relate them here; better to read the book itself which was deservedly praised by the critics. If the walk itself was gruelling for Raynor and her husband (even given the fact that it was completed in two parts), then writing a book about it, must have been equally daunting for someone who, as far as I know, though clearly intelligent, had no background or experience as an author of any kind. But in the end, the book is as much a triumph as the walk.

The paragraph below is from the latter part of the book when Raynor and her husband, are walking west from Poole and along Chesil Beach:

‘We walked on quietly together, through the syrupy air of the perfectly still evening. The sun was setting, lighting the sky in late July tones of gentle southern colour. The land ahead turned blue in the falling shadows and the lagoon fell silent, birdlife fading away as the water receded without wave or motion, leaving only channelled streams in the muddy sand. A small boat made its way to the shore, a black shadow weaving quietly along rivulets of molten sky, disappearing as mud and stone blended together in the low rays of the last reflected light. A mist began to lift as the air turned silver and night blue, the reeds becoming dark silhouettes against the line of the pebble bank and the dimming sky. We pitched the tents amongst the marsh grasses, hearing only the evening calls of the wading birds and the rustle of seed heads in the breeze.’