We were in tatters: sunburnt, rubbed raw, bone-sore, stiffened. Thirsty too, though getting to the bar proved a Herculean labour: we had to manoeuvre our legs with our arms, then haul ourselves there, grabbing on to pub furniture, as if relearning to walk. Which, in a way, we were.
This was the Cobweb Inn, Boscastle, June 2007, and the end of my and my now-husband’s first day on the South West Coast Path (SWCP), our first long-distance, multi-day, world-on-our-backs hike, carrying too much stuff and too little experience. Frankly, we were shell-shocked. What was this strange, terrible, wonderful thing we’d embarked upon? After just a day, we were almost broken, totally in love, changed for ever.
The SWCP, which wraps around the edgelands of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset, can do that to a person. That and more.
Today, May 30, sees the release of the film The Salt Path, the big-screen adaptation of Raynor Winn’s bestseller, recounting her journey on the trail with her husband, Moth. After losing their farmhouse, and discovering Moth has a terminal degenerative illness, they decide to go for a long walk. “Excited, afraid, homeless, fat, dying, but at least if we made that first step we had somewhere to go, we had a purpose,” Winn writes. “And we really didn’t have anything better to do at half past three on a Thursday afternoon than to start a 630-mile walk.”
It’s a brilliantly insane decision, resulting in a tale of desperation, hope, love, resilience, social injustice and the power of nature. And it’s centred on three compelling characters: Raynor and Moth – played in the film by Gillian Anderson and Jason Issacs – and the SWCP, playing itself.
It’s no surprise that The Salt Path was filmed at real-life locations. This National Trail is A-list. It certainly dazzled me: I grew up on the other side of the country, and had never been to Cornwall before this walk. I’d no idea British seas could be so turquoise, the foreshore so wild and varied, the cliffs so craggy, the cottages so cute, the air so laced with – what is it?
A potion equal parts gulls, sea salt, surf-boof, fresh-baked pasties and bygone smugglers (the path was established in the 19th century so coastguards could patrol). I drank deep of this elixir as – after the first few days of agony and exhaustion – I eased into the trail’s rhythm, discovering a strength and a freedom and a joy I didn’t know how to contain. As my life was stripped back to just meals and miles, I’d never felt richer. This wasn’t a holiday, it was an epiphany. Hiking has since become the thing I do. My gear, fitness and knowledge have improved; the euphoria is the same.
We didn’t start the SWCP at the beginning. It runs from Minehead to Poole, but we’d found a Trailblazer guide to the section between Bude and Falmouth (203 miles) and were swayed by the more manageable distance and the book’s lovely hand-drawn maps. Over subsequent years, we returned three times to complete the full 630 miles.
Tough, unrelenting and spectacular, the SWCP’s personality changes frequently. Our first Cornish section felt mystical, infused with Arthurian legend, Poldarkian mines, bootlegging bays and fishermen’s shanties. It’s on this stretch that you walk through The Salt Path film locations such as foodie Padstow – where a gull brazenly swiped my husband’s last mouthful of Rick Stein fish and chips – and garish Newquay, which briefly yanked us out of our serene walking world.
This stretch also encompasses pretty higgledy-piggledy Port Isaac, promontory-perched Godrevy Lighthouse (which inspired Virginia Woolf), arty St Ives, sandy Sennen Cove, carbuncular Land’s End, tiny Penberth Cove (we spotted basking sharks here), the tidal isle of St Michael’s Mount and gorgeous Kynance Cove.
Our second leg (though sequentially the trail’s first) was from Minehead to Bude, encompassing one of my favourite sections: the Exmoor coast. Indeed, there are few finer ways to spend a weekend than walking the 26 miles from Porlock to Combe Martin. This is where you find the path’s highest cliffs (topping out at the 318m Great Hangman), its most secretive combes and its most idyllic cream teas, at Lee Abbey Tea Cottage. The film lingers here, revealing the wide sweep of Porlock Bay, with its eerie dead trees, as well as the Valley of Rocks, a dramatic glacial groove nibbled by wild goats and running parallel to the sea.
Falmouth to Exmouth – our third chunk – felt more civilised. There was still plenty of windswept up-downing, but it was more often interrupted by inconvenient estuaries (requiring detours or ferries) and seaside resorts, some charming (Polperro, Noss Mayo), some not (Par, Paignton). Reached via ferry from likeable Falmouth, the Roseland Peninsula is a real highlight here, as is secluded Polridmouth, on the Menabilly estate – the inspiration for Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
Yachtie-posh Fowey and Salcombe are obvious superstars, but more intriguing are the deserted, cliff-clinging village of Hallsands and shingly Slapton, used for D-Day practice, including the ill-fated Exercise Tiger, during which at least 749 US servicemen died. Perhaps my favourite outing, though, was a diversion from Dartmouth, up the Dart Estuary, to Greenway, Agatha Christie’s country retreat.
Finally, on our fourth trip, we traced the Jurassic Coast, from Exmouth to Poole, where Dorset’s rolling green innards meet millennia of gob-smacking geology: the Undercliff, where landslides have created a unique wildlife habitat, the fossil-flecked shores of Lyme Regis, 191m-high Golden Cap, the rock arch of Durdle Door, the perfect arc of Lulworth Cove. Finally, just past the naturists on Studland Bay (quite the send-off…), you hit the sign at South Haven Point marking the trail’s end.
I still remember how I felt, finishing the path. It was some kind of grief, a little like the Portuguese saudade: that not quite translatable feeling of loss for something that hasn’t physically gone. The path would still be there, only I wouldn’t be walking it.
Yes, the SWCP left its mark. My circumstances, fortunately, were nothing like those of Raynor and Moth Winn, but the effect wasn’t entirely dissimilar. Winn writes about encountering a woman who says she knows the couple have been walking for a while. “It’s touched you,” she explains. “It’s written all over you: you’ve felt the hand of nature. It won’t ever leave you now; you’re salted… When it’s touched you, when you let it be, you’re never the same again.”
How to do it
Macs Adventure (0141 530 7886) offers walking holidays along the whole SWCP. A seven-night, self-guided Padstow-St Ives trip costs from £959pp, including B&B accommodation and luggage transfers.
The beachfront Nare (01872 501111), on the Roseland Peninsula, has doubles from £406 per night B&B.
The Gurnard’s Head (01736 796928), near St Ives, has doubles from £167.50 per night B&B.
Fowey’s characterful Old Quay House (0172 683 3302) has doubles from £161 per night B&B.