‘I want to tell you something. I have a stage 4 brain tumour, and I don’t know how long I have left.” When fellow walker Peter utters these words to me at the Minack theatre in Porthcurno onCornwall’s south coast, I half think he might be reading lines for a new play. Behind him, the waves aredancing, while mist swirls on thewind as though spooling from asmokemachine.
It had only been an hour since I firstmet him and his wife, Michelle, as we all took shelter from the freezing wind in a hut at nearby Gwennap Head. I had asked why they were walking the South West Coast Path – the 630-mile (1,014km) trail that weaves its way from the seaside town of Minehead in Somerset around to Poole harbour in Dorset, via the windswept headlands, secluded coves and beaches of Devon and Cornwall.
They’d said it seemed like a good idea and that they’d like to finish it one day. “If we have the time,” Peter had added. Without knowing the full import of his words at the time, I’d said farewell and wandered on.
This coastal path is many things to many people. Thought to have existed in some form since the late 17th century, it was first forged by smugglers, then paced by coastguards determined to catch them. Since it was opened as a National Trail in 1978,it has been trodden by countless hikers looking fora challenge.
Back in 2012, I visited it for the firsttime as part of my “extreme sleeping challenge”, camping high above the waves in a bivvy bag on the southernmost point of mainland Britain, Lizard Point, something I wrote about in my book Extreme Sleeps.
In a strange twist of fate, Raynor Winn had read my book just before she and her husband, Moth, lost their family farm in 2013. A business deal with a friend had gone awry, leaving them temporarily homeless. In a story strikingly similar to that of the walker I’d just met, in the same week Moth had been diagnosed with a terminal neurodegenerative condition.
With nowhere to go and nothing to do, they decided to simply walk the coastal path and make the trail their home. Their story is told in Raynor’s memoir The Salt Path, which has gone on to sell more than two million copies worldwide and has been adapted into a film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, due to be released in May.
“It feels bizarre,” says Raynor – or Ray, as she likes to be called – when Icall to congratulate her on the film. “We visited the set at the Valley of Rocks [a dramatic stretch of coast onthe northern edge of Exmoor] andIhadn’t been back there since wewalked through it with our rucksacks. So to go there and to see ourselves being portrayed in what had been a really difficult, vulnerable, early point in our journey really brought back emotions I hadn’t been quite so connected to in recent times.”
I ask Ray which part of the path she loved the most and she told me it was the stretch from Zennor to the Minack theatre in Cornwall. “It was a turning point for us because we stood at Land’s End in an incredible storm and there was nobody there, just us and the Atlantic, and waves were breaking over that headland.
“And we really could have given up, but at that point we just realised how much that path was giving us, how much life it was giving us back. And Ivisit it often because I always seem tofind some way of making sense of things there.”
I know exactly what she means. The path is where I once wandered tocome to terms with losing my mum,and again when I lost a dear friend. And now, in the middle of arelationship breakdown, Ray’s words have inspired me to take the Night Riviera sleeper train to Penzance, haila cab, and hit the trail at the Tinners Arms in Zennor – the spot where, in the book, Ray and Moth arrive bedraggled after being caught ina storm.
I wander out on to the rough path tosee the sun struggling to break through the clouds. The wind whistles wildly through my hair while the waves crash below the cliffs, the landscape embodying my inner emotional squall. It’s March, so the early spring palette of russet and earthy khaki is only occasionally broken up with a splash of colour from the bright yellowgorse flowers or clusters of purple dog violets.
At the spur of Gurnard’s Head, Imeet my first fellow walker – Reid from Lancaster. He is on day two of a three-month journey from Land’s End to John o’Groats, raising money for the British Heart Foundation in memory of his grandma and father, both of whom died within the past two years. “To be honest, Idon’t know what to do with my life, so following a trail seems like a good idea,” he says, before walking on.
Not everyone I meet has emotive reasons for walking. Fiona and Derek from Brighton – who I happen upon before reaching the first of many remnants of the mining industry on astretch known as the Tin Coast – are retired. They decided after Covid to tryto complete the trail, undertaking sections when they could, staying in people’s homes as pet-sitters to save on the cost of B&Bs.
Near Porthmeor Cove, I meet John and Jane, from Holsworthy in Devon. It took them 10 years to complete the path over weekends, and they still walk it regularly. While navigating my way through aherd of wild ponies at Treen, I chat to Myriam, from Germany, who has two months free between jobs so decided to walk the Cornish section. At Portheras Cove, Ileave the trail to sit on the white sandbeach, watching the impossibly blue sea.
In The Salt Path, it is here that a woman tells Ray and Moth they have become “salted” – meaning they are for ever connected tothis path due to their time spent treading it.
Crumbling engine houses with distinctive Cornish chimney stacks line the route at Geevor and Botallack, and I temporarily share the trail with local schoolchildren being guided by teachers. I will my tired legs up to the ruins of iron age Kenidjack Castle and finally spot Cape Cornwall – the promontory that, until 200 years ago, was believed to be farther south-west than Land’s End.
The wind begins to change and Ihead to rest at the only place close tothe trail – Cape Cornwall Club – where the luxury of a hot tub awaits, followed by a cold beer with a view ofa blistering sunset over the point where the Irish Sea meets the AtlanticOcean.
My second day sees me walk alone with my thoughts for the first couple of hours, and with each step the clouds begin to clear. By the time the sun emerges, I have surrendered to the power of the trail, where everything isas simple as putting one foot in front of the other. Sally and Hugh, a retired couple from Kent, bring me back into the hereand now when they tell me theyhave been ticking off sections ofthe path since they spent their honeymoon here in 1986. I smile as they unknowingly flaunt their love while I have lost mine. I focus on the surfers that bob like croutons on a bluesoup.
At Land’s End, I watch the tourists pay to take their photos with the souvenir sign, and turn to face the full force of a bitter, easterly wind head-on, as I continue on my own path forwards. Finally, I reach Gwennap, where I meet Peter and Michelle, whoare walking, like Moth, with theshadow of uncertainty lingering ahead. My whole situation is unexpectedly pushed into perspective, and I know that whatever happens next, I can keep going.
When I ask Ray how Moth is now, 12 years after their epic walk, shesays: “It’s been hard and difficult, but he’s still here and he’s still fighting through every day. He’s actually out walking at the moment. And that’s allyou can hope for, isn’t it? That youcan get up in the morning and gofor awalk.”
For further information, visit southwestcoastpath.org.uk. PhoebeSmith’s latest book, Wayfarer: Love, Loss and Life on Britain’s Pilgrim Paths, is published byHarperNorth at£10.99. Tosupport the Guardian, goto guardianbookshop.com. Deliverycharges may apply
