Watching a walking travel show got me onto this book, my first about a favourite way to exercise. But there was more to this story than just the book.

Author:	Raynor Winn
Publisher:	[London] : Penguin Books, 2019.©2018
ISBN:	9781405937184
Characteristics:	viii, 274 pages: map; 20 cm
Source:	Melbourne City Library.
Date Read:	15-Jul-2026

Raynor Winn was featured on Kate Humble’s Coastal Britain, season 1 episode 1 covering Exmoor. Kate was showing The Salt Path, a well-known coastal walking track in Cornwall, popular with locals and tourists. The author’s book, The Salt Path, documents her walking the Salt Path with her husband Moth (short for Timothy). It has also been made into a movie.

The Salt Path is a memoir, which turns out to be very different from a biography. Biographies are close to the truth whereas memoirs are the author’s ideal life. And The Salt Path begins with a huge embellishment where Raynor turns her crime of embezzlement and failure to pay back the loan into a situation where they have been wronged by a business associate and have lost their home as a result. So without a home Raynor and Moth decide to do The Salt Path.

But the lies start earlier with the author’s writing career, having won a prize given to first time authors, when The Salt Path is Raynor’s second book. Moth has corticobasal degeneration (CBD), so going on a long walk with a backpack each, set out in a guidebook by Paddy Dillon, 630 mile-long South West Coast Path (which is named as one of the toughest long-distance walking trails) with only a tent to fend against the elements is foolhardy and this is well illustrated in the film. Raynor wrote about her experiences of the walk to give to her husband, and this was later published.

Raynor claims that the walk reduced Moth’s terrible symptoms, but experts say this is impossible and it’s more likely that Moth has been misdiagnosed.

Once the lies are discovered by doing some research you wonder how much of the book is true. The text gives the impression that the walk was done in one go, but in reality, they did it in small stages, often staying in houses and in France where they own property; and you wonder why the couple didn’t sell up to save their farm.

There’s a surreal chapter where Moth is mistaken for a well-known British poet Simon Armitage, but I can’t see the likeness myself. Anyway, because of Moth’s celebrity resemblance they get pampered with food and massages by a bevy of beautiful girls in a nearby luxury house.

The Salt Walk has beautiful scenery; and this is the only redeeming feature of the movie which is one of the most tedious I have seen for a long time. There is a very basic map in the book, and it would have been helpful to have the alleged route they took marked in.

Wynn writes well, and I think The Salt Path would have been a much better book if she confessed her evil ways, explained why she stole money, and how she tried to repay the debt. But in her mind, she has done nothing wrong and will never seek forgiveness from the people she stole from including family.

Raynor is a good writer, and some parts were very good, including this touching paragraph about recalling meeting Moth, only to be brought back to reality with the harsh environment of The Salt Path.

I was ten million minutes and nineteen years ago, I was in the bus stop about to go back to his house, knowing his parents weren’t home, I was a mother of toddlers stealing moments in a walk-in wardrobe, we were us, every second of us, a long-marinated stew of life’s ingredients. We were everything we wanted to be and every- thing we didn’t. And we were free, free to be all those things, and stronger because of them. Skin on longed-for skin, life could wait, time could wait, death could wait. This second in the millions of seconds was the only one, the only one that we could live in. I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home.

Days passed. Heavy driving rain came from the west in banks of purple angry cloud; forked lightning danced across the sea; light rain drifted from the south in gentle cloaks of dampness falling from impenetrable grey skies. Dark black nights were lit by endless pinpoints of light, sparking with shooting stars in profusion, the late summer Perseids, meteor showers from another world. We gathered water from a stream gushing down the rock face after the rain, drinking at will, washing salt from dried throats and skin. Fat black dung beetles scurried around the low vegetation and common blue butterflies dusted the air as the sun returned, bringing a cooler, gentler warmth than before. Ever conscious that Moth shouldn’t be still for too long, we walked and swam through the days, but we were rested. Strong but peaceful, held at the ocean’s edge, out of time, closer to it than ever before. A dog walker came twice a day and peered down at us from the path above. We had been there for over a week, our food supplies had run out, limpets had lost their appeal and it was time to move on.

The Salt Path, page 262.

Conclusion

Initially The Salt Path was an engaging read but learning about how much of it was really fiction spoilt the story. Some parts became unbelievable, in the end making it a tedious piece of fiction.

Further Reading

Featured image: Aenyeth.