After Losing Their House, This Couple Hiked 630 Miles to Their New Home

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The Salt Path, a new film from first-time feature director Marianne Elliot, stars Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) and Jason Isaacs (The White Lotus) as Raynor and Moth Winn, a British couple who, after losing their home in 2013, set off on a 630-mile hike on Cornwall's South West Coast Path. The screenplay, by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, is based upon Raynor's 2018 memoir of the same name, which was universally praised and won several awards, including the Royal Society of Literature's inaugural Christopher Bland Prize and the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. Critics have equally lauded the film adaptation (it currently sits at 86 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but does The Salt Path properly capture the specificity of its source material?
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Elliot's film picks up shortly after Raynor and Moth have set off on their journey, filling in the particulars of their circumstances with brief flashbacks. After losing to an unwise investment nearly all of their money and their farmstead, the home in which their children grew up and also the source of the family's income, Raynor and Moth decide to walk the entirety of the South West Coast Path. This is particularly ill-advised as Moth has recently been diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease corticobasal degeneration (CBD), which normally carries a life expectancy of five to eight years. As they walk, Moth's symptoms begin to dissipate, and he and Raynor discover a side of each other that's lain dormant for decades.
Much like the book on which it's based, The Salt Path is a powerful story well told in an unobtrusive, straightforward manner. Those who are unfamiliar with the true events and perhaps expecting a more linear narrative might be wrong-footed by the episodic structure, but the movie is more concerned with capturing the feeling of the characters and their predicament than detailing the specifics of it. (The inciting incident which costs them their home remains mostly unexplained.) It's about the way Raynor and Moth relate to one another, or sometimes fail to relate to one another. This is an ordinary but no less impactful real-life love story about a couple who ventured together through the very worst that life had to offer and came out stronger on the other side. More than the restorative powers of nature, The Salt Path is about the restorative powers of love.
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Elliot and her team capture the essence of Raynor and Moth's journey, at times so vividly it feels as though the book has sprung from the page. It's a shame that this lacks many of the louder qualities which often qualify a movie for awards contention, because The Salt Path really should be at the frontrunner of every race. Isaacs and Anderson, both tremendously accomplished actors, are as good as they've ever been. Both disappear into their roles with a breathtaking naturalism that's so subtle, so un-actorly, that you actually forget you're not watching the real people. Anderson, best known as Agent Scully on The X-Files, has over time quietly become one of the most reliable actors on screen. Her work here is genuinely astounding.
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This is the sort of movie which, the more you consider and unpack it, the more it reveals hidden treasures. Things which at first seem a bit off—for example, an ending which initially feels abrupt—on reflection seem like the only logical choices in telling this story. The Cornish landscapes are sharply photographed and will have you digging in the closet to find your hiking boots (this would make an interesting double bill with Mark Jenkin's Bait), but Elliot nicely foregrounds her characters rather than the sights that surround them. The Salt Path is a lovely, uncommonly low-key drama which serves as a perfect extension to the Winn's memoir. It's hard to imagine a version which is more perfectly told, so graceful is the work of everyone involved. Hopefully, their efforts will be remembered come awards season.
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After Losing Their House, This Couple Hiked 630 Miles to Their New Home first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 5, 2025