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Telegraph
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Britain's loveliest coastal path turned me into a hiker – and now is the perfect time to tackle it
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. Fowey's characterful Old Quay House (0172 683 3302) has doubles from £161 per night B&B.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Walk on the wild side: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs on their epic hiking movie The Salt Path
'I have played a lot of powerful, well-dressed women in my career,' says Gillian Anderson. They flash before your eyes: Margaret Thatcher (The Crown), Eleanor Roosevelt (The First Lady), Emily Maitlis (the Prince Andrew/Newsnight drama Scoop) – as well as the formidable sex therapist in the Netflix hit Sex Education, a role that led to her being inundated with dildos from over-enthusiastic fans. 'These are all women in control of themselves and their environment. Any time I have an opportunity to steer against that, particularly lately, it's of interest to me.' There is steering in another direction, and then there is the screeching handbrake turn represented by her role in The Salt Path, adapted from Raynor Winn's 2018 memoir of homelessness and hope along the coastline of England's south-west. Playing Winn, Anderson is shown making a single teabag stretch for several cuppas, withdrawing the final £1.38 from her bank account, and warming her blistered feet by a pub fire. A typical day begins with her peeing in the undergrowth. It's a far cry from Agent Scully in The X-Files. Winn's response to a double catastrophe in her life in 2013 was to embark on the lengthy South West Coast Path walk with her husband, Moth. The film's opening scene shows the couple's tent being flooded during a King Lear-level storm. A flashback then reveals how they ended up in this sorry, soggy state. A bad investment left them saddled with crippling debts and the couple lost the farm in Wales where they had brought up their now-adult children. While cowering in the hallway from bailiffs, Winn took inspiration from a cherished book glimpsed among their partly packed belongings: Five Hundred Mile Walkies, in which Mark Wallington recounts the trek he and his dog took around the south-west. He must have miscalculated the journey, however. It is in fact 630 miles, including many steep ascents and descents. And as if penury and homelessness were not challenging enough, Moth had recently been diagnosed with a rare brain disease, corticobasal syndrome, and advised by doctors to rest. Stairs, he was told, would be particularly problematic. Twelve years and those 630 miles later, Moth Winn is, miraculously, still alive. He is played in the film by Jason Isaacs, who sits beside his screen wife today in a London hotel room. Their contrasting body language is instantly revealing. The 56-year-old Anderson, friendly but with a casually authoritative aura, is perched side-saddle in her chair, one leg crossed away from me, so that she seems almost to be looking back over her shoulder in my direction as she speaks. Isaacs, 61, leans forward, elbows on knees, keen to get stuck in. It is as if they are still playing their parts from The Salt Path: Raynor Winn, with her patina of reserve and caution, and Moth, eager to make sure everyone else is comfortable, a people-pleaser even when the people aren't worth pleasing, as some of those they meet on their travels manifestly are not. A passerby berates them for wild camping, beating their tent with his stick. In a scene that hasn't made it from page to screen, Winn is humiliated by a woman who spots her scrambling on the ground for dropped coins and assumes she is drunk. Despite those flashes of conflict, Winn had doubts about how her story would work on screen. 'It's about two people and a path,' she tells me from the home she and Moth now share in Cornwall. 'I couldn't grasp how that could be a film.' But Marianne Elliott, the acclaimed stage director of War Horse, Angels in America, and Company, makes her screen directing debut here and tells me she always saw The Salt Path as inherently cinematic. 'Ray and Moth hardly talk on their walk,' she says. 'They are carrying their trauma on their back, but then they slowly calm down and start to look up and engage with the majestic landscapes. And they are changed by it. It felt like nature was playing with them, like a wild beast – sometimes giving them beauty and wonder, and sometimes battering them cruelly. They were reformed by the elements, if you like.' Playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who adapted The Salt Path for the screen, says she saw nature as the key to unlocking the film version. 'Any reservations were about the walking,' she says. 'You know: how do we make walking dynamic for that amount of time? It felt like we needed almost to take the weather and the landscape as a character. It needed to be a film with a lot of silence. It's not some chatty, walky comedy.' Watching Isaacs trudging across English landscapes, however magnificent, feels incongruous after all those scenes of him suffering existential despair in luxurious five-star surroundings in the Thailand-set third season of The White Lotus. I assume he will be heartily sick of talking about the series by now, but it is he who brings up the similarity between the characters he plays. 'They're both men who lose everything. And they react in very different ways, which is a measure of who they are.' His character in The White Lotus was prone to suicidal ideations. So, too, was the apparently upbeat Moth. 'He laughs all the time, even when he's describing the toll his disease has taken on him. But he felt suicidal on the walk. He and Ray were crippled with shame, and the future was this abyss for them. They hid that from one another. They constantly made each other laugh. Acting is a game of pretend, and that's what they were both doing.' What were Anderson's first impressions of Raynor? 'I was surprised at how guarded she was,' she says. 'Of course, it must be strange: you've got two relatively famous actors who are going to play you showing up at your house. But it was interesting to encounter a certain steeliness. It was informative for me to see that.' 'You can be quite steely,' Isaacs says. 'You've got that in you.' 'Oh, definitely,' she agrees. 'I know that about myself.' Having been surprised when her memoir was optioned, Winn says she was even more taken aback by the casting. 'I remember thinking, 'How is that going to work? How will someone so perfect and glamorous capture me in that raw state?'' Things got even more confusing when she told Moth the news. 'He thought I meant Pamela Anderson.' During the first meeting between the four of them, the Winns explained to the actors the details of how they packed, knowing that they couldn't take more than what could be carried on their backs. 'Then they put the tent up for us right there in the living room,' Isaacs says. 'I'm not sure if I'd … ever … camped … before,' says Anderson, stringing the words out as though anticipating derision. 'You'd never pitched a tent?' asks Isaacs in mild disbelief. 'Not as far as I can remember,' she says. 'I might have pitched one for my kids in the back garden.' Isaacs says he is 'all about climbing things, jumping off things, swimming through things. Canyons and stuff. I like extreme physical experiences. Even at my advanced age, I see something and I think, 'That'd be fun to climb up. Or slide down.' I'm still a 12-year-old boy trapped in a 100-year-old body.' As a child, he went wild camping with his family in Wales. 'We'd get woken by farmers. Or livestock.' Once, they parked in heavy fog on a small hill and pitched their tent. 'You couldn't see your hand in front of you. We woke up to find we'd camped on a roundabout.' Anderson gasps and claps her hands: 'That's such a good story!' The Salt Path began life as a diary that Winn kept on the walk, and which she later wrote up as a gift for Moth – and, more urgently, as a way of preserving the experience for him as his memory began to fade. That diary spawned a Big Issue article and then a book, nominated for the Costa prize in 2018. The judges called it 'an absolutely brilliant story that needs to be told about the human capacity to endure and keep putting one foot in front of another'. The picture will doubtless reignite interest in the South West Coast Path, and attract more walkers after a recent downturn. To anyone tempted to wonder whether walking is having 'a moment', what with the film of The Salt Path following David Nicholls's novel You Are Here (about a friendship that blooms on a 200-mile coast-to-coast hike across the north of England), it is as well to remember that what the Winns did was born out desperation. They found beauty and a kind of salvation, and the walk even seemed to help Moth to defy his doctors' prognosis, but it was often a ghastly, hardscrabble journey. 'They were desperate and lonely and scared,' says Isaacs. 'They wanted to avoid towns because they got treated badly there and they had no money to buy food. They were happier by themselves away from people. They experienced both sides of human nature: tremendous compassion and generosity but also abuse and neglect. They were frightened of the police and of anyone who would come along and dehumanise them just because they were homeless. Though the book itself was a love letter to Moth, there's a marked lack of sentimentality when they speak about what happened. They got all kinds of different benefits from the walk but they still wanted a warm roof over their heads.' One thing that is impossible to capture on screen, he says, is their persistent hunger. 'It colours everything. We do our best to tell the story but that's a physical ache. They would stand at cafe windows watching people eat.' Anderson is nodding along. 'Ray talks in the book about pretending to eat, and how the fantasy of eating, the act of moving the mouth, does half the job,' she says. Winn tells me that living below the breadline has altered her for ever. 'It changes how you feel about material things,' she says. 'Having let go of everything we had, possessions don't concern me in the same way they did before. Anything that doesn't enrich your life just gets in the way. The stuff we gather can easily start to control us.' Winn says her life is much as it ever was, though Moth now tires more easily, and requires extensive physiotherapy. 'Except without the worry of paying the rent.' As the author of several bestselling books, does she allow herself the occasional luxury these days? 'I do,' she sighs. 'Sometimes it's nice to have the whole pasty instead of just half.' The Salt Path is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 May.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
Gillian Anderson's new film is picture-postcard perfect… but it doesn't show the real Cornwall
The South West Coast Path is full of contradictions. One minute you're breezing across lush clifftops – the next you're slogging your way up a crag. It's a beautiful but cruel mistress. The 630-mile route – which runs from Minehead in Somerset, along the Cornish coast and ends in Poole in Dorset – is the setting for The Salt Path, a heartwarming new film about a couple who walk the path after being made homeless. Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs lead the cast, but the coast path is the real star. And so it should be. I spent nearly two decades living just down the road from the path in rural Cornwall. It became a constant in my life for everything from Christmas Eve family stomps to afternoon strolls, which often turned into boozy evenings on the cliffs, discussing life, love and the universe. I once walked a 30-mile section dressed as a nun – and few people even batted an eyelid. Such craziness isn't uncommon on the path, which has become a pilgrimage for waifs, strays and loveable rogues looking for an adventure, or a purpose. Why? Because its residents probably have a greater generosity of spirit than anyone else in the UK: the rough and tumble of rural life requires it. Aged 18, I moved away for university and never returned to live in Cornwall. It may seem like a crazy decision, but the sad reality is that it's a common one for people my age, thanks to the complete vacuum of skilled jobs. This isn't a personal tragedy though; it's a massive regional problem with far-reaching consequences. The South West is a place of extreme beauty, but also extreme poverty. If you look beyond the glorious coastline and posh fish restaurants (largely owned by celebrity chefs like Rick Stein and Paul Ainsworth), you'll realise there are lots of issues making life unaffordable. While smaller coastal towns across the UK generally have higher deprivation levels than non-coastal towns, those in Cornwall, in particular, face wage rates that are £10,000 below the UK average. House prices are above national levels, though, thanks to the tidal wave of second homeowners and Airbnbs increasing demand. Many are facing job losses, as the farming sector, which employs one in five Cornish people, attempts to navigate inheritance tax changes. It will be difficult for workers to upskill though, as the one – yes, one – train line in and out of the region is under constant threat of falling into the sea near Dawlish, deterring big companies from investing and bringing in well-paid jobs. If these issues were happening north of Bristol, politicians and broadcasters would be discussing them far more. Yet they remain largely unreported. The problem is too far away. Reporters can't take a train from London, film a TV report, and get home in the same day – so they don't. Rarely do politicians visit either, as the South West isn't quite red or blue enough for Labour and the Conservatives to have a political fistfight like they've had over northern England's 'Red Wall'. When Rishi Sunak did come to Cornwall last year while on the campaign trail – a last-ditch attempt from the then-prime minister to win over voters – he donned a monogrammed £750 designer backpack as he wandered around Penzance – a town that has long been one of the nation's poorest. It seems even hosting the G7 summit in 2021 didn't do much to shift the spotlight on these issues, either. This has left communities feeling ignored, and their disillusionment is starting to show. In a shocking, but not surprising result, Reform UK won the recent council elections in Cornwall and Devon. I hope this is the moment which finally makes our leaders wake up and address the structural challenges the South West faces. I fear the consequences if not. So, if you see The Salt Path, gasp at the beauty of the beaches, and drool at the Cornish ice cream, come down for a visit (if you're willing to listen to locals moan about holidaymakers, even though they need your money as much as you need their beach). But respect the people who farm the fields and look after the coasts. Life in the South West is glorious, but, just like the coast path, it can be a cruel mistress, too.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Salt Path review – Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs hike from ruin to renewal
This film gives cinema one of the most nail-biting scenes of the year so far: an edge-of-the-seat moment as Gillian Anderson puts her bank card into a cash machine. Is there enough money in the account? Everything is at stake. This impressive, intelligent drama is an adaptation of Raynor Winn's memoir about walking the South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset, with her husband, Moth. Unlike other hikers, the couple were not walking for pleasure – at least not to begin with. They had nowhere else to go after losing their farm. From theatre director Marianne Elliott, it stars two fancy actors – Anderson and Jason Isaacs – both giving lovely, emotional, low-key performances. In flashback we see the bailiffs banging at the door, evicting the couple, who are in their 50s, from the home in which they raised their kids, now flown the nest to university. Moth has recently been diagnosed with a rare, life-limiting degenerative brain disease; nevertheless, off they set carrying their heavy rucksacks, sleeping in a tent, living off £4o a week, sharing teabags, eating in soup kitchens. The landscape is gorgeous and there are lovely moments of kindness, like the barman in a pub who brings them a teapot of hot water to make a brew, tactfully acknowledging they can't pay for drinks. Making her feature-film debut, Elliott handles their story gently, with patience – though it might feel a bit slow for some. Somehow, they all bring a real sense of meaning and truth to cheap-sounding messages about living in the moment, and the possibility of long-term relationships deepening and growing in ways impossible to predict. And the best thing about watching the couple's hardship is knowing there is a happy end coming – with the publication of Winn's bestselling memoir. The Salt Path is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 May.
The Advertiser
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Homeless tale of new film deeply moved Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson says she was "profoundly affected" by homelessness memoir The Salt Path, which has been adapted into a film she stars in. The novel, written by Raynor Winn, follows the author and husband Moth as they lose their home and embark on a long-distance walk with only a few pennies in their pockets. The X-Files star Anderson plays Winn in the new film while Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs stars as her husband. "I first discovered The Salt Path probably about a year and a half or two before they went into prep," she told the Big Issue. "I bought Ray's audiobook and was profoundly affected by it. I was then trying to find out about the rights." Isaacs told the magazine that it shocked him how quickly and easily they became homeless. "One moment they were sure that they were going to keep their home, then they're sitting in court and suddenly there is a date, a ticking clock." After they lost their home the couple completed the 1000km South West Coast Path, which follows the coastline of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset in the UK. As well as delving into the issue of homelessness, the book and film explore Moth's diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a rare condition that can cause gradually worsening problems with movement, speech, memory and swallowing, according to the UK's National Health Service website. In 2017, Winn had an article published in the Big Issue and said "everything changed" for her after this. The Salt Path was published in March 2018 and became a Sunday Times bestseller. Gillian Anderson says she was "profoundly affected" by homelessness memoir The Salt Path, which has been adapted into a film she stars in. The novel, written by Raynor Winn, follows the author and husband Moth as they lose their home and embark on a long-distance walk with only a few pennies in their pockets. The X-Files star Anderson plays Winn in the new film while Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs stars as her husband. "I first discovered The Salt Path probably about a year and a half or two before they went into prep," she told the Big Issue. "I bought Ray's audiobook and was profoundly affected by it. I was then trying to find out about the rights." Isaacs told the magazine that it shocked him how quickly and easily they became homeless. "One moment they were sure that they were going to keep their home, then they're sitting in court and suddenly there is a date, a ticking clock." After they lost their home the couple completed the 1000km South West Coast Path, which follows the coastline of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset in the UK. As well as delving into the issue of homelessness, the book and film explore Moth's diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a rare condition that can cause gradually worsening problems with movement, speech, memory and swallowing, according to the UK's National Health Service website. In 2017, Winn had an article published in the Big Issue and said "everything changed" for her after this. The Salt Path was published in March 2018 and became a Sunday Times bestseller. Gillian Anderson says she was "profoundly affected" by homelessness memoir The Salt Path, which has been adapted into a film she stars in. The novel, written by Raynor Winn, follows the author and husband Moth as they lose their home and embark on a long-distance walk with only a few pennies in their pockets. The X-Files star Anderson plays Winn in the new film while Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs stars as her husband. "I first discovered The Salt Path probably about a year and a half or two before they went into prep," she told the Big Issue. "I bought Ray's audiobook and was profoundly affected by it. I was then trying to find out about the rights." Isaacs told the magazine that it shocked him how quickly and easily they became homeless. "One moment they were sure that they were going to keep their home, then they're sitting in court and suddenly there is a date, a ticking clock." After they lost their home the couple completed the 1000km South West Coast Path, which follows the coastline of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset in the UK. As well as delving into the issue of homelessness, the book and film explore Moth's diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a rare condition that can cause gradually worsening problems with movement, speech, memory and swallowing, according to the UK's National Health Service website. In 2017, Winn had an article published in the Big Issue and said "everything changed" for her after this. The Salt Path was published in March 2018 and became a Sunday Times bestseller. Gillian Anderson says she was "profoundly affected" by homelessness memoir The Salt Path, which has been adapted into a film she stars in. The novel, written by Raynor Winn, follows the author and husband Moth as they lose their home and embark on a long-distance walk with only a few pennies in their pockets. The X-Files star Anderson plays Winn in the new film while Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs stars as her husband. "I first discovered The Salt Path probably about a year and a half or two before they went into prep," she told the Big Issue. "I bought Ray's audiobook and was profoundly affected by it. I was then trying to find out about the rights." Isaacs told the magazine that it shocked him how quickly and easily they became homeless. "One moment they were sure that they were going to keep their home, then they're sitting in court and suddenly there is a date, a ticking clock." After they lost their home the couple completed the 1000km South West Coast Path, which follows the coastline of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset in the UK. As well as delving into the issue of homelessness, the book and film explore Moth's diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a rare condition that can cause gradually worsening problems with movement, speech, memory and swallowing, according to the UK's National Health Service website. In 2017, Winn had an article published in the Big Issue and said "everything changed" for her after this. The Salt Path was published in March 2018 and became a Sunday Times bestseller.
