The solace of the South West Coast Path
Facing financial ruin and ill health, Raynor and Moth Winn refused to give up and instead set off on the adventure of a lifetime, with just a few pounds in their pockets. Raynor Winn tells an inspiring story that reminds us all that immersion in nature ca
It was one of those weeks that happens to other people. A financial dispute with a lifetime friend had led to a court case that culminated in us losing our home and business in Wales, and facing eviction. Within days of that news, Moth, my husband of 32 years, was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative brain disease for which there is no cure or treatment. Nothing could be done, other than physiotherapy to help him retain some muscle strength.
We were under the stairs hiding from the bailiffs when we decided to walk. We didn’t carefully consider setting out on the 630 miles of the South West Coast Path carrying everything we needed on our backs, but as the bailiffs hammered on the door, it seemed like the best response. It offered us the chance to follow a line on a map, and I desperately needed a map, something to show me the way, to shine a faint light in the void that our future had become.
We had precious few options. There were no private rents available to us and the local council was unable to help. We were homeless, with almost no money. Our lives were quickly spiralling into chaos.
In the face of all this Moth had grasped the idea of physiotherapy like a lifeline and as he began a punishing exercise regimen, the idea of the walk grew. We packed our rucksacks with the bare minimum, but it soon became apparent that carrying a rucksack when you’re 50 isn’t the same as when you’re 20. However light we packed, they still weighed us down. But we headed south all the same, to walk the path as it follows the coastline from Minehead in Somerset, through North Devon, Cornwall and South Devon, to Poole in Dorset. We didn’t realise that the route’s total ascent is equivalent to climbing Everest nearly four times, that it would take us through wild terrain and urban holidaymakers, and test us in ways we hadn’t imagined, or that the walk would change us and the course of our lives irrevocably.
The first days were incredibly hard, as we battled despair, self-doubt, Moth’s illness and the sheer difficulty of the start of the path. Unable to afford campsites, we wild-camped, finding a new place to pitch the tent every evening. Each morning, Moth would struggle to get up and put his rucksack on – the effort involved was almost unbearable.
But as the miles passed, each day became a little less painful and we found that our gaze was held less by our feet and more by the wild expanse surrounding us.
Through dark star-crusted nights we camped on exposed, wind-battered headlands, in deep wooded valleys, on cold beaches and in sloping fields of thistles. As the rhythm of the walk began to stretch out, waking to a different view every day brought a wild solace. One morning we would open our eyes to a dew-lit meadow and thousands of ladybirds hatching into life, tiny crimson bodies crawling over everything and lifting into flight. The next we’d be on a foggy hillside, with the mist lifting from the headlands to expose a slither of golden light along the coast and seals calling in the coves below. Experiences of a lifetime came daily and the unpredictability of wild camping became its beauty.
LOST AND FOUND
Snatched from the complacency of middle age, from the habits and rituals of everyday life, we were lost. The framework that we would spent our lives constructing was gone and we had no idea how to build a new one. So we walked. Putting one foot in front of another was a victory, each step the reason to take the next, each combe climbed a success. The strip of ancient, weather-worn wilderness between the land and the sea drew us on and seeing more of it became our purpose. Our lives no longer needed a framework, for now we were alive and together, and that was enough.
On a damp, misty morning on the north coast of Cornwall we came across two old men walking home from a morning swim. One was bundled in
“OUR GAZE WAS HELD LESS BY OUR FEET AND MORE BY THE WILD EXPANSE SURROUNDING US”
hat and coat, the other in bathers carrying a Tupperware box of blackberries. I thought I didn’t like blackberries; the ones we’d eaten on the path had been tart and unpleasant. So when he offered one I took it out of politeness, but as I bit into it there was an explosion of rich, autumnal flavour. And faintly, in the background, salt. How could they be so different? The old man replaced the lid on the box and told us that when the mist comes and lays the sea air on a perfectly ripe blackberry, then you have something special, something you can’t create and money can’t buy – a gift of nature.
Hundreds of miles passed and Moth became stronger in ways consultants had said was impossible. Camped on a beach, we were caught out by an incoming tide at three in the morning. To escape the water we lifted the fully erected tent above our heads and ran up the sand. Before we began the walk Moth had struggled to put his coat on without help, but the hard, physical effort of the path and months of living as one with the natural world had brought him back to health, back to life, if only for a short time.
Passing Land’s End, having spent the day struggling through horizontal rain, we pitched the tent among granite boulders. Alone at the edge of the Atlantic, there were just two sheets of nylon between us and Canada. But we were free. To walk or not, to give up or not; free to choose as we had never been in our lives before. The path had allowed us to let go of despair and look to the horizon with hope. It gave us a life when we thought ours was over and taught us how to truly live the time we have, to appreciate the moment. We may have had nothing, but we were lightly salted blackberries hanging in the last of the summer sun. And don’t we all deserve some time to discover that? Time to find out who we really are before the moments run out.