Therapy on a salt path in Dorset Michael Fitzpatrick

To the Dorset countryside, in this season of staycations, for some respite from the world of Covid-19. For more than a quarter of a century, we have been coming, as a family, to the same cottage on the Jurassic Coast lying only a few feet from the South West Coast Path and never has the escape from the city been more welcome.

It was a pleasure to find, left behind by the previous guests, The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, which documents a midlife crisis tackled through walking the coastal path from Minehead in Somerset to Poole in Dorset, passing our temporary front door. As a result of financial and legal difficulties, Winn and her husband Moth lost their farm in Wales, their livelihoods and their home. In the same week Moth was brusquely informed of the diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a disease like Parkinson’s causing progressive motor and cognitive decline. Though this could only be confirmed by a post-mortem examination, he was advised that he had probably already had the condition for six years and the usual prognosis was six to eight years.

Recommended rest and gentle physiotherapy, Moth and Winn sold up their remaining possessions, bought rucksacks and a tent and, with a 30-year-old guide book and a battered copy of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, set off to walk the 630 miles around the coasts of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset. “Dislocated, disconnected and uprooted, a strip of earth, often no more than a foot wide, had become home.” Their odyssey started off as “a time to get our thoughts straight and make a plan” but soon became “a meditation, a mental void filled only with salt, wind, dust and light”.

Over the past 25 years I have walked every inch of the last leg of the coast path, from Lyme Regis to Swanage, and though I have avoided the rigours of wild camping, I can testify to the therapeutic power of this spectacular landscape. Even at the height of this summer when travel abroad is so restricted and the beaches at home are notoriously congested, the coastal path is, for substantial distances, sparsely travelled. As you walk past fields of wheat and barley, cattle and sheep, under horizons of sea and sky, you almost expect to meet characters out of a Thomas Hardy novel, rather than a modern backpacker.

“We had lost everything, except our children and each other,” writes Winn, “but we had the wet grass and the rhythm of the sea on the rocks.” The Salt Path is a thoughtful reflection on ageing and infirmity, home and homelessness, hope and survival.

Bark and bite

One enduring hazard of the coast path experienced by Raynor Winn is that arising from dogs. When she was bowled over one day by a rampaging hound, its owner inquired accusingly: “Are you drunk?” When Winn replied that “it’s your dog that’s the problem”, she was abused as a “tramp”. I have been bitten twice by dogs in the vicinity of the coast path – and on both occasions owners suggested that I must have provoked their usually tranquil pet into

Life-enhancing: Parkrun is back, after 70 weeks in pandemic abeyance

uncustomarily aggressive behaviour. Winn and her husband were often disturbed at dawn by dog walkers and on one occasion by a dog urinating copiously on their tent. Perhaps the plan to license professional dog walkers in London parks could be extended to the South West coastal path?

Run the world

After 70 weeks in pandemic abeyance, Parkrun is back. I was delighted to welcome the return of the 5km run enjoyed by thousands every Saturday morning in parks around the world. Though I normally run in Finsbury Park in north London, on holiday I was able to join the runners at Lodmoor Country Park in Weymouth, to celebrate my 150th run. No “personal best” this week, but it was great to be back at this lifeenhancing event.

I have walked every inch of the last leg of the ‘Salt Path’ and can testify to its therapeutic power