Review
Books
Culture
Film & TV
Purpose
8 min read

You may never take the Salt Path but here's why the tale makes sense

Kindness runs deep in the architecture of reality.

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

A hiking couple sit on the grass next to a pack.
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
BBC Films.

The Salt Path is a phenomenon.  

An internationally best-selling book and now a movie starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. How is it that a memoir of a middle-aged couple walking the South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset, via Land’s End, has had such an impact? 

Well, it’s because it resonates. It rings true. It’s about life as we know it, even if we haven’t hiked the 630 miles of the path from start to finish. A journey that is also, incidentally, the equivalent of climbing Mt Everest four times over. 

In the events leading up to their walk Raynor (Ray) and Moth Winn are dealt a series of body blows. They’re left bankrupt and homeless empty-nesters, struggling to come to terms with Moth’s deteriorating health.  

It was just as the bailiffs were seeking to gain access to their farm and take possession of it that Ray spotted an old book, 500 Hundred Mile Walkies, and took inspiration. 

‘We could just walk.’ 

And that’s what they did. 

So, what are the truths about life and our human experience that this story opens up for us? 

Life is precarious  

Bad stuff happens. Sometimes we bring it on ourselves, the consequence of wrong or ill-judged decisions. Other times it is thoroughly undeserved. Life turns around and bites us, hard. We’re left with our heads numb and spinning round with the persistent but unanswered question, ‘why me?’ 

For the Winns, an investment in the business of a trusted, life-long friend failed. The deal he structured left them responsible for the debts of his company. The end of a prolonged legal battle meant they lost everything, their farm, their home, their business, and the life-long friend. 

The same week also found them in a hospital in Liverpool getting the diagnosis for Moth’s chronic shoulder pain. It was not the suspected nerve damage, but rather the fatal neurological condition corticobasal degeneration. CBD. A diagnosis that was untreatable and only finally confirmed postmortem. 

Whether it’s the South West Coast Path or the familiar details of our own life, we can never fully anticipate tomorrow. We do not know what lies behind the next headland or what unwelcome surprises life may spring on us. No, we need to live in the moment. It’s pointless worrying about tomorrow and we ought to let it worry about itself. We can only live in today. As Ray reflected towards the end of their time on the path: 

“This second in the millions of seconds was the only one, the only one that we could live in.” 

Who am I, really? 

Early in the book Ray recalls: 

“I once heard a lecture by Stephen Hawking, when he said, ‘It’s the past that tells us who we are. Without it we lose our identity.’ Perhaps I was trying to lose my identity, so I could invent a new one.” 

Who are we when everything is stripped away? What defines us? Homeless and jobless, questions about where we’re from and what we do are not only awkward, they also create an existential void.  

Often mistaken for tramps, Ray and Moth noticed people treating them differently. Some quietly moved away, others were more forthright, “disgusting!” But the judgement of others does not define who we are. Yet, who actually were they in this new world of theirs?  

And then there’s the impact of failing health. Each stage of deterioration promising to erode what can be physically done and requiring a redefinition until there is nothing left at all.  

Yet identity is deeper than that. It is at the core of who we are, at the very heart of us. It is the sum of our experiences and choices, our successes and failures, of what we have gladly embraced and that which life has unexpectedly thrown at us. We are unique individuals with intrinsic value, worth and dignity. People who love and are loved. 

At the end of the path Ray muses: 

“Most people go through their whole lives without answering their own questions: What am I, who do I have within me? The big stuff. What a waste.” 

I guess that’s one of the attractions of making space to walk. To lose the distractions and busyness of our over-complicated lives for self-discovery to break in. 

One step at a time 

How do you get your head around walking 630 miles? How can you appreciate the demands of climbing unknown hills and cliffs and navigating their gullies and ravines.  

On top of the terrain there’s the notorious English weather to negotiate. With little money and only a tent for respite: when it rains you get wet and stay wet, when it’s cold, you shiver and put on as many layers as you can. Even in August it can be challenging. 

Walk, eat, sleep, repeat. 

Sometimes the only thing to do is put one foot in front of the other.  

“Each step had its own resonance, its moment of power or failure. That step, and the next and the next and the next, was the reason and the future. … each day survived a reason to live through the next.” 

There is always agency. There is always the opportunity to choose today which path to travel and which attitude to serve. To give in or go on, to be a defeatist or hopeful, complaining or generous, those choices are always there, even when they’re limited. Even in the wake of unfair decisions and unexpected tragedy, we choose today the way we take. And sometimes that’s all we can muster. 

The kindness of strangers 

Ray and Moth’s story is littered with moments of kindness and warmth. From the lovelorn waitress who sneaks them the day’s leftover pasties to the generosity of a hippie commune there is a recurring theme that echoes an underlying goodness in the nature of people. And often it is those with the least who prove to be the most open-handed and thoughtful. 

On more than one occasion the Winn’s themselves share from their own meagre supply of food, especially their precious fudge bars, with those in a more uncertain state than their own. On another occasion they step into a tense and potentially violent situation with a young woman, Sealy, the subject of an abusive relationship. They offer her company and a way out, ultimately paying for her £5 bus journey to get away to family. 

There is something heartwarming about kindness, something elevating. Both the giver and the receiver feel encouraged, lighter, happier. The abiding truth continues to stand the test of time that it is ‘better to give than to receive’.  

Strangely, watching these scenes play out in my local Showcase Cinema was an uplifting and inspiring experience. You can never predict or properly anticipate when a tear will unexpectedly present itself to the corner of your eye. I suspect that kindness runs more deeply in the nature of things than we comprehend. It is part of the deep architecture of reality.

Love and relationship in tough times 

When it comes down to it, The Salt Path is about Ray’s relationship with Moth. How they face an unimaginably difficult set of circumstances and find a way through together. This is a profoundly hopeful story. And from it we can draw hope too. 

There was nothing religious about what they were doing, “It’s not a pilgrimage. Is it?”  

At one level it is purely a response to desperation. But in the midst of it all they have each other. Thirty-two years together, having begun their relationship when Ray was 18, they are still deeply in love. They epitomise the values enshrined in the marriage vows. 

“… to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part …” 

This is not slushy sentimentality but rather love that proves itself in the face of the onslaught of ‘worse … poorer … sickness … death’. 

The conclusion of their journey led Ray to a realisation: “I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home.” As the ancient poet wrote: 

“Set me as a seal upon your heart,  

as a seal upon your arm; 

for love is strong as death, 

passion fierce as the grave. 

Its flashes are flashes of fire, 

a raging flame. 

 

Many waters cannot quench love, 

neither can floods drown it. 

If one offered for love 

all the wealth of one's house, 

it would be utterly scorned.” 

(Song of Solomon) 

That’s it then. The book and the movie work because they reflect back to us the life we know, the lives we live. Yes, they’re in high relief in the choices that Ray and Moth take, but that clarifies things for us. Most of us won’t ever find ourselves in the position they were in, but we can empathise. Most of us would never think to do what they did even if we were. But for all that, we see, we understand and it makes sense. 

If you get a chance to see the film, then do. Gillian Anderson and Jeremy Isaacs are exceptionally good in their understated performances. The visual experience of the South West coast is everything you would expect it to be, sounding as majestic and immersive as if you were there. A real treat. 

For me, the most poignant and telling moment of the story happens at Lyme Regis. Moth says: 

“When it does come, the end, I want you to have me cremated. …keep me in a box somewhere, then when you die the kids can put you in, give us a shake and send us on our way … They can let us go on the coast, in the wind, and we’ll find the horizon together.” 

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Article
Character
Culture
Football
Sport
3 min read

What happens if your club doesn’t win?

In football leagues and life not all of us can be winners.

Henry Corbett, a vicar in Liverpool and chaplain to Everton Football Club.  

  

A dejected football coach squats by the byline.

Most football clubs don’t win Premier League titles, FA Cup finals, Champions League trophies. 

Most football players don’t pick up winners' medals at the highest level. 

Many of us don’t achieve fame, status, “winners” headlines. No medals or trophies on our mantlepiece, no rousing applause or open-top bus parades. 

So, are we losers, are we the defeated, should we be envious of the winners? Or do we try and ignore all this talk about winning and remain indifferent to all this hype about football, medals, fame, applause? 

Here are some attempts at comfort, at a better perspective, at some hope for us all, whether out club wins titles or not, whether a player picks up medals or not, and whether all of us are recognised, famous or not. 

Winning is not just about titles and trophies. If your club has the resources and the team to win a title and a trophy, at whatever level, professional or amateur, that is great and definitely to be celebrated.  

But if you support a club with a limited budget and which has performed brilliantly well and beyond expectations has stayed in its division and brought pleasure to many then that is a win.  

If your club, thanks to great efforts by a few or many, has remained solvent and has an outstanding community section that makes a difference, that is a win.  

If your club has excellent supporter involvement and a pricing system that is fair, inclusive and creates good relationships across the club and the community that is a win.

If your team is clearly improving, if the attitude is spot on, if the behaviour on and off the pitch is sound, if every player and coach and staff member gives their very best as well as looking to improve that is a win.  

The word “winning” needs a fairer, more encouraging, truer definition. 

Are we the defeated, the losers, the envious? Of course not. 

They say that professional football players have two lives: the first is their playing career, and then the second is their life after their playing days. To win in life is to win in both lives.  

That will mean giving of their best as players with a passion to learn, to improve, to be a good teammate. It means being a good role model on and off the pitch. Then in life number two to give of your best there too to make our world a better, fairer, more loving, more beautiful place.  

And there will be lessons from the time as a player to take into life number two: the values of teamwork, discipline, training, courage, and of course coping with the disappointment of not maybe winning titles and realising there is more to life than simply titles. Player, manager and World Cup winner with Argentina in 1978 Ossie Ardlies reflected back on his football career and said:  

“Everyone is a winner who gives their best.” 

And for all of us applause, status, fame are unreliable goals. A few achieve that, some deservedly, some maybe less so. Most don’t hit the headlines. Are we the defeated, the losers, the envious? Of course not.  

So, are we indifferent to such issues as winning, success, applause, accolades?  Roy Castle wrote a forward to a slim volume of essays celebrating Christians who had worked and served in their communities away from the limelight, and he mentioned that as a performer he appreciates the applause he gets. “These people”, he wrote, “have worked away without applause, But there is always one person in the audience. His applause comes later.”  That’s the greatest win. 

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief