Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Welcome to conversations. Now. I've been very lucky.
Speaker 1: I've just seen a movie that's about to be released.
Speaker 1: It's called The Salt Path and it tells the story
Speaker 1: about raynal Winn and her husband Moths, who lose their home,
Speaker 1: sadly lose their home and then faced with this prospect
Speaker 1: of homelessness, decided to go walking as you do. And
Speaker 1: it turned into an amazing film where which is beautifully
Speaker 1: shot showing the coastline of southern England. And it turned
Speaker 1: out to be very therapeutic for Raynhold's husband, who had
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with a very serious illness. But very fortunate
Speaker 1: we have Raynold joining us now. Raynal Winn, welcome to
Speaker 1: the program. How are you great?
Speaker 2: Thanks good for you to be here.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us from where we are speaking to you.
Speaker 2: I'm in Cornwall in the southwestern tip of England.
Speaker 1: Is that home now?
Speaker 2: It's worth of been since we stopped, since we finished
Speaker 2: walking a path. Actually strange that your life just washed
Speaker 2: me up here and I've not left.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Now when we look at your bio you
Speaker 1: list to your occupation is listed as a British long
Speaker 1: distance walker. I wonder how many people make their career
Speaker 1: as long distance walkers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's strange, isn't it. I don't know how that
Speaker 2: made book. I do walk quite a bit, so maybe the.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to start at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but I think I have to start in the middle
Speaker 1: when we when we go back to the movie, the
Speaker 1: movie starts with you and your husband being kicked out
Speaker 1: of your house or your farm, and it's a gripping, sad,
Speaker 1: angry moment for I imagine for you and for him,
Speaker 1: and for those of us who are watching. So can
Speaker 1: you tell us what led up to that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, moster night we met when we were teenagers. I
Speaker 2: can remember I was sitting in the college canteen and
Speaker 2: it was a really busy day. But as I looked
Speaker 2: up across the canteen, it's really full, busy room. There
Speaker 2: was a little partying in the heads along the opposite
Speaker 2: side of the room, there was this young man in
Speaker 2: a white shirt and just at that moment so I
Speaker 2: saw him. It dipped a Mars bar, a chocolate bar
Speaker 2: in a cup of tea, and I can remember thinking
Speaker 2: what a weird thing to do. But strangely is I
Speaker 2: watched him it was just like he's the one, I
Speaker 2: just know it. And as I walked out of the room,
Speaker 2: I looked back at him and he caught my eye,
Speaker 2: and there was just that moment of knowing, that moment
Speaker 2: when we both.
Speaker 1: Just knew love it first sight.
Speaker 2: That's definitely yeah. And through the years after that, we
Speaker 2: just had this dream that we would find a place
Speaker 2: in the hills, somewhere we could turn into a home
Speaker 2: and live life on our terms. I think I was
Speaker 2: about thirty when we actually found that place. It was
Speaker 2: an absolute ruin. The walls were falling in, roof was
Speaker 2: caving in, but it was exactly what we'd been looking for,
Speaker 2: and we spent the next thirty years of our lives,
Speaker 2: twenty years, sorry of our lives, rebuilding that converting the
Speaker 2: outbuildings into holiday accommodations so visitors could come and stay
Speaker 2: and pay the bills, and our children grew up, then
Speaker 2: they went to university. It was just it was everything
Speaker 2: we'd ever hoped for, and we were living our sort
Speaker 2: of idyllic life, I think. But during those years, we'd
Speaker 2: had this financial dispute with a lifetime friend and it
Speaker 2: resulted in a court case that's always being served with
Speaker 2: an eviction notice from that home, and they gave us
Speaker 2: a week to move out, a week to pack Goes
Speaker 2: twenty years of life into.
Speaker 1: A box and go.
Speaker 2: And it was during that week that Moth had what
Speaker 2: we thought was going to be routine hospice of appointment
Speaker 2: because it has a problem with his shoulder. We thought
Speaker 2: it was it had come from when he fell through
Speaker 2: the roof when we were mending the roof, But it
Speaker 2: turned out not to be routine at all because it
Speaker 2: was diagnosed with a neuro degenerative condition called cortico base
Speaker 2: or degeneration, and it's a really rare condition that has
Speaker 2: no treatment and no cure. And I think it was
Speaker 2: in that moment that all of our lives fell apart,
Speaker 2: because we'd lost everything that we had worked towards, our home,
Speaker 2: our business, everything that we'd built for twenty years. But
Speaker 2: then we lost what we believed would be our future
Speaker 2: as well, because that was being taken away from him.
Speaker 1: Well, I wanted to know, and never really explained in
Speaker 1: the movie, is what was the business deal that went wrong?
Speaker 1: Can you expand on that as well?
Speaker 2: I've never really dwelt on that because I don't think
Speaker 2: it's the priority really in what in this story because
Speaker 2: the story was about the coast path, but everything, it's
Speaker 2: just a friend, and then you find out in life
Speaker 2: you probably shouldn't have trusted them. We all can do that,
Speaker 2: can't we. But sometimes the outcome can be more extreme,
Speaker 2: and it was in our case.
Speaker 1: Could you lose your house and you get kicked out?
Speaker 1: I mean that just seems so brutal. The bailiffs are
Speaker 1: there knocking the door down to kick you out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Early on in the film Starting a Book as well,
Speaker 2: it starts at that point where we're standing under the stairs.
Speaker 2: The bayliffs are knocking at the door, and we just
Speaker 2: weren't ready to go. That's why we were under the stairs.
Speaker 2: We weren't ready to take that step out of the
Speaker 2: door because we knew in that moment as we stepped out,
Speaker 2: we would never go back, never go back into all
Speaker 2: those years of life. And also as we went out
Speaker 2: of that door, we would become homeless because there was
Speaker 2: nowherefforts to go. And that was the moment when I
Speaker 2: saw a book in a packing case, and it was
Speaker 2: a book about a young man who'd walked to the
Speaker 2: Southwest Coast Path with his dog, and I think in that,
Speaker 2: in that really brutal moment, it felt like the idea
Speaker 2: of filling a rucksack and just going for a walk
Speaker 2: following a line on the map would give us a reason,
Speaker 2: would give us a reason to go forwards, a purpose
Speaker 2: to go into the next day. And at that stage,
Speaker 2: that's all it was. It was something that would readers
Speaker 2: through the next day because it felt as if there
Speaker 2: was no reason to go on really at that point.
Speaker 1: But you needed some sort of preparation. Had to find
Speaker 1: a tent, you had to find food, you had to
Speaker 1: find nep sex. And did that take much doing?
Speaker 2: I did. I mean, we hadn't walked any sort of
Speaker 2: of like multi day distance since we were in iarly twenties,
Speaker 2: and at this point I was fifty. So when we
Speaker 2: got all our old equipment and looked at it, it
Speaker 2: was actually not not carryable because it was so heavy
Speaker 2: and we weren't twenty anymore. So we had to buy
Speaker 2: a new tent, which we did. We bought it from
Speaker 2: an online auction website and it became our home for
Speaker 2: months to come. But we bought it for a few
Speaker 2: pounds online, and then, of course, you know, we gathered
Speaker 2: the other things that we would need and go were
Speaker 2: very very basic, very rudimentary things. Probably the biggest mistake
Speaker 2: we made was I saw these summer weight sleeping bags
Speaker 2: in a supermarket that was so tiny and lightweight, and
Speaker 2: it was like fantastic, easy to carry. Great, but you
Speaker 2: know it's Britain. You never needs sleeping bag here.
Speaker 1: What is quite gripping when you're trying to understand Moth's
Speaker 1: condition and he looked like he walked with quite a
Speaker 1: severe limp. It must have been so painful for him
Speaker 1: to negotiate those climbs and the like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very difficult because part of good condition,
Speaker 2: well the majority of the condition of CBD is that
Speaker 2: it affects movement. It affects the signals from the brain
Speaker 2: telling your body to move. And so his initial stages
Speaker 2: with this condition were that he was struggling with his
Speaker 2: left side, struggling to move his left leg properly and
Speaker 2: that was really difficult. But he was also struggling to
Speaker 2: even put his coat on without help. So carrying a
Speaker 2: rucksack was really hard. Yeah, he was. He was finding
Speaker 2: it very very hard to start with. You know, there
Speaker 2: were days when many mornings early on in that walk
Speaker 2: when he would have been in the tent overnight and
Speaker 2: was so stiff in the morning he couldn't get out
Speaker 2: of the tent. So there's a scene in a film
Speaker 2: where Jillian pulls him out of the tent by the
Speaker 2: sleeping bag, and that often happened many mornings. It was
Speaker 2: the only way of getting him out was to pull
Speaker 2: the sleeping bag out with him in it. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it wasn't easy in those early weeks. It wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: My guest on conversations today is rain Or when Raina
Speaker 1: and her husband Moth start war and they don't start,
Speaker 1: but they're their main characters in a movie called The
Speaker 1: Salt Path. They walked the Salt Path, which is a
Speaker 1: path in England. We're talking about that at bit more
Speaker 1: and when he come back, there's a film made of it.
Speaker 1: There's books being written and subsequently a couple of other books.
Speaker 1: So back shortly, folks. Raynall Winner is my guest on
Speaker 1: conversations now. Raynal is a well. She's described in Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: if you can trust Wikipedia, as a British long distance
Speaker 1: walker and writer. Well, she certainly is a writer because
Speaker 1: her first book, The Sault Path, became a best seller,
Speaker 1: and it's been made into a movie now. The movie
Speaker 1: stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. Gillian Andson plays Raynor's
Speaker 1: part and Isaacs plays the part of Moth. What's it
Speaker 1: like seeing yourself portrayed in a movie with and are
Speaker 1: you happy with the performance and the and the casting.
Speaker 2: Well, it's quite a weird thing, isn't it, having Jillian
Speaker 2: Anderson portray you on the screen. It's not an experience,
Speaker 2: that's for sure. I can remember when I was told
Speaker 2: that it would be Jillian Anderson. I was a little
Speaker 2: bit I don't know, is it going to work. She's
Speaker 2: so good, glamorous. I just couldn't see how she would
Speaker 2: capture me in that absolutely raw state. But as soon
Speaker 2: as I saw her on set, I could see she
Speaker 2: completely abandoned any idea of vanity and had thrown herself
Speaker 2: into the idea of being raw and elemental and out
Speaker 2: in the weather. And she did a brilliant job of that,
Speaker 2: of capturing that sense of being lost in life.
Speaker 1: And how did Jason Isaacs portray math? Were you happy
Speaker 1: with that?
Speaker 2: Well? Yes, completely. We met them for a day before
Speaker 2: filming started, and I think I was immediately struck by
Speaker 2: Jason Isaac's enthusiasm for life, and that is such a
Speaker 2: part of moths character, that sense of enthusiasm and joy
Speaker 2: and just willingness to embrace the day. And yeah, completely,
Speaker 2: as soon as you know he was, he was running
Speaker 2: up and down the stairs, trying to copy Moth's movements
Speaker 2: and jumping on and off our kitchen worktop. I realized
Speaker 2: that he was going to be actually perfect. And another
Speaker 2: moments in the film, just little moments when I looked
Speaker 2: at the screen and just for a second I thought
Speaker 2: it was Moth on the screen. So I can't have
Speaker 2: done a bad job if I felt like that.
Speaker 1: Surely Moth isn't his real name, Moth as in Moth
Speaker 1: t h.
Speaker 2: It's what most of his teenage friends have always called him.
Speaker 1: So is it a secret?
Speaker 2: Well, it's that's an abbreviation of his real name, so
Speaker 2: you know, it's what we've always known about. So that's
Speaker 2: who he is to us.
Speaker 1: You can't you have to tell us his real name.
Speaker 2: I don't, you.
Speaker 1: Can be what can that be short for moths?
Speaker 2: Anyway, it was great to see Jason on the screen
Speaker 2: because there's a little scene later in a film when
Speaker 2: it's a semed direct from the book when a lady
Speaker 2: comes and talks to them and says, you know, you've
Speaker 2: been out in the out in the wilderness, and you
Speaker 2: can see it written all over you. You're salted. And
Speaker 2: that scene in the book, when I looked at the
Speaker 2: at the screen, just at Julian and Jason sitting on
Speaker 2: the sand, there was just in that moment they really
Speaker 2: captured that feeling of what it felt like to be
Speaker 2: on that path, of what it felt like to be
Speaker 2: out there weeks and weeks into that walk with nothing else.
Speaker 2: And I think that was the thing. It wasn't just
Speaker 2: like going for a walk, it was there was nothing
Speaker 2: else that walk, those rocksacks, got tent, It was all
Speaker 2: we had.
Speaker 1: So did you have a rustic or rule upbringing you
Speaker 1: close to the land?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I grew up on farm, so my whole childhood
Speaker 2: was playing in the fields and in the woods and
Speaker 2: and tracking rabbits and that that was my childhood. So
Speaker 2: I think really.
Speaker 1: Were about where about what part of.
Speaker 2: England, So as far from the sea as you can get,
Speaker 2: right in the center of the country, as far away
Speaker 2: from the coast as you could be. So I think
Speaker 2: something of that of that growing up in a landscape,
Speaker 2: was in that decision two to go out onto the
Speaker 2: headguns because maybe maybe that felt like going to a
Speaker 2: safe place, because I understood nature more than I would
Speaker 2: ever feel at home in the town or I mean,
Speaker 2: moth have grown up on the edge of but in
Speaker 2: his head, he'd always been absolutely drawn to the wild places.
Speaker 2: So when we first met, you know, he really encouraged
Speaker 2: me to go to the mountains, to go to the
Speaker 2: coast guine, to go to the places that really inspired him.
Speaker 2: Of very early years together were spent exploring Scotland in
Speaker 2: the Lake District, the really wilder parts of the UK,
Speaker 2: And I think that's what our relationship was built on,
Speaker 2: was built on those early years of being out in
Speaker 2: the countryside. And so I'm sure that that, you know,
Speaker 2: was there somewhere in the background of that decision to walk.
Speaker 1: As a young lady and a young girl growing up,
Speaker 1: what ambition did you have you did you see yourself
Speaker 1: as a marathon walker? Well? What did you want to be?
Speaker 2: Absolutely when I was a child, I thought I was
Speaker 2: going to grow up to be a writer, and I
Speaker 2: really just thought I was going to have a book
Speaker 2: with a penguin on the the spine.
Speaker 1: Of the book.
Speaker 2: But I never did write. I just life took me
Speaker 2: off down another avenue, and I never did write anything
Speaker 2: until I started to write The Salt Path. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was such a joy to put words onto a page
Speaker 2: and to feel how you could how you could painter
Speaker 2: scene with words. I just loved the process and it
Speaker 2: was almost as addictive as a long distance walk.
Speaker 1: Then was it easy to get it published?
Speaker 2: Well, I've been told by my publisher and my agent
Speaker 2: to qualify anything I say about this by saying what
Speaker 2: happened to me isn't normal. I literally I wrote it
Speaker 2: four Moth. I wrote the Sort Path just for Moth
Speaker 2: because he was starting to the illness was starting to
Speaker 2: affect his memory, was starting to forget some parts of
Speaker 2: that path, and it had been such an important, strong,
Speaker 2: powerful moment in our lives. I needed to hold it
Speaker 2: for him, to capture it so that he would always
Speaker 2: have it. And that's all I was doing with it,
Speaker 2: you know. I literally wrote it, printed it on a
Speaker 2: home printer. It started out black, ended up pink because
Speaker 2: the printer ran out of ink. I tied it up
Speaker 2: with the string, gave it to him for his birthday.
Speaker 2: That's all it was at that stage, but I remember
Speaker 2: my daughter was staying with us because it was his birthday.
Speaker 2: She read it before he did, and she said, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not bad. You should do something with it. And
Speaker 2: I really thought she meant, you know, get a binder
Speaker 2: or put it in a folder, because I couldn't imagine
Speaker 2: doing anything other. But eventually I did look for an
Speaker 2: agent and found one that I thought would be okay.
Speaker 2: Sent you know, as you do three chapters and this
Speaker 2: is not this And just a few days later she
Speaker 2: got back to me and said, kind of sing the
Speaker 2: rest of the manuscript. Within a week she said she
Speaker 2: wanted to represent me. And then just a couple of
Speaker 2: months later we had an offer from from the publishers
Speaker 2: and I've got a penguin on the spine of my book.
Speaker 1: How amazing is that? You dripped about that as a
Speaker 1: little girl. Yeah, And then the film rights followed. Did
Speaker 1: that take you by surprise?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? The Sapath had been published for a few months
Speaker 2: and we started to get some interest from a few
Speaker 2: producers who wanted to option the film rights. I didn't
Speaker 2: understand anything about film really, I'm not really sure if
Speaker 2: I do now, but I certainly didn't then, but it
Speaker 2: does seem that many books get optioned, but very few
Speaker 2: get made into a film. So we we we agreed
Speaker 2: to option the film rights with absolutely no expectation of
Speaker 2: ever seeing a film made. So when it did finally
Speaker 2: come to to good point where things started to move
Speaker 2: and it was actually going to be made, it did
Speaker 2: feel a bit like, oh, hold on, because it's actually happening.
Speaker 2: What is this going to mean? Yeah, well, there were
Speaker 2: quite a few years in between the option and the
Speaker 2: film actually get made, but apparently that's the way it
Speaker 2: goes in films, very slow business.
Speaker 1: Rain Or Win is my guest, folks. Her book was
Speaker 1: called The Salt Path that's been made into a movie.
Speaker 1: You must see it. It's quite gripping and it's quite
Speaker 1: inspiring actually because you feel the pain. You feel the
Speaker 1: pain of climbing hills and sleeping out and I don't
Speaker 1: know how you actually walk so far carrying begpecks Back shortly, folks,
Speaker 1: welcome back the conversations everybody. If you have just joined in,
Speaker 1: I'm chatting with rain Or Win. She's in Cornwall as
Speaker 1: we speak, down at the south of England, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about a movie that was made subsequent to her
Speaker 1: publishing a book called The Salt Path about her and
Speaker 1: her husband Moths diagnosed with a really serious illness. I'll
Speaker 1: just see if I'm actually pronounced a quarterboat, quarterco base
Speaker 1: or degeneration. And they lose their home in a business
Speaker 1: deal or an arrangement that went poorly for them, so
Speaker 1: in desperation they start walking. I just can't imagine walking
Speaker 1: the distances you did. I mean, you can go for
Speaker 1: a walk, and you might go for a go for
Speaker 1: a weekend, but you're the Salt Path was is that
Speaker 1: five hundred odd miles.
Speaker 2: Six hundred and thirty miles that's got on a scent
Speaker 2: because aparently equivalent to climbing. Ever, it's nearly four times,
Speaker 2: so you can tell it goes up and down quite
Speaker 2: a bit.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing that puzzled me when you see
Speaker 1: the movie where Moth starts off and he's dragging his
Speaker 1: leg and he's dragging his lenk the whole way through. Firstly,
Speaker 1: did the did the actor Jason Isaacs, did he get
Speaker 1: the movement accurate? Is that? Is that? How?
Speaker 2: Talking to Math and lots of time exploring how that
Speaker 2: condition affected him at that time, but he also spent
Speaker 2: quite a bit of time talking to PSPA, the charity
Speaker 2: that supports people with DBD, and another very closely connected
Speaker 2: illness PSP, and from that he built a picture of
Speaker 2: of the movements of people with cort co based or degeneration,
Speaker 2: and he he worked quite closely with Math on movement
Speaker 2: and that was that was really worthwhile because although the
Speaker 2: movements that he portrays might not be one hundred percent
Speaker 2: accurate to how Math moved, they do portray that illness
Speaker 2: really well and as such it was it was really
Speaker 2: strong picture of the condition.
Speaker 1: There's interesting parts. I mean, I know I've seen the
Speaker 1: movie and our listeners probably haven't yet, but you seem
Speaker 1: so destitute, had no money at times, you were starving
Speaker 1: at times. How did you survive and what was that
Speaker 1: like the prospect of no money and no food and
Speaker 1: you're on the walk.
Speaker 2: It was pretty desperate at times. We had really quite
Speaker 2: poor equipment as well, because we hadn't had much money
Speaker 2: to buy it with, so I think probably one of
Speaker 2: our worst mistakes was buying goes super thin, ultra lightweight
Speaker 2: summer sleeping bags. So we were cold quite a lot,
Speaker 2: but we had hard money. Were we started out with
Speaker 2: about forty pounds a week, and then it rapidly went
Speaker 2: down to about twenty five a week. And on the
Speaker 2: Southwest coast, which is very tourist built area that sort
Speaker 2: of exists on its tourism, twenty five pounds a week
Speaker 2: for two people doesn't go very far. There's a scene
Speaker 2: in the film where where the couple have forgotten to
Speaker 2: cancel their house insurance and so a standing order takes
Speaker 2: all their money out of the account, and Durian Anderson
Speaker 2: goes to a bank teller and asks for the last
Speaker 2: one pound thirty eight out of the account, and that
Speaker 2: did actually happen. But we took that one pound thirty
Speaker 2: eight out because it equated six packs of noodles, which
Speaker 2: we worked out we could just survive for about five
Speaker 2: days on those packets of noodles. One packet a day
Speaker 2: between two of us was just through that and an
Speaker 2: awful lot of hot water to keep the hunger at bait,
Speaker 2: and we could just about get by. So hunger was
Speaker 2: such a big deal to start with. It was anyway,
Speaker 2: because we don't usually really face real hunger in Western society,
Speaker 2: do we in our civilization? And you know, if we
Speaker 2: are really hungry and there's nothing much in a house.
Speaker 2: You can always usually get a cracker or a bit
Speaker 2: of toast, but when you've got no money and there's
Speaker 2: no food, yeah, hunger can be such a really painful thing.
Speaker 2: It's actually surprising how painful hunger can be. But after
Speaker 2: a while, it's like your body adjusts and it stops
Speaker 2: needing food in the same way. And then we really
Speaker 2: did discover that you can actually keep hunger at bay
Speaker 2: with a with a hot water. And we didn't have
Speaker 2: many tea bags, so we did share the tea bags.
Speaker 2: And because you know, by then we were drinking our
Speaker 2: tea with no milk and just this reused tea bag,
Speaker 2: we did come to the point where where a tea
Speaker 2: bag could actually last us all day if we needed
Speaker 2: it to. Can I the tea that way now? Actually,
Speaker 2: with just like hint of tea and some hot water.
Speaker 1: What is this doing to your self esteem as you
Speaker 1: are enduring this lifestyle?
Speaker 2: Well, I think our self esteem took an absolute nose
Speaker 2: dive quite early on, because just maybe just a week
Speaker 2: into that walk, we were already down to our last
Speaker 2: few pounds, and I can remember standing outside the shop
Speaker 2: trying to count how much we had before we went
Speaker 2: in to obviously see what we could have thought. And
Speaker 2: I can remember having nine pound coins in my hand
Speaker 2: and that's all we had, and a lady came around
Speaker 2: the corner of the shop with a big dog that
Speaker 2: jumped up my rucksack made me make those coins skip
Speaker 2: off my hand and going onto the pavement. Well, I
Speaker 2: was straight down on the pavement, hand on the drainage grill,
Speaker 2: trying to catch my pound coin before it rolled away.
Speaker 2: And as I was there lying on the concrete, the
Speaker 2: woman with the dog started poking me with her foot,
Speaker 2: and I'll never forget it. She said, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: We don't have people like you here, drunken Trampson Street.
Speaker 2: Get up And I come in that moment thinking who's
Speaker 2: talking to because it can't be me, And then when
Speaker 2: I realized she was. I think that was the point
Speaker 2: when that sense of self really fell apart, because to
Speaker 2: that point our lives had fallen apart, but I hadn't
Speaker 2: regarded how we had changed in society's view. And I
Speaker 2: think that real low point of loss of sense of
Speaker 2: self was that was the hardest to come back from,
Speaker 2: I think, And it's a long way back from being
Speaker 2: at the very very bottom of your own sense of
Speaker 2: where you exist, not just in the wider society, but
Speaker 2: in your own self.
Speaker 1: Look at you now, self esteemsh stat I would think.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think something of've got time will
Speaker 2: always stay with me. Actually, do you think.
Speaker 1: This lady would she have recognized herself in the movie?
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of There were a couple of
Speaker 1: moments where you were, you know, castigated by people passing
Speaker 1: by and what are you doing camping here? And yeah,
Speaker 1: did you have a smart response?
Speaker 2: Usually we just ignored them and let them talk because
Speaker 2: it seemed quite the easiest way. And initially, of course,
Speaker 2: you know, people would ask, how come we've got so
Speaker 2: much time to walk so far? And initially we were
Speaker 2: quite honest and we would say, you know, we we've
Speaker 2: lost a home, we're homeless, there's nothing else to be done.
Speaker 2: And it was a real shock actually trying that people
Speaker 2: would actually physically recoil, gather their children in, or the
Speaker 2: worse still haven't quite worked this out, was draw their
Speaker 2: dogs in on a retractable lead. What was happened to
Speaker 2: the dog? I never quite work out, because there be
Speaker 2: so much emotional damage you can take before you start
Speaker 2: actually protecting yourself, and so that's what we did. So
Speaker 2: we sort of changed that narrative. When people ask us
Speaker 2: that question, how come you've got so much time, we
Speaker 2: started to say, well, we've sold our house, which is
Speaker 2: going where the wind blows, a scene where life takes us,
Speaker 2: and suddenly then well the action was completely different. It
Speaker 2: was like fantastic, amazing, and it was a real surprise
Speaker 2: to find our preconceptions around home ownership and the difference
Speaker 2: between losing your house and selling your house there was
Speaker 2: a universe in between. It was an interesting observation of
Speaker 2: society's preconceptions, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Rain Or when is my guest, folks. The movie is
Speaker 1: called The Salt Path, of the book is called The Salt Path,
Speaker 1: but there's been two books, so we're talking about that
Speaker 1: when we come back back shortly, I'm talking to rain
Speaker 1: Or Win. If you just tuned in, folks, rain Or
Speaker 1: has written a book called The Salt Path that's subsequently
Speaker 1: been made into a movie, and it's a beautiful movie.
Speaker 1: It tells the story of rain Or and her husband Moth,
Speaker 1: find themselves homeless, almost destitute at times, on. They have
Speaker 1: been a destitute, but they decide as therapy to escape,
Speaker 1: to have somewhere to go. They walk the Salt Path
Speaker 1: and it's in six hundred and thirty mile just over
Speaker 1: a thousand kilometer walk in the southwest of England. But
Speaker 1: you finish, it comes to an end. You get to
Speaker 1: the end of the path. Now what happens then? What
Speaker 1: do you do then? Or was it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were close to the end of the path
Speaker 2: and Moth started to think that maybe actually the answer
Speaker 2: was if he went back to education and studied for
Speaker 2: something good he was interested in, and so that's what
Speaker 2: he did. At the end of that path, he started
Speaker 2: a degree and we moved into a tiny apartment at
Speaker 2: the back of a chapel in a Cornish fishing village
Speaker 2: that had been given to us by a really, really
Speaker 2: kind and generous person we'd met while we were walking. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it was a really strange time. Moth had gone
Speaker 2: to university and was learning things in one respect but
Speaker 2: then losing his memory because of the illness and the
Speaker 2: other before that's when I wrote the book. But also
Speaker 2: i'd never lived in the village before. I'd always lived
Speaker 2: on a farm in a rural place. So actually to
Speaker 2: go out of the door and find that there were
Speaker 2: people outside the door, I've haund it really quite hard
Speaker 2: to adjust to. And also I was really missing that
Speaker 2: sense of being part of the landscape, that sense of
Speaker 2: being part of that open horizon. I couldn't sleep, It
Speaker 2: was really difficult. I remember putting the tent up in
Speaker 2: the bedroom and sleeping in that for weeks. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it was a strange time of adjustment when we came back.
Speaker 1: But so you write the book. The book unexpectedly is
Speaker 1: published in the movie Rights Options. Then you write another book,
Speaker 1: tell us about the Wild Silence. The Wild Silence.
Speaker 2: Silence was really a follow on to the Salt Path,
Speaker 2: a bit of a what comes next, But at the
Speaker 2: same time it was that it was really a book
Speaker 2: about about the land and how important the landscape land
Speaker 2: is to is to not just us, but to all
Speaker 2: of us. So it really it covers that time of
Speaker 2: adjustment going back into society, of sleeping in the tent
Speaker 2: in the bedroom, and also of a trail we did
Speaker 2: through the highlands of Iceland, and the walk through the
Speaker 2: southern highlands of Iceland and that incredible moonlight landscape of
Speaker 2: a volcanic ash and sulfur and boiling water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I I it inspires me to do it, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that the old knees, the worn out knees,
Speaker 1: would sustain it. So it sounds like, after all this,
Speaker 1: I would have thought you'd been done with walking. You
Speaker 1: decided to walk the Cape Roth Trail. It's got an
Speaker 1: intimidating name. It's one thousand miles sixteen hundred kilometers, for
Speaker 1: Heaven's sake, well, and.
Speaker 2: We decided to walk that path. Moth was because it'd
Speaker 2: been quite stationary for a while. It was just post
Speaker 2: a pandemic, so we'd all been in lockdown in this country.
Speaker 2: We weren't allowed to even walk very far. So he'd
Speaker 2: been walking a very restricted amount, and the symptoms of
Speaker 2: CB really flared back up, and he was at that point,
Speaker 2: one of his lowest points, and he was almost accepting it.
Speaker 2: He was almost accepting that this was it, that the
Speaker 2: condition was now going to actually just take its course.
Speaker 2: But I couldn't face that. I couldn't face the idea
Speaker 2: of him allowing that, accepting that without just trying one
Speaker 2: more time to walk a long distance and see if
Speaker 2: it changed the course of that condition as it did
Speaker 2: when we walked to the Southwest Coast Path. So we
Speaker 2: went to walk the Cape Wrath Trail, which sounds ridiculous
Speaker 2: because it's the most remote, one of the most difficult
Speaker 2: trails in the country, but it's about two hundred miles.
Speaker 2: But it was also it was a place that Marthad
Speaker 2: always wanted to go and spend time, but we'd never
Speaker 2: really had time, and I thought, if anywhere encourages him
Speaker 2: to try it or be there, So we went to
Speaker 2: the very north of Scotland, northwest of scottl went to
Speaker 2: walk with Cape Brath Trail and that's all we were
Speaker 2: going to do, but we did. We slowly, slowly walked
Speaker 2: through the remote hids and the great wilderness and rough
Speaker 2: bounds of noid Art and found ourselves in Fort William,
Speaker 2: and Moth was going, well, I feel a lot better
Speaker 2: than I did at the start, but maybe if we
Speaker 2: walked a bit further I might feel even better. And
Speaker 2: Fort William is where you can start the West Hyland Way,
Speaker 2: so we thought we'll just follow the West Tiland Way
Speaker 2: for just over a week, see how you feel there.
Speaker 2: So we walked to the West Tiland Way and that
Speaker 2: took us down through Scotland down to Glasgow and then
Speaker 2: well we thought we'll just walk up the towpath to Edinburgh,
Speaker 2: and then when we got there it was like and
Speaker 2: then we just compended on way and then offers die
Speaker 2: and before we knew it, we'd walk back to CoolWall
Speaker 2: on thousand miles. It was quite a long way.
Speaker 1: What did it say about the therapeutic benefit of walking
Speaker 1: and exercise for somebody with such a serious illness? And
Speaker 1: when modern medicine wouldn't tell you this, they'd tribe to
Speaker 1: medicate you. But how therapeutic is it?
Speaker 2: Well, he'd been told that there was no treatment and
Speaker 2: no cure for his condition, and there still isn't It's
Speaker 2: such a rare, unknown condition, and you know that the
Speaker 2: charity are desperately seeking funds for research into it, because
Speaker 2: without the research we will never have the answers. But
Speaker 2: when he walked the Southwest Coast Path about two hundred
Speaker 2: miles in his condition began to change to the point
Speaker 2: where the very start of the film we first scene
Speaker 2: at of the film, we're caught on a beach as
Speaker 2: the tide is coming in in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: We have to jump out of the tent, pick the
Speaker 2: tent up hole, and run up the beach with the tent,
Speaker 2: and we dropped it at the cliffs at the top
Speaker 2: of the beach. We realized, actually he'd just run up
Speaker 2: the beach carrying attention head when a few weeks earlier,
Speaker 2: a few hundred miles earlier, he hadn't been able to
Speaker 2: put his coat on without help. And I think we
Speaker 2: knew then that that walk had done something to him
Speaker 2: that the medical professionals said wasn't possible, and that had
Speaker 2: from then on has become our only answer to this condition,
Speaker 2: because it's only through those long distance walks that his
Speaker 2: health journey changes. We still don't know why. We still
Speaker 2: don't know how, But in a new book that comes
Speaker 2: out in October, and maybe get a little bit closer.
Speaker 2: Maybe who knows. The research is still ongoing.
Speaker 1: But what to do for you? I heard a quote
Speaker 1: of yours which I thought was quite delightful. You said,
Speaker 1: walking it's like riding a rhythm through a beautiful piece
Speaker 1: of music. Is that what walking is to you?
Speaker 2: A long distance path? It's like that, I think after
Speaker 2: a few for me, it's about two weeks really, so
Speaker 2: it's quite a long one, but after about two weeks
Speaker 2: you feel as if there's a change in your body.
Speaker 2: You feel that like shunting your body into something that
Speaker 2: becomes easy and rhythmic and smooth. And then, like I said,
Speaker 2: then that's what it's like. It's like riding a rhythm.
Speaker 2: It's as if it's as if your body feels the
Speaker 2: landscape and you just go with it and it becomes
Speaker 2: like a meditation. I think like it just simply becomes
Speaker 2: about the next step. It becomes about the landscape, about
Speaker 2: the horizon, less about you, and it's as if you disappear.
Speaker 2: I wrote at the end of Landline, it's the third
Speaker 2: book about walking down the country. There's a piece at
Speaker 2: the end of that about I think it is Sufiism,
Speaker 2: a philosophy in that called a wayless way, and it's
Speaker 2: got point where you become a path and the path
Speaker 2: becomes you and it stops being something separate, but you
Speaker 2: become the path itself. And that's what a long distance
Speaker 2: path does. It allows you to become the landscape.
Speaker 1: It's terribly inspiring, except the part where you're penniless and
Speaker 1: Moss decides to busk stand on a Did it really happen?
Speaker 1: Did he stand on a pa foreman that recites stories.
Speaker 2: That's seeing the film is so close to how it
Speaker 2: actually happened. I was back there on the street with
Speaker 2: my hat collecting coins. Yeah, Moth always carries this book.
Speaker 2: It's a seamless Heeney version of Beiof. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't get it. It's maybe it's a man's book. As
Speaker 2: far as I'm concerned, it's just about who's got the
Speaker 2: biggest sword. But he seems to go it. He really
Speaker 2: takes something from it. And we had virtually no money.
Speaker 2: We were in Saint Ives, this little little town on
Speaker 2: the southwest, you know, quite way into the west, and
Speaker 2: we've got hardly any money. We'd shared a pasty and
Speaker 2: a seagull had come down and eaten my half. So
Speaker 2: and he was like, we can't go on like this.
Speaker 2: Took his book without telling me what he was doing
Speaker 2: and started telling people as story, started reciting bear Wolf
Speaker 2: in only the way he can, you know, a real storytellers.
Speaker 2: So he loves the story. So he was standing there
Speaker 2: telling this story, which is quite you know, it's quite
Speaker 2: an action pack story of monsters and swords. So there's
Speaker 2: quite a lot goes on in it and a crowd gathered.
Speaker 2: A crowd gathered round and he gave me to collect
Speaker 2: and I was so embarrassed. I didn't want to do it,
Speaker 2: and during the film captures got cringe of oh, I
Speaker 2: don't want to do this. So but by the end
Speaker 2: of it, we've got twenty pounds in a hat, and
Speaker 2: I mean, for us, it was a fortune. And we
Speaker 2: went and bought a pastie, and because it was starting
Speaker 2: to get quite chilly, we bought a war We jump
Speaker 2: for each from the charity shop.
Speaker 1: We've come to the end. Rain Or There's so much
Speaker 1: could chattel all day about that. I encourage people to
Speaker 1: see the movie, read the book. You've had subsequent books,
Speaker 1: The Wild Silence and Landlines and another one due shortly,
Speaker 1: so good luck with it. It's a delightful story. It's
Speaker 1: an inspiring story. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Rain Or Win was my guest. Folks. The book and
Speaker 1: the movie is called The Salt Path. I know you'll
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Thank you for joining us.