Review: The Salt Path

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A middle-aged couple in the UK, facing bankruptcy and a terminal illness diagnosis, decides to take off and walk the South West Coast Path in the United Kingdom, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall. Most identity crisis take-a-walk memoirs are from younger, healthier people who still struggle physically, emotionally, and financially, but all of those elements are worse here. They are frequently mistaken for vagrants, asked to leave, and sometimes given food for free (and they really need it in these moments, so the kind strangers are not wrong!)

There is a bit of desperation in the pages. The path is almost insurmountable, but they do not have any way to make a living or any place to live. So they walk. It almost intersects more with books like Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century than with your typical sojourning books.

I enjoyed reading about the landscape of the cliffs of this region and definitely spent some time looking up images on the internet. It is a shame that so many of these communities seem actively opposed to travelers coming through, when clearly the path has a long history.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

View all my reviews