The Salt Path

Trauma, loss of home, news of a terminal illness — all this suddenly fell upon the 50-year-old couple from Britain at once, completely unexpectedly. Bewildered, desperate, almost broke, they make what seems to be the most insane decision: to embark... on a hike along the 630-mile South West Coast Path, famous for its rugged beauty. In 2013, after struggling to throw their backpacks with the essentials on their shoulders, they set off on a journey through breathtaking landscapes, facing all the hardships of life in the wild and changing with every step. The hike, described in the book, took the author and her husband more than a hundred days, during which they covered about 630 km and ascended to a height four times greater than climbing Everest. After the hike along the path, Raynor Wynn wrote an article about it for the British street newspaper The Big Issue, which garnered a strong response. Then Raynor decided to write a book, originally conceived as a love letter to her husband, as well as a reminder of this journey — for the time when his memory would begin to deteriorate due to illness. After reading the manuscript, their daughter convinced Raynor to show the book to a literary agent, who then arranged a meeting with the publishing house Penguin. By the time this edition was released, The Salt Path had become a Sunday Times bestseller in 2018, made it to the Wainwright Prize and Costa Book Awards shortlist in the Biography category, and in 2019 received the RSL Christopher Bland Prize. In September 2019, the book became the first bestseller in independent bookstores in the UK. After hiking along the South West Coast Path, Raynor Wynn began to regularly go hiking and write about nature, wild tourism, and homelessness issues. She now lives in Cornwall with her husband Moth and dog Monty.