Nothing to lose, everything to walk for

What would you do if you lost your home and your source of income, then your partner of 30 years was diagnosed with an incurable, degenerative disease? In Raynor Winn's case, she decided to walk the South West Coast Path to give her and husband Moth one or two months to consider their options.

The couple survived on benefits income of 48 GBP a week, living in a tent, eating packet-noodles. In spite of the hardship, "a wet sleeping bag in a wet tent on a windy headland," Winn says "I was grateful that I wasn't on a piece of cardboard behind the bins in a back alley."

The Salt Path shows how Raynor and Moth, both in their 50s, survive the complete breakdown of the life they had built for themselves. But it is more than that. It holds a mirror to how society treats homeless people: the unwarranted fear and vindictiveness of some and the unstinting generosity of others.

Ray Winn talks frankly about what the knowledge of being homeless does to a person, and how it can affect relationships with friends and family. The couple were "intensely grateful" to one friend who offered them free accommodation in a shed in return for converting it into a holiday rental. However the arrangement leaves Winn "hollow inside," where "days had no meaning, just a repetition of toil with no purpose for us, other than to keep warm and dry. I was alone among friends. Homelessness had taught me that however much people think they want to help you, when you enter their home, you quickly become a cuckoo in their nest, a guest that outstays their welcome. Or their usefulness."

It was interesting to have read this journey immediately after finishing Josie Dew's Slow Coast Home. Josie, a successful writer with her own business, chooses to cycle around England, wild camping when necessary, and occasionally making free use of camp sites when the pitch fees are over-priced. Ray and Moth do exactly the same. Does one have the same opinion of Josie and Ray? They both pitch their tents "illegally", but are we more accepting of one than the other? This was what I really liked about the book, that it challenges one's own assumptions about those who are on the street: they might be homeless, might be refugees from poverty or conflict, down on their luck, travellers searching for a better life.

In conclusion, The Salt Path is an uplifting book about self-determination, fortitude, hope and love. Here's how Ray describes it:

"We could have stopped, but we had nothing to lose and everything to walk for. We were free here, battered by the elements, hungry, tired, cold, but free. Free to walk on or not, to stop or not. Not camping out with friends or family, being a burden, becoming an irritation, wearing friendship away to just tolerance. Here we were still in control of our life, of our own outcomes, our own destiny. The water ran from our rucksacks as we put them on our back. We chose to walk and seized the freedom that came with that choice."