‘I want to tell you something. I have a stage 4 brain tumour, and I don’t know how long I have left.” When fellow walker Peter utters these words to me at the Minack theatre in Porthcurno on Cornwall’s south coast, I half think he might be reading lines for a new play. Behind him, the waves are dancing, while mist swirls on the wind as though spooling from a smoke machine.
It had only been an hour since I first met him and his wife, Michelle, as we all took shelter from the freezing wind in a hut at nearby Gwennap Head. I had asked why they were walking the South West Coast Path – the 630-mile (1,014km) trail that weaves its way from the seaside town of Minehead in Somerset around to Poole harbour in Dorset, via the windswept headlands, secluded coves and beaches of Devon and Cornwall.
