Was the story always, in hindsight, just a little too good to be true? A middle-aged couple, brutally down on their luck after bankruptcy and a terminal diagnosis, escape their troubles on an epic walk round the South West Coast Path, finding comfort along the way in the kindness of strangers. Billed as an “honest and life-affirming” story of prevailing against the odds, The Salt Path became first a bestseller and then a blockbuster film, starring a windswept Gillian Anderson. Though it was never really my thing, I knew plenty of people for whom The Salt Path genuinely resonated, with its romantic central theme of being (as the film’s director, Marianne Elliott, put it) “reformed by the elements” of a blustery English seascape.
If it seemed a bit unlikely that a dying man could be rejuvenated by a strenuous trek involving wild camping in all weathers – well, getting readers to suspend their disbelief is what good storytellers do, and The Salt Path’s Raynor Winn was definitely good. Arguably, as I said, too good.
