Here’s a variation on our competition – different but absolutely valid:
Stopping off at Dyffryn Gardens near Cardiff on the way back from a walking week in Pembrokeshire, I came away with a plant I’d been looking out for and a copy of The Salt Path which I found on the shelves of a second-hand book shop.
It somehow seemed the right sort of book to be reading after walking along short stretches of the Wales Coast Path, but I had to wait my turn as my husband got there first.
A few years ago he’d started a photographic project of recording memorial benches along the South West Coast Path, which kept him for rather a long time in Minehead. This book took him a lot further.
Having now read their story too I almost want there to be a bench to Raynor and Moth somewhere along the path, dedicated to their dedication and a place for other walkers to reflect upon this rather remarkable journey.
Each reader, as with each walker, will take something different away from this salted path. For me the overriding feeling was the reminder of how thin a line there is between having it all and losing the familiar securities we most of us live by and largely take for granted and the resilience and love required to prevent us from drowning.
One of our family has been homeless for very many years – he could have been the man they met in the underpass. It struck a chord.
But the moment I most vividly recall is the poignant loss of the very much needed £2 coin, rolling down the hill to be pocketed by a small boy – with Moth’s blessing. With it, he suggests he buys an ice cream cone. My £2 coin, my pocket change, bought me a copy of their story.
Anna Quarendon
Beckhampton
