I’ve not yet read The Salt Path, so I don’t have a sense of personal betrayal following the report by the Observer this month that implies it should be moved from Autobiography to Fiction.
If you don’t know the book, the blurb summarises it thus:
Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years is terminally ill, their home and livelihood is taken away. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path.” And describes it as “an unflinchingly honest, inspiring and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world”.
The thing is, that the Observer presents evidence that undermines two key elements of the book: the reason why the couple lost their home, and the terminal nature of Winn’s husband’s illness. So apparently not so “unflinchingly honest” after all. Winn has published a statement that’s beautifully written, responding to the piece in the Observer, but side-stepping a lot of the points made. (If that link breaks, there is hopefully a longer-lasting copy here).
The Observer piece been nagging at me for the last few days.
The book is about the transformative power of connecting with landscape, about long distance walking, about the coast. It’s in a tradition which includes the writings of Nan Shepherd, Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water and, more recently, H is for Hawk. It’s the sort of book that changes how people view the world. The reviews say things like “This is what you need to read right now to muster hope and resilience” and “This … book should give us all a sense of our possible braveries”. It’s the sort of narrative we want to be true.
The problem is this. If Winn mislead us about the reason the couple lost their house and the nature of her husband’s illness, we feel differently about those central messages too, the ones about transformation and connection, about landscape and the natural world. We wonder those inspirational messages were just a commodity to be monetised, rather than the gift of a transformative, healing truth.
One of the privileges of living in Caithness is that so many people here do have a truthful, deep connection with the land, the sea, and the coast. For many – for most – it’s because they grew up here, as did their families for as long as the records go back. It’s largely unspoken, but it shows up in all sorts of ways, from people working the same croft, farm, or fishing-boat their grandparents worked, to local artists working with landscape and stone. And then we have the long distance walkers who’ve walked the length of the county themselves, and for whom John o’Groats is a deeply meaningful goal.
The book appears to portray inspiring truths about landscape, transformation and connection. But… what happens if it isn’t true? Do the bits that are untrue undermine the bits that might be? Worse – if people no longer believe Winn formed a connection with landscape and the natural world, will they stop believing that anyone can?
Sometimes place doesn’t matter when we go away; we want to relax in the hot sun by blue water, without caring if that’s in Türkiye, Spain, or the Maldives; or maybe we need adrenaline to wash the tensions away, and swither between white water rafting in the Rockies or bungee jumping in New Zealand.
But sometimes we want to connect with people, place, culture and heritage; we want to see Renaissance paintings in Florence, or go to the Palace of Holyrood because of Mary Queen of Scots. And sometimes it is a more personal journey. We need to visit the trenches our great-grandfather fought in during the First World War. And many people come to Scotland to visit the places their ancestors lived.
At the Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage, I have tried to make a place that welcomes you, whether you need to disconnect, or want to connect. It’s a great place to come for a break, for some fresh air, to unplug, to sleep in, to unwind. But I have also spent eight years trying to provide a richer – truthful – experience for guests who are curious about the people who used to fish the waters off Wick, and the puffins that still do, and about the lightkeepers who worked here at Noss Head, and the sea-farers they protected. I have collected books, pictures, memoirs, guides, even chocolate and biscuits, to help you find out more about people and landscape here, if that’s what you want. Because connection sometimes matters.
Deceptions disconnect us from each other, in a bad way. If one part of a thing is a lie, I struggle to connect with the rest of it. I don’t know which version of the loss of their home is more accurate, the one in the Observer, or the one in the book. In her statement, Winn argues that her husband’s illness presented in an atypical way, which is fair enough. The sections in her statement about the loss of their house are more interesting. When you read the statement closely, you find these sections are confused and do not contradict the details of the Observer‘s account.
More and more, we have to separate the art from the artist. But to do that, we have to recognise that The Salt Path is artifice, rather than truth. And as I thought about it, I realised that experiences that are life-affirming and transformational do not necessarily align with morality. Someone can have and describe a transcendent experience truthfully, and still behave badly. You should never meet your heroes. But I will read the book and see the film because I want find out whether this context undermines the other messages for me.
Truth matters. The natural world we depend on really matters. Our connection with it – as individuals and as a society – matters most of all. I do still worry that this author and her book have undermined the strength of that connection for some people.
My name is Ben, and I grew up living in the house my grandmother was born in, on the edge of an escarpment, overlooking Gloucester and the Malverns to the north, and the river Severn and Wales to the west. So landscape, wildlife, and rural communities all matter to me in a way that’s a bit out of step with our urban modern world. I don’t talk about it much, but it’s informed the way I set up my holiday cottage and run my business. You are welcome to stay here, of course.
There aren’t many photos of me with a view behind me, so here I am in the 1980s, tucked behind a triangulation point, looking out over Gloucester, the River Severn and Wales.
And because connection matters, this was written by me, and not by AI.
