Every now and then, I take one of the three short- to medium-distance walking routes out of town. North-west, under the railway past Borrowfield to Hillside; north, seventy-five minutes to walk the beach, then up inland along the North Esk, across the railway viaduct, and a hop down to St. Cyrus; south, the farms of Usan, the coast to Elephant Rock, Dunninald, Lunan Bay in all its glory. “It wasn’t just the walking…it was feeling free,” explains “The Salt Path” (BBC Films), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse.
The film opens with a storm; we are backpacking along the coast of south-west England with Raynor Winn, played by Gillian Anderson, and husband Moth, played by Jason Isaacs. Instead of a long-winded explanation, a standing-start, we get the hang of why in small, delicate fragments: terminal illness, bad investments, a judge, homelessness, pennilessness. But they have taken action: they are already in motion away from the crisis. It is a struggle—Moth is limping and often breathless, Raynor a few steps ahead, “do you need to rest a while?” They proceed slowly (“…we are not in a hurry”), possessions in their rucksacks, pitching their tent where they arrive late in the day, feet blistered, surviving on spaghetti and cups of tea made from a single shared tea-bag. There are heartbreaking scenes at ATMs, acted with such believability that we hold our breath with the couple as they wait to see whether the few pounds they need will be dispensed. We watch them with sympathy as they return items they can’t afford to the shelf in the corner shop (the “cake-police”), and later as they look with envy through the windows of a cafe at people eating modest dinners of fish-and-chips. As it is tenderly revealed what happened in the days before they started walking, the film draws a rare degree of kindly feelings from cinema-goers. They are poorer, middle-aged people who have been married a long time—like many people we know in Montrose—victims of events, unlucky in the non-casino sense, exposed. They walk not because they want to but because they have to: it is the solution to their homelessness, surely just a stopgap, but a solution all the same. As they continue to trudge along the Salt Path, they meet characters along the way who break up the routine, and Raynor tells Moth, “when you first told me that you loved me, no one had ever told me that before.”
Last weekend, The Sunday Times listed “The Salt Path” book, written by Raynor as a travel journal, on its best-seller list for the one hundred and fifth week (it is in stock now at the independent Ink-and-Quill bookstore in John Street). If the film had simply rendered the couple’s journey as a flesh-and-bones biopic, it would have been perfectly worthwhile. But one inspired decision catapulted the movie far beyond this to a truly exceptional work of art.
Like National Geographic magazine, the BBC’s global name hinges on its gorgeous wildlife photography. (A recent feature-length Ocean with David Attenborough film has been playing to near-capacity audiences at the Playhouse—there is another chance to catch it this weekend.) Here, the BBC uses its rich experience to capture the coastal life of Britain; the clever part being to split the scenes equally between the human and non-human drama. For instance, a close-up scene at a rest-stop turns into a wide shot of the birds (music rising in volume), then back again to the characters, and so on. The film becomes way more than the sum of its parts: we start in the close confines of the tent, zipped-up between fear of death and worry about money, and later emerge almost joyfully beneath the wide blue-sky of hope and acceptance.
That’s a great accomplishment. Just feel the tension subside in the moments when gulls, goats, and rabbits appear; the beaches of rock and sand, the scruffy grass on the cliffs, the rain in the dell. As we release the tight grasp over what we hold to be true, what we believe we need in order to be O.K., the loveliness of the physical environment appears exactly as it is, what it was before we were born and what it will be after we die; for the first time there is nothing more to say.
“The Salt Path” deserves every success for its all-out pursuit of the antidote to over-consumption. Similar to “Perfect Days” (2023), it only takes two short hours to reveal what many of us have beavered away exploring over many long years. At times, as we are more and more charmed by the beautiful experience on-screen, we are caught up with just how counter-cultural this life is—such as when one of the (many) judgey people they pass along the way carelessly asks, “retired, are you?” Raynor replies, “homeless actually.” There is a cringe-worthy case of mistaken identity which is used to show how shallow people’s concern for each other can be. They themselves seem quite taken aback by it all. Maybe there is something wrong with them—“This is insane! Insane! What are we doing?” Or perhaps the truth is that there is a vast gulf between where they are by the mid-point of the film, say, and lying on the sofa firing up the phone to buy more stuff.
Arriving home mid-afternoon after watching the Playhouse matinee, the first thing I found myself doing was refilling my garden bird-feeder. It was almost unconscious. Birds in their hundreds of thousands live here too. The coastline here is glorious too. We don’t have to impose on Cornwall like the rich Londoners taken down like so many toy soldiers in “The Salt Path.” In the first few miles, Moth says, “it’s all bonkers.” The freedom comes much later on, long after the pressure to cover a certain distance in a day has left them, and they learn to react to the question, “Why?” with a huge smile, calmly replying, “We’re just walking.”
Adam Poole
6th June 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
