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May 24, 2025 14 mins

Author Raynor Winn experienced a week like no other back in 2013 - and it inspired the hit film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.

In the space of seven days, she and her husband Moth lost their family home, and then Moth was diagnosed with a rare terminal degenerative brain disease and given two years to live.  

Homeless and facing an uncertain future together, Raynor and Moth left on a 630 mile trek along the South West Coast path and made the trail their home. 

That journey inspired Raynor's book - The Salt Path.

"Many books get optioned, but they rarely make it to film. So I didn't expect the film to be made, to be honest. So when I realised it was actually happening - I think my main concern was how they could capture the story."

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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Right back in twenty thirteen, Welsh couple Rayna Wyn and
her husband Moth experienced a week like no other, and
the space of seven days, they lost their home, the
farm where they'd lived for twenty years and raised their children. Then,
Moth was diagnosed with a rare terminal degenerative brain disease
and given two years to live. Homeless and facing an
uncertain future, together, Raynor and Moth left on a six

(00:35):
hundred and thirty mile trek along the Southwest Coast Path
and made the trail their home. Their incredible story became
a best selling memoir and has now been adapted for film.
It's called The Salt Path.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Are you walking the path? Yes we are.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
That's a long hike. Yeah, retired, are below mister laders homeless?
Actually we lovest everything.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
You really a coward?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
I love Lord, just follow a line around.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
The We just walk you ready, can't move my arms
and my legs, but often that could go and.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Raynald went with me. Now, so lovely to have you
with us. Good morning, good morning, great to be with
you Francesca. Firstly, what was it like watching Jillian Anderson
play yourself?

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Well, it's quite surreal, isn't it. Jillian Anderson on the
screen pretending to be you. It's not an average everyday thing,
is it.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
I thought she did an absolutely fantastic job. I thought
her performance was fantastic. Did she capture the experience? Well?

Speaker 3 (01:43):
I think she did. I was really concerned when they
told me it was going to be Jillian Andsen, because
I thought, well, she's just so perfect, so glamorous, How
on earth is she going to betray me in that
raw state? But as soon as I saw it on screen,
I thought, Yes, she's got it. She's got that sense
of being lost, not in the environment, but lost in life.

(02:05):
And and I think she captured that so well in
those moments between dialogue, those moments when she's just.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
In the landscape, those wonderful nuances. Yes, I agree with you.
I was a bit worried about that as well. But
I thought both her and Jason Isaacs, who plays your
husband Moth, neither of them came to this film with
any vanity about the roles. Did they No, they didn't.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
They didn't, And I think I think Jillian abandoned every
ounce of vanity and just threw herself into the role completely,
And Jason spent so much time talking to Moth and
really exploring how that path was for him with that condition,

(02:47):
that he really brought something of Moth to the screen.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Did you spend much time with Julian? Did she want
to know anything from you? Well, yes, we had.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
We had a really good day together. We had a
whole cornish experience of putting a tent up and eating
ice screams and really exploring the emotions between behind some
scenes in the book so transferred into the film.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Were you excited that you'd be selling meanwhile would be
turned into a film. We're a little bit anxious because
it is reliving a pretty vulnerable time in your life.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah. I think initially I just didn't really overthink what
was going to happen if the film was made, because
apparently many books get optioned, but they rarely make it
to film, and so I didn't expect the film to
be made to be honest. So when I realized that
it was actually happening, I think my main concern was

(03:44):
how they could capture a story that is basically about
two people under path how they could capture that in
a way that would engage in audience. But also that
book is however many pages it is, but that represents
months and months of our lives distilled down into those

(04:05):
pages of the book, and that was going to have
to be condensed way down to fit the to fit
the timescale of a film. I didn't know how they
were going to do that because there's so much path,
there's so much walking gig that book. How on earthquaky
condensed that down? But they have, and it's meant that

(04:27):
at some moments in the film are really intense because
there's a week's life in a glance.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's remarkable, wasn't it. I mean, did you watch it
as a family? Have you watched it as a family
the film?

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yes, we have, yeah, yeah, and obviously as you would expect,
you know, we were all a bit of an emotional
mess when we came out wonderful.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
I mean, it is an extraordinary story, right or Your
lives were turned upside down and just that one week
there was the loss of your home and the bankruptcy
and then the diagnosis. Can you tell us a little
bit about that's a you found yourself.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Out well, we were living in a place that fact
we'd found in our thirties when we first moved in.
It had been ruined in the hills, where the walls
were crumbling and the roof was falling in, but it
was it was like our dream home. We'd spent twenty
years of our lives restoring it, converting a barn so

(05:30):
visitors could stay.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Our children grew up then.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
And went to university, and it was our little idyll
in the hills really. But we'd had this sort of
background dispute with a lifetime friend that ended in a
court case that's always been served with in eviction notice
from that house, and then we were given a week
to pack up twenty years and leave. And it was

(05:56):
in that week that Moth received the diagnosis. And it
was as if the whole of life had just crumbled.
It's a crumb ord in that tiny short space of time,
and what was left was just avoid and we didn't
know how to go into it or what to do

(06:16):
when we got there. And that's where the book starts,
that's where the film starts. At that moment, when we're
under the stairs, the bayards are knocking at the door,
we're about to leave and we see a book in
the packing case about somebody walking Southwest Coast Path, and

(06:38):
it really was you know, that's spontaneous, a decision to
just pick up a rock, suck and go.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
So Raynal was it Did you realistically think, yes, we
can do this, this is possible, when, of course by
the stage Moth was, you know, feeling the effects of
his diagnosis. Or actually, did it just come down to
we don't have a choice, so let's just start. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Really, when we thought about walking, it was simply some
thing that would take us into the next day, a
reason to get up and go forwards. And to be honest,
we were just starting out thinking it was a line
on the map and we would follow it because it
will give us a sense of purpose. We had no
real expectation of walking it. Or because at the start

(07:26):
Moth could barely put his coat on without help, was
struggling with a rook sack. He would get into the
tent at night and not be able to get out
in the morning. There's a scene in the film where
Gillian pulls Jason out of the tent by the sleeping bag,
and that happened quite a lot in the early days
that you know, the only way we're out was if
I pulled him out, basically.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
So.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
We really were just existing in those early days, existing
and finding a way to just go into the next day.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
And you didn't have much money at all, you know,
you were surviving. I think it was forty pounds a week.
There's a lovely scene where you pretty much split Was
it a winegum for breakfast? I think, yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
There is a moment where we had no money left
and we were in this really remote little head guned
we got no food left, and then the moth found
a winegum in his pocket and it was it was
like hairy with pocket fuff picking her heads off and
splitting it in half, and that was breakfast. It was

(08:33):
a really strange moment though, because the tent was surrounded
by rabbits, because we were camped on a rabbit warrant
and they were everywhere. And I grew up on a farm,
you know, the obvious thing to do with a rabbit
is make a stew.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
But you know what was the point.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
We didn't have enough gas to.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Cook it, so you know, we just share the winegum
in instead. It is a beautiful walk, but it's a
lot tougher than I thought it would be, you know,
the treacherous, you know, steers up and down and things.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Yeah, it's a really difficult path. It says in its
title Coast Path, the Southwest West Coast Path. So in
my head, have we not read a guidebook? I think
I was sort of thinking there'd be a lot of
time just walking on the beach. But it's six hundred
and thirty miles that has a scent that's equivalent to

(09:27):
climbing Everes nearly four times, so that's a lot of
up and down. Yeah, we didn't take that into consideration,
I don't think at the beginning.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
So how long did it take to settle into the walk?
Was there a moment when you realized that actually this
was an incredible experience and one that was changing you?
I suppose yeah, I mean it.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
Was weeks really into it, because at the beginning we
were just carrying all that anxiety and bitterness and fear
of what had happened and what might come, and that
sort of was our focus at the beginning. But slowly
the beauty of that landscape, the sense of that endless

(10:13):
horizon always to one side, it sort of seemed to
smooth those emotions down until I think in the book
I mentioned them feeling more like sea worm pebbles in
our pockets rather than jagged stones. But there was a moment,
probably two hundred miles into the walk, when we camped
on the beach, and it was one of those perfect

(10:34):
moments when the sea was like syrup still and there
were dolphins came into the bay, and we camped well
above the high tig line.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
But then at three in the morning, we weren't.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Above the high tiger line because the tide was right
up to the tent, and we had to jump out
of the tent, snatch the whole thing hole fully erected,
carried it above our heads, and run up the beach.
As we dropped it at the foot of the cliffs,
I can remember thinking, but you've just carried a tent
above your head and run up a beach when you
couldn't put your coat on without help. And that was

(11:07):
such a remarkable moment to realize that from being told
there was nothing that could be done, suddenly those symptoms
have gone into They've been suppressed somehow. We didn't know how,
we didn't know why, but that scene I was worried
how it would be captured in the film because it

(11:28):
was so important to me. So when we sat down
and watched a film and it's the first scene you
see it's a couple fighting with the tent, it was like, Oh, yeah,
you've caught it. That's that's it, that moment of wild
weather and panic.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
And yeah, right, Rain or can I ask it's been
twelve years since moths diagnosis. How are things going?

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Well? He's had these ups and downs over those years.
You know, he's had really down points when we've gone
out and tried to walk again, and moments when we
went to Scotland and tried to walk and ended up
walking a thousand miles back to for But last year
he had a really difficult year and we wondered if

(12:13):
it I'd be a way back really from that. But
but now, in true Moth style, he's doing his physio
every day, he's walking a few miles every day, and slowly, slowly,
he's getting back to where he would.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Prefer to be. I'm so pleased to hear that. You know,
I was thinking about this story, and you know, since
the pandemic, a lot of people have had their lives
turned upside down. A lot of people have lost jobs
and businesses, and I wonder whether you know we need stories,
hopeful stories, beautiful stories like this just to remind us
that we can deal with adversity. Here's a story really

(12:52):
resonated with a lot of people. It absolutely has.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
I mean I didn't consider that at all when the
book was first published, But now I feel as if
I put my story out and it's as if thousands
have come back. Such a privilege to share those stories
of other people's lives. How I've come to realize, actually,
you know, there aren't many of us that don't go

(13:16):
through a moment when we hit that crisis point in life, emotionally, financially,
health wise, whatever brings that moment, we all go through
it in some way or another. And I think it's
almost become like it's not my story anymore. It's our story.
It's the story of how any offers stand up again
when life's knocked us down. And you know, it's become

(13:39):
a shared experience now really rather than just my story.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
And it has it's changed your life, hesn't. I mean,
you've got three beer selling books under your belt now,
and I believe a fourth one is on the way.
Can you tell us much about that?

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Uh? Yes, I have literally twenty minutes before before I
spoke to you, literally just this morning sent it to
the publisher. So it's like fingers crossed that I say
it's okay, But it's out in October, and I can't
say too much because the probably just haven't announced it yet.

(14:14):
But there will be another long walk, but from a
slightly different viewpoint.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Oh, Rainald, thank you so much for your time today.
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
That's great. Thank you for good to meet you.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
That was Raynald when the film based on Who Men?
While The Salt Path is in cinemas now.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudgin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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