On the path | The Walkers Ep2
The Walkers: The real Salt Path | Tortoise Investigates
The Observer
4.6 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With question marks now raised over how The Salt Path began, Chloe Hadjimatheou starts to track down other characters from the book. Did Raynor Winn and Moth ever walk the path the way they claimed?
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Credits:
Reporter - Chloe Hadjimatheou
Additional reporting - James Urquhart
Producer - Matt Russell
Artwork: Observer design with acknowledgements to Angela Harding
Music supervision & sound design - Karla Patella
Executive Producer - Jasper Corbett
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Observer |
| 0:07.0 | If you're going from St Ives to Land's End and Penzance, there's a lot of narrow paths, |
| 0:26.1 | scratchy ghost bushes, lots of ascents and descents, and they can be quite hard work. |
| 0:32.2 | When Rainer Wyn set off to walk the South West Coastal Path, she chose to bring one book with her, Paddy Dillon's |
| 0:39.3 | Little Brown Guidebook. It's got a waterproof cover and an ordnance survey map, and it's the perfect |
| 0:46.3 | travel companion for a couple wanting to navigate a mammoth walk along the cliffs of England. |
| 0:52.2 | If it's lashing with rain, blowing a gale, it's quite stressful and takes you longer than |
| 0:58.5 | you think it's going to take. |
| 1:00.2 | The south-west coastal path has ascents and descents totaling more than 35,000 metres. |
| 1:07.0 | Paddy, one of Britain's most prolific outdoor writers, knows it better than most. |
| 1:12.2 | Apparently, it's the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest four times. |
| 1:16.9 | Well, when I was younger and fitter, it took me 28 days, and we are now on day 49 for me. |
| 1:24.6 | When I got in touch with Paddy, he just happened to be editing and updating the same book |
| 1:29.1 | that Rainer Wyn and Moth followed when they left their life behind and hit the hills. |
| 1:33.9 | Like Rainer Wyn, I wanted to start with an easy bit, so I caught up with him on the very last day |
| 1:39.2 | of the walk, from Swanage to South Haven Point in Dorset. |
| 1:42.8 | This one is really quite easy, especially the very last part to the end. |
| 1:49.0 | There's definitely something about the path that attracts people who want to conquer the odds. |
| 1:55.0 | Paddy tells me that when he was in his late teens, |
| 1:57.0 | he did a whole section of the walk surviving on one loaf of bread and a jar of |
| 2:02.6 | strawberry jam. Rainer Wyn and Moth managed to walk the entire coastal path on barely anything more |
| 2:09.2 | than super noodles, crackers and the occasional bag of chips. You can go for some days on a restricted calorie intake, if you like, |
... |
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