Hello and welcome to Happy Place, the show that questions what we're generally

told about what happiness is. I'm Fern Cotton and today I'm meeting Rainer

Win. I've felt some of my greatest happiness in the most extremely difficult for me

situations, walking on the coast path with no money, no food, nowhere to live,

some of the happiest moments of my life because there was nothing else. All that

mattered was the next step and the next bag of noodles. Rainer is a long

distance walker, a wild camper and has written award-winning books about those

experiences. First the salt path, then the wild silence and now landlines and I

don't even know how to begin to tell you how much I love these books. I'm a

mega fan. Within days of learning that her husband Moth was terminally ill. The

couple had their home taken away from them and lost their livelihood as a

result too. Appreciating that there were huge parts of this horrendous

situation they couldn't control, they turned the entirety of their anger into

positivity by grabbing hold of the parts of life they did have control over. They

picked a path and they started walking. That impulsive decision to walk the

630 miles of the southwest coast path led not only to a completely new

outlook on life but an improvement in Moth's health. Obviously Rainer's put

what she's learned into the books but she's also been putting on shows that

just sound like the most beautiful evenings because she's basically combined

tales of her walks with gorgeous folk music which is brilliant because folk

music obviously has such a strong sense of place. So Rainer's book and stories

are about the wild and beautiful nature and people she and Moth met on their

...