Notes from the Coastal Path

Salt, Light and shadows

“It is a grand thing to get leave to live”

Nan Shepherd, from “The Living Mountain”

I have just spent 3 days ¹walking along the North Cornwall Coastal path from Gwithian to Crantock with a group of women I had only just met.

I was there as the retreat photographer - part fly-on-the-wall, part participant, part-documentarian of the muddy boots, the windswept hair and the stoic determination of a group of funny, adventurous, badass women who decided that walking along the extremities of England was exactly what they needed last weekend.

The Cornish Coastal path, especially when walked over several back to back days, can serve as a kind of truth serum. There is a bone deep exhaustion from the extreme and hilly terrain, the salt air and alternate days of high temperatures then storms and driving rain. This kind of experience has a habit of peeling back any stiff upper lips and revealing/unravelling all the emotions underneath. The women who sign up for these (this is my second year on this retreat) come for all sorts of reasons - heartbreak, celebration, burnout or simple curiosity. Although I came with my professional photographer head on, I had the sense I needed this as much as they did.

There is something gloriously radical about a women only retreat that involves intense physical challenge - walking around 12 miles a day, pitching a tent each night, sleeping on a rollmat before packing it all up again early next morning and setting off again. There is sweating and blisters and swimming in freezing cold coves, and in all that comes the magic. At night we made fires and shared stories and feelings, some of which may have never been spoken aloud before.

This year there was also a beautiful evening spent in a wild sauna, which was a giddy release after a day of intense walking, sitting half naked in a cedar box overlooking the sea, with women who had only just met each other, followed by some powerful breathwork which literally and metaphorically filled us back up.

As the photographer I had to dance between observing and being part of all this. I didn’t take photographs that evening because it would have somehow tainted the experience of everyone there. This was definitely a moment for the body and soul, not the lens.

It was my job to take images that wouldn’t betray any confidences, but would show the raw beauty of the experience so that the women who needed this next year would see them, and know this was what they had been looking for. Between the obvious shots of the incredible coastline there are the moments of connection - a hand up on a steep cliff, a shared snack at the summit, women falling into comfortable step with each other as they quietly tell the stories of their life experiences.

And then I came home, open hearted, sunburnt and wind chapped, and the news was full of fury against Raynor Winn, the woman who wrote the memoir, “The Salt Path”. The story of a couple who walked the SW Coastal path after losing everything. It was a book that had quickly become a national treasure, and had recently been released as a film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.

This story of resiliance, wildness and love was now under scrutiny, with allegations of factual embellishment, of legal letters and untruths. What had been a symbol of truth and survival was now a media battleground, and coming off the retreat, this felt incredibly surreal.

I had felt the power of that path, not as a metaphor but as muscle deep, mud soaked exhaustion, and a lot of laughter. Media outrage over whether the novel was “real enough” was everywhere, but having witnessed women reclaiming their wild and wonderful strengths over the last few days, I couldn’t help but think - does it matter?

Of course I think that truth in memoirs is important, but there is something deeper here. The story was emotionally true - mirroring the way that the land can hold us when nothing else does. And although it’s important to question how stories are told, and with what accountability, there should also be space to acknowledge what the story unlocked in others.

So yes, there’s a scandal here. But having just been part of a group of (in someone else’s words ) Badass Witch Bitches who became more of themselves with every uphill bastard mile, I think there is something much deeper here. There is a quiet radicalism in stepping away from everyday life to connect with nature, and a wild feminine energy that being on this kind of retreat unlocks.

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet”

Adrienne Rich

The Salt Path moved people because of what it unlocked in them.

And that was real.

Thanks for reading LensSoup, and have a great week.

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