Raynor Winn on losing everything and finding home
The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Raynor Winn on losing everything and finding home
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Author Raynor Winn talks to Katherine May about the losing her home when her husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and finding new life from having nothing
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Listen to the Episode
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Katherine May:
So, this is a special episode of the Wintering Sessions. We are re-airing the episode, one the first episodes I recorded with Raynor Winn, but just in time for the release of her new book Landlines, which is coming out on the 15th of September, Ray, tell us about your new book.
Raynor Winn:
Well, it's about a very, very long walk. It starts really in the winter of 2021. And we were all in lockdown and the final lockdown. And ...
Katherine May:
You hope the final lockdown.
Raynor Winn:
Well of that moment, it was the final lockdown. It to been a really difficult winter because Moth my husband, who suffers from a neurodegenerative disease, as I've talked about before, needs to walk quite a lot as often as possible, and to keep really physically active, to keep on top of his condition. But lockdown meant that we were really confined to our area. We couldn't walk farther than around the loch, a couple of miles, and that was it really, and it wasn't enough. And his health was deteriorating really, really quickly to the point where he actually was starting to think that the final stages of that illness was starting to kick in and he was heading towards a point of really no return. And he'd almost given up hope really, but after we'd ... Yeah, we'd fought so hard and for so long to keep on top of that illness, I couldn't accept it.
I couldn't accept that that was what was coming. Not yet. I wasn't ready. And I went to get the gloves to pick up the logs for the stove one day. And just behind the log basket was the pile of books on a bookcase. And it was a pile of guidebooks, guidebooks to walks. And in amongst that there was the Salt Path guidebook that's just got held together within an elastic hairband, that rippled like the beach when the tide goes out and then obviously Iceland one that sort of smells of sulfur and grit. And then there was this other one and it was a little thin volume that had never been used, but it was a place that I knew Moth really, really wanted to go. And it was the Cape Wrath Trail, which is the most remote, the most difficult un-way marked path in Britain.
And it starts in the very north-west of Scotland and runs down to Fort William. It's 230 miles through the wildest part of Britain, through the great wilderness of Scotland and through the rough bounds of Knoydart. And I thought if anywhere would persuade him to just try one more time, it would be that. So I left it out on the table and he put it away and I put it back on the table and he put it away and we argued and I put it on the kitchen worktop and eventually he said, "Okay, when are we going then?"
And eventually after just a little bit of preparation for him, because he was at the point where when we'd walked those two miles around the loch at home, he was having to sleep for two hours afterwards because it was just wearing him out. And like all of us, we'd come to know our locality very, very well and there was not much stimulation left in that walk. But he kept trying and it got to the point where he only slept for 20 minutes after that walk. And then we thought, well, we're ready to go now. And we headed to the north of Scotland.
Katherine May:
That sounds incredible. I love the way that so much of your work has become about keeping on walking and why it's so important metaphorically and physically to just keep moving through the landscape.
Raynor Winn:
I think so. I think it's about a forward motion. I think it's about allowing yourself to keep going forwards, but also there's something really physical about just putting one foot in front of another, in front of another, and just taking the next step and the next step. It almost allows you to reset yourself because it puts you outside of the everyday because you know this Kathryn, that just by walking a long distance, you go into another place. It's almost like a meditation I think, where things start to fall away. Where the anxieties and the feelings that we carry, just start to fall away. Also, it's what we're made for. It's what we're built to do. So physically it can only be beneficial to us and yeah, yeah. We keep walking.
Katherine May:
So Ray's book comes out on the 15th September. It is pre-orderable as you listen and maybe even orderable, depending on when you're listening. But now take a listen to what she said when she first spoke to me in the very first season of the Wintering Sessions a couple of years ago. Enjoy.
Welcome Raynor. It's lovely to talk to you.
Raynor Winn:
Yes, you too. Katherine, it's been ages.
Katherine May:
It's been really ages, and we have had trauma with the tech today, so thank you for sticking with me. We met because of our shared love of the South West Coast Path really, I think it's fair to say. We were put on a panel together.
Raynor Winn:
Yes we were weren't we? At Budleigh.
Katherine May:
Was it two years ago now? It must be two years ago, yeah. So it feels like a long, long time ago. So we both had books out at the same time. Yours is much more famous than mine. I will put that out there straight away, but you are the author of the Salt Path, which is such a beautiful book about your journey around the Southwest coast path after you were made homeless. And I'd really love to talk about that today, but first of all, I'd love to ask you because you live in Cornwall, what's Cornwall like at the moment under lockdown. How is it all going for you?
Raynor Winn:
It's actually gone quite well for me because I think I'm very suited to a life of isolation actually. So it's just been Moth and myself here where we are in a very, very quiet spot where maybe one car has passed today and then a girl with a dog that we look out for every morning at 11 o'clock, and that's been our lockdown and we're still here. We're still more or less still isolated in the house.
Katherine May:
Yeah, it sounds very peaceful. I think because I'm in the slightly busier coastal town, we've had loads and loads of tourists come in the last few weeks and it's been quite troubling really, just the beach being absolutely packed and full of huge groups of youths. I've reached the age now when I look at them and I think, "Oh gosh, youths. They're drinking." I like to think I'm the only one that can drink on the beach. But apparently other people do it too. And yeah, it's been peaceful for a long time, but now it's not peaceful and that's been quite intimidating really because it's hard seeing lockdown just disappear, but I'm glad it was lovely where you are.
Raynor Winn:
Yeah. It's been the same here I think. Out in the wider world, I think same issues been going on here, but for us it's carried on being quite quiet. So very lucky.
Katherine May:
That sounds like heaven. You've chosen the right place to live. So let's talk about the Salt Path which is the book that massively made your reputation. I'd love to actually talk a little bit about that later because I think it must have been really hard for you to suddenly have that explode in the way it did and for so many people to feel so passionately about it. But first of all, let's talk about the book itself and I know that you'll be great at telling the story of it, but two things happened at the beginning of the book that began your journey. First of all, Moth, your husband became ill and you also lost your house at the same time. Can you take us through that?
Raynor Winn:
Yes, yes it was, if we go back a little bit further than the start of the book really, it probably puts it more into context really. I met Moth when I was a teenager, Moth my husband, when I was a teenager, I was 18 and I was in the college canteen and looked up across the room and just saw this young man in a white shirt with dazzling blue eyes, dipping a Mars Bar in a cup of tea. And I thought "That's the one for me." And weirdly it turned out to be, because he's still here. But we sort of had this dream that we would find a ruin somewhere in the hills, a place that we could restore and create a home and a way of life that would be ours entirely. And that's what we did. By the time we were about 30 we'd bought a ramshackle old place in the hills of Wales and we spent the next 20 years of our life restoring it. And we kept sheep and hens and grew vegetables and two children. It was like the perfect life, the idyllic life.
Katherine May:
It sounds absolutely idyllic. Yeah.
Raynor Winn:
It absolutely was. It was what we imagined it would be. And we had it. But then sadly at the same time we had a dispute, a financial dispute with a lifetime friend, that ended up in a court case. We were served with a conviction notice from that home and ...
Katherine May:
That's not idyllic at all.
Raynor Winn:
No, that is not idyllic and it was absolutely devastating. At the time we thought probably the worst thing that could possibly happen to us. But then during the week that we were given to pack up and leave the house, so a week of trying to pack 20 years of our life into boxes, during that week Moth had what we thought was going to be just a routine hospital appointment and turned out to be anything but, because he was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration, CBD. That's a neurodegenerative disease that has no treatment, no cure. So just in that one week it was as if our entire lives had been wiped out, everything that we'd worked towards and the whole future that we imagined, just gone in a week.
Katherine May:
It's extraordinary isn't it, how life can come at you like that sometimes? It's never just one thing. It seems that these things come in terrible, terrible clusters.
Raynor Winn:
Oh yes, don't you find that? Never one thing at times, always everything.
Katherine May:
Everything at once. But I mean for you, I always think that both sides of your sense of security were hit at once. Your sense of home and financial stability, which is, seems trivial when you talk about Moth's illness in comparison, but it actually isn't is it? Those things can be incredibly undermining.
Raynor Winn:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because your home is everything that you sort of structure your life around, isn't it? You create a format of your life and it encompasses your home, but then for Moth to become ill as well, that was doubly ...
Katherine May:
Yeah. That's terrifying. Did they give a kind of time period that they're expecting him to?
Raynor Winn:
Yeah. So at the time they said we'd probably be lucky if it was two years, most of that would be a rapid decline into poor health, really so ...
Katherine May:
Terrifying and from nothing really. From him seeming completely fine, you were given his vision of this future that you couldn't quite comprehend.
Raynor Winn:
Absolutely. I mean, he'd had a problem with his shoulder and we thought it was because he'd fallen through the barn roof and we were expecting them to say, "Well it's ligament damage and we'll just sew you back together and that'll be that." But then it wasn't. It was an absolute shock.
Katherine May:
So reading from that, you packed up the whole house.
Raynor Winn:
Yes.
Katherine May:
And then what?
Raynor Winn:
Yes, we got the whole house was packed. It was the very, very last moment. The bailiffs were knocking at the door waiting to change the lock and we were hiding under the stairs. It wasn't that we were hiding under the stairs thinking some miracle was going to happen and we weren't going to have to leave. It was just, we weren't ready. Just weren't ready to take that very last step over the threshold just knowing that we were never, ever go back. Just hanging onto that last minute of some kind of security, normality, safety, call it what you like, I don't know.
But it was in that moment that I spotted a book in a packing case that hadn't gone out of the door and it was Mark Wallington's 500 mile Walkies. It's the story of Mark Wallington is a young man who walks around the South West Coast Path with a dog that he's borrowed from a friend and a rucksack that he borrowed from someone else, and walks for what he seems to describe as 500 miles of the South West Coast Path. And just in that moment, that horrible desperate moment, it just seemed like the most obvious thing to do. Just fill a rucksack and go for a walk.
Katherine May:
Have you always been a spontaneous kind of a person? Because I'm not. And so I can't imagine making that decision at that point.
Raynor Winn:
Spontaneous. I don't know. Maybe there was always something of that in me somewhere. I don't know. I looked up, I saw Moth that first time and I just knew I'd be with him forever. Other odd moments in my life, maybe spontaneous, but I was 50 for goodness's sake. How spontaneous are most of us at 50? Not very. But just then, there, everything had gone. The whole construct of our life had gone. It was the last moments, the last threads of hanging on to some sort of normality. So I think then, when you take everything away, then anything becomes possible. And maybe even if you are the biggest planner in the world, which I think I've probably become quite a planner, then you can change in those situations. You can just become something else without even planning to do so.
Katherine May:
It's amazing. So let's talk about the path, because we both know it intimately, you more than me because you slept along the way. What were your first impressions? What were those first few days like of walking?
Raynor Winn:
Well I think you've been there. You know what it's like. You can plan as much as you like, you can read the guide books, you can read other people's blogs, but nothing compares to when you get there and you stand there in Minehead and you look at the start of the path and it heads up that cliff through the woods and you realize just how steep it is, how difficult it's going to be. And you stand there and you think what on earth am I doing?
Katherine May:
You tend to think that walking is fine. You think I can walk. I can walk anywhere? And the South West Coast Path very quickly tells you that you can't walk anywhere. That actually it takes you hours to get a mile sometimes. And it hurts so much.
Raynor Winn:
Oh, it hurts from the first step to the very last, it's just pain. But it's about getting used to the pain isn't it?
Katherine May:
Yeah. You get used to the pain and you develop techniques I think, don't you? I mean, I became a better walker, but it took me a long time and I just hated it for quite a while.
Raynor Winn:
Yes. That's it. You are absolutely right when you say you think you can walk. Well, we all think we can walk don't we? And you might just go for casual 10 mile walk at the weekend and feel great. But when you put that rucksack on your back on your back and you head up that ... It's a rollercoaster isn't it that path?
Katherine May:
Literally, yes.
Raynor Winn:
No sooner have you climbed up onto a headland, you're back down to sea level again. Just goes on and on all day, every day. It's really ...
Katherine May:
And it's often raining while that's happening. I mean, let's be blunt. The sun does not shine on it for a lot of the year.
Raynor Winn:
Well, we were, I don't know how whether you would describe it as lucky or not, but for quite a large proportion of our walk, it wasn't just hot. It was intensely hot. It was a year when it was climbing up to about 38 degrees some days. And on the north coast, there's hardly any shelter after you get past Clovelly, it sort of becomes just bare headlands and there's hardly any shelter. So it was tricky in parts that's for sure. Seemed to be an awful lot of dehydration going on.
Katherine May:
Yeah, I was the opposite. I was experiencing flooded paths and lashing rain and wind. It seems that it gets you either way.
Raynor Winn:
Well, we did have some storms. We had some incredible storms and that path, when it gets wet, it becomes like ice. It just turns to sort of slime under your feet doesn't it? You could [inaudible 00:17:40]. It's very tricky to walk when it's wet, especially.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I mean, there's a very real risk of falling down a massive cliff into the sea for quite a lot of the time, I think.
Raynor Winn:
Time, yeah. You could fall into the sea. There could be a landslide and you could [inaudible 00:17:55] into the sea. You could be blown into the sea.
Katherine May:
So many different ways it could get you.
Raynor Winn:
Yeah. So many ways.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I'm fascinated by why I love it so much. And you do too I think, I mean we're being negative, but ...
Raynor Winn:
Absolutely. There's something so magnetic about it though isn't there? I think there's something, after a few miles, after a few days, that path starts to draw you along doesn't it? There is something, like I say, there's something magical about being on that strip of wilderness, but separate from the ordinary world on one side and that endless horizon of the sea on the other, it's like you're trapped in a world apart.
Katherine May:
It really does. It feels very otherworldly and you are not far from civilization because you never really are in the UK, I don't think, but it feels like you step into a different world and it's so utterly absorbing and beautiful but also so physically hard. And that absorbs you too. I'm really interested to know how it helped you to process what was going on being on that path. Did it take your mind off things or did it let your mind go on to things as it were?
Raynor Winn:
It's strange thing, isn't it? We started out thinking that we would have lots of time to think, lots of time to talk through how we'd come to that point and how to formulate some kind of future going on. But we found we didn't really talk about anything much at all other than where we were going to sleep that night or where we'd get the next bag of noodles. It became almost like a meditation. I think when you've walked for many hours, it becomes a matter of taking the next step and the next step, and each step becomes a success doesn't it?
Katherine May:
Definitely, yeah.
Raynor Winn:
Each headland that you manage to get up is a battle won and it becomes your entire focus. And I think that empties your head in lot of ways. And it stops you thinking, because life becomes really immediate. It becomes about, really literally, about that next step. And I think that in itself has the ability to allow your brain to calm. It allows the panic to subside and something far more elemental to take over. And I think the salvation was in that actually.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I can imagine how it would be incredibly comforting. I mean, it puts you back into contact with survival in a different way to the way that we understand it in an everyday sense. You really do feel like you're battling the elements. But there was for me, this feeling, which I think is exactly what you're describing. And I always thought that that was because I was walking alone most of the time. But obviously it happens when you're walking with someone else too, that maybe a few hours in every day, my mind would go into this incredibly quiet space where there weren't even any words left anymore. It was just, yeah, I was just walking. I was just existing and that, I think, is a very difficult place to get to in any other way.
Raynor Winn:
I think you're right. I think that's why I describe it like a meditation because that's what you are looking for when you meditate, don't you? So I think that's that element of complete disconnection from everything, but in that emptiness, anything can come can't it? Anything can come. And I think because after hours, you just stop, you stop thinking. As you say, you stop thinking, you stop considering anything and you just be. And there's an incredible sense of release in that.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I always say that I would never have come to my autism diagnosis if I hadn't been doing those walks. It opened up a kind of forum in my mind where I could accept a completely new idea about myself and I needed to get past my conscious self to get there. It opened me to new possibilities.
Raynor Winn:
I think we'd taken away everything material, more or less everything financial. All the day-to-day ordinary problems of life had gone with that as well. So we weren't concerned about had we paid the council tax or did we need a new wheel on the van. All of that was gone and our lives had gone to a far more, just a mode of survival really. And it was down to a really basic base level of food, shelter, water, warmth, those being the only things that we needed to concern ourselves about.
Katherine May:
And you were literally kind of pitching a tent and sleeping along the way. How was that?
Raynor Winn:
Oh, well wild camping, because we just couldn't afford camp sites basically, and so to wild camp was the only way we could do it. To start with it was really, really hard, not only just for Moth because he was struggling just to get in and out of the tent every day, but really hard to find somewhere to put the tent, because as you know, on a lot of the path, you can't find a flat spot anywhere. [inaudible 00:23:22] campsite at lunchtime, but by the time, sort of seven, eight o'clock at night, when you're thinking I've really got to stop there, I've got stop, you are on a slope of thistles and gorse for the next three miles and you can't possibly stop at all. So just finding somewhere to put the tent every day was a endeavor. And I've got to say when we started that walk, I really always thought I'd be somewhere near public toilets or some ...
Katherine May:
There's no toilets, there's no tele, there's no shops.
Raynor Winn:
No shops when you need them. There are never ever toilets when you need them. So dog walkers became my nemesis because they get up too early. Always there when you were trying to, rushing to get out of your tent first thing in the morning, there was always a dog walker outside. But then there was something else really about that wild camping. And I think that was that element of never really knowing where you were going to find yourself. Because often by the time we'd got the tent up at night, it was getting dark and you weren't really 100% aware of where you were. So often you'd wake up in the morning and you'd find that you bring this ... Once we woke up we were in this magical little meadow where there were millions of ladybirds just hatching into [inaudible 00:24:40].
And there's other days, you got the day we woke on all this wet, foggy headland in a field of cows, but the sun started to break and it was lifting over the horizon and just lighting the headlands one by one towards us. And we could just hear the seals calling to each other in the cove below. I think that's what the wide camping gave us more than anything. It was that real immersion in nature. That real sense of not living alongside nature, but really as part of it.
Katherine May:
And I feel like it probably let you do it in the way the path wants you to walk it, in that you can't predict how long anything will take. You can use any formula for crossing contour lines on a map that you like, but I never ever walked at the pace that I ever expected. And I constantly downgraded my expectations of how far I was going to get. And I still routinely didn't make my point that I was planning to finish. And it seems to me that there's a real wisdom to doing what you did along the path, which is just stopping when you need to stop.
Raynor Winn:
Well, we had to really. It was the only way, especially with Moth's illness. Some days we might only walk two miles and we'd have to stop and put the tent back up. Other days as time went on and we got a little bit stronger, maybe we were lucky if we did 10 miles a day. So people constantly say, "Oh, what was your average mileage?" I didn't have an average mileage. And people will say, "Well, didn't you do sort of three miles an hour. That's standard walking speed."
Katherine May:
No [inaudible 00:26:22].
Raynor Winn:
There is no standard walking speed is there on that path?
Katherine May:
No. I mean, quite often I was walking for an hour and a half and realized I'd got less than a mile, particularly in Heartland. That was the bit that really got me.
Raynor Winn:
Yeah. We used to say, if we're doing a mile an hour, we're doing well.
Katherine May:
Yes, that's so true. But then I kept seeing all these incredibly fit pensioners come yomping past me and people running it. For God's sake. People run the path.
Raynor Winn:
Exactly. Yeah. Super fit people yomping by, but luckily usually in the other direction so that's fine.
Katherine May:
I'm just interrupting you for a moment to ask if you'd consider subscribing to my Patreon. Friends of the Wintering Sessions get an extended edition of the podcast a day early, the chance to put questions to my guests, a monthly bonus episode at exclusive discounts on my courses and events. Most of all, you help to keep the podcast running. To find out more, go to.patreon.com/ katherinemay. Do take a look. Now back to the show.
By the time you got to the end of your journey, what had changed for you? What had the walk put in place for you and what world were you looking towards then?
Raynor Winn:
I think not only had we changed in so many ways, but we had formulated some sort of structure for how our future would be. Moth had found that actually walking improved his health in ways that he'd had been told were utterly impossible.
Katherine May:
Incredible.
Raynor Winn:
And that he had gained strength as we'd walked, rather than losing his mobility as we'd been told he would. Because the doctors had told him just don't get too tired and be careful on the stairs. So we've walked ...
Katherine May:
So you decided to scale some cliffs instead.
Raynor Winn:
Exactly, exactly.
Katherine May:
And he's still fit and well now?
Raynor Winn:
He has spells when he's really not been as well as he was when we finished the path. But when he gets on a real low, we pack the rucksacks and go for a walk.
Katherine May:
What a wonderful thing to have that you can go and go out and make yourself feel better.
Raynor Winn:
Yes. And that's at the moment, that's the only treatment that we have. So we keep doing that.
Katherine May:
Right. But it's wonderful. And I think what's lovely is that you've bought extra time together somehow by going on your mission. That still sounds absolutely crazy to me. I mean, I admire it so much, but I know I can never have done it.
Raynor Winn:
I'm sure you could. I'm sure you could.
Katherine May:
No I'd have been at home by that time.
Raynor Winn:
Your husband picking you up in the evening. You would do it. I know you would.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I'm not one of the world's campers. Tell me about ...
Raynor Winn:
Camping.
Katherine May:
Yeah, no. Yeah. I would do one of those lovely safari tent things.
Raynor Winn:
[inaudible 00:29:33] things.
Katherine May:
I do like a duvet you know.
Raynor Winn:
I'm partial to one myself.
Katherine May:
You decided to write about your journey. And so many people have read the beautiful book that ensued. That must have changed your world in ways you never could have expected. For a start, the love and enthusiasm for the book must have really struck you.
Raynor Winn:
Absolutely. I mean, I wrote the book. It wasn't really a book for people to read. I wrote it for Moth because I wanted to make a record of that walk because it seemed so important to us and he was starting to lose his memory of bits of it. So I wanted to capture it and keep it for him so when he did start to forget it, I could put it in front of him and say, "Look what we did. Remember. [inaudible 00:30:28] keep trying. You've got to keep trying."
Katherine May:
But instead ...
Raynor Winn:
Instead, yeah, my daughter read it before he did. And she said, "Mum, you ought to do something with this." And then eventually I did.
Katherine May:
So life changed for you for a lot. And maybe I'm, I'm guessing, has given you a lot of security that didn't ever look possible for you when you were writing it.
Raynor Winn:
I can certainly pay the rent now, which is always a pleasure.
Katherine May:
Yeah, that always feels good.
Raynor Winn:
You have to pay your bills, but I can pay my bills now. And it always makes me smile when I pay the electric bill. There's something not quite right about that isn't there?
Katherine May:
No, I think there's huge gratitude. My husband, before I met him, had been made effectively homeless when he was in his late teens and he was thrown out of home and he ended up in a very difficult financial situation where he had caught county court judgments because he was 16 and trying to rent a flat with no money. And I remember when we were first together, he appreciated so many things that everybody else takes for granted, like when we owned our first washing machine, he'd go in and say goodnight to it every night. And I think it's really good to feel like that about the world around you. There's great gratitude there.
Raynor Winn:
Yes. Yeah. I think that will never leave me. I think it's really sort of ingrained in me now, that sense of knowing just how things are different, but I don't stop feeling lucky or extremely grateful more than ...
Katherine May:
Yeah, even ordinary things. And you've become a fantastic advocate for homelessness. Sorry, an advocate for homelessness sounds terrible. You've you've become an advocate for people who become homeless I should say.
Raynor Winn:
Well, I think it's really important because it's very easy for many people to regard homeless people as just a problem in the doorway rather than the individuals with the individual stories that they are.
Katherine May:
[inaudible 00:32:35].
Raynor Winn:
Exactly. I've been given this incredible platform, which a book does, which are in itself is a bit of a surprise. But yeah, if I don't talk about homelessness in that situation, then I feel as if I'm letting people down because I would've hoped when I was homeless that people would be trying their best to raise awareness if nothing else.
Katherine May:
Absolutely. It's an obligation in lots of ways, but a kind of warm obligation to be able to use your voice.
Raynor Winn:
Oh absolutely. To be able to actually do something, if it's only to change one person's opinion of what homelessness is, then that's a step along the way to actually solving the problem. I mean, we've just been through this incredible time when we did actually solve the problem of homelessness. Just for those few short weeks, we did not have a homeless problem.
Katherine May:
Incredibly quickly as well.
Raynor Winn:
Which just goes to prove that it is absolutely doable and it is all about prioritizing and what we as the country prioritize.
Katherine May:
Yeah. So important.
Raynor Winn:
So now all those homeless people who have found shelter and they've found some sort of structure to their days, are very, very shortly going to be back out on the street, back to square one.
Katherine May:
It's extraordinary isn't it that we have the tools to solve these things, and yet we choose not to essentially? There's no other way to think about it. I don't think,
Raynor Winn:
But this time has shown good it was always solvable and it was always possible to solve it virtually overnight, but we chose not to.
Katherine May:
And we go on doing that.
Raynor Winn:
And we've chosen to put them back out in the streets and that's a low point for anyone who's made that choice, I think.
Katherine May:
Here, here. So to finish, you were due to release a new book in the middle of lockdown and you've decided to delay it, but that's coming in September?
Raynor Winn:
Yes. September 3rd. It should have been April, but due to lockdown and the amount of publicity that was booked for the months after release, it just wouldn't have been possible. So yes it's September 3rd, but quite excited about that really. It's really a book that it's called The Wild Silence and it follows on really from the Salt Path. So although it seems like idyllic to find yourself going from homelessness into a home again, I found it quite a difficult adjustment and it's coming to terms with that adjustment in life and a really sort of closer look to our connection to the natural world and how that's informed our lives and is now forming our future. Not bad without giving too much away is it?
Katherine May:
That's very good. Yeah. You said you couldn't give too much away, but that sounds absolutely amazing. And it strikes me already that you're talking about those wintry moments that take you by surprise, I guess. Those times when you think everything should be fine and that's often the bits that take you down the most.
Raynor Winn:
Exactly. And that's a real parallel with your book, Wintering.
Katherine May:
We're always on slightly the same wavelength you and I, I think.
Raynor Winn:
So we're must have a chat about the next one when we get off.
Katherine May:
Yeah. No, I'm not telling you anything.
Raynor Winn:
Yeah. I think those moments in life when you expect everything to be okay and they're unexpectedly not okay, can be really hard to work your way through. And I think this book is about one of those moments and the strengths of the natural world to pull you through and how we are all really closely connected to the natural world, whether we recognize it or we don't.
Katherine May:
Oh, Raynor, it's been so lovely to speak to you and I cannot wait to read it. I will be first in line at Waterstones in September, if indeed Waterstones is open by then. We can all hope right? Fingers crossed. But I look forward to us sharing a stage on a literary festival talking about having written a very similar book again.
Raynor Winn:
It's going to happen. I know it is. Thank you Katherine. It's been lovely to talk to you again.
Katherine May:
Thank you so much.
Show Notes
Author Raynor Winn talks to Katherine May about the losing her home when her husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and finding new life from having nothing.
Raynor Winn has captured a multitude of hearts with her book, The Salt Path, which recounts the time she lost her home just as her husband received a terminal diagnosis. With nothing to lose, they set off to walk the South West Coast Path carrying nothing but a tent.
Here Raynor reflects on that transformative time that redefined the meaning of home - and gives a welcome update on Moth’s health. We also hear about her book, The Wild Silence.
I adored talking to Raynor about our shared love of the South West Coast Path, as I always do :)
References from this episode:
Other episodes you might enjoy:
Season 2: Josie George on the joy of small things
Season 3: Ross Gay on delight
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For information on Katherine’s online writing courses, including her programme Wintering for Writers, visit True Stories Writing School
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Wintering is out now in the UK, and the US.
