by Raynor Winn
I could understand that; farm finances are precarious at the best of times, and I could see she was struggling with something she wanted to say. I had to say it for her. Now was the moment. If we were to make a forward move in our lives, it had to be now. I took a deep breath and told her about Moth’s uni application, mentally leaping from the cliff edge, spreading my arms into freefall.
‘Gordon said you’d showed him around the shed, so if his rent will help, we’ll go as soon as we can.’
We packed our things, taxed and insured the van, put enough money for a deposit and a month’s rent into the bank and handed back the keys. We wouldn’t be able to rent anywhere yet as we needed to wait for the student loan to come through in late September. We had over two months with nowhere to go and Moth’s health was at its lowest point so far. With two hundred pounds left in our pockets we loaded the van and said our goodbyes. But I could already feel the wind in my hair.
We drove away, homelessness ahead of us again, but this time we knew where we were going.
Part Six
* * *
EDGELANDERS
Meet me there, where the sea meets the sky,
Lost but finally free.
Inscription on memorial bench, Mên-y-grib Point
19. Alive
The wind licked warm air in from the Channel. This time we had chosen to stand on the sand with the salt in our hair. Blue water lapped against our feet, the water of life rising on unstoppable tides, climbing, irresistible. Not yet, for now we were above it, breathing, alive. Homeless still, but this time with a possible end date.
We got off the ferry from Poole and took a photograph of the marker post with its familiar white acorn: 630 miles from South Haven Point to Minehead. In a different life, one in which we’d miraculously survived a winter of wild camping, this could have been our finish line. Instead, we were starting at the end point, and heading back west to Polruan, walking towards the point where our path had abruptly ended almost a year ago. Only 250 miles left to complete; an infinity of steps that might never be taken. The steel sculpture of a compass and sails marked the end of the Coast Path, blue against a blue sky, a beginning at the end.
Moth hunched under the weight of his pack, muscles receding against the incoming tau. Confusion washing over him in waves, falling quietly like a sandcastle in the water running before the tide. The start of the mental decline that accompanies CBD. Salt water lapped against my legs, rising, syrup-warm, clinging. Drawn here by the sweat and tears of the previous year, markers of the salt path we had followed, pulling us back to the sea where we could feel each grain of sand as it ebbed away. So quickly, the parapets becoming tide-rippled seabed.
Beyond the stifling dunes, we stepped on to the path of trodden sea grasses and heather. Our eyes focused on the sea, waves of relief bringing salt streams dripping from the overhang of my face. After months of inland confinement, drowning in a place that didn’t hold us, returning to the cocoon of an untouchable horizon gripped me with a spasm of joy. We peeled away from the heat to the shelter of the trees and the path of short open grass that funnelled a pilgrimage of people to the white arches and stacks of Old Harry Rocks and the cliff edge. Swallows dived in the hot air, snatching insects as they hovered over low, scrubby gorse, rich in yellow flowers. Breathing deeply and turning away from the massed photographers, we faced into the wind, towards the path as it unfurled west along the white chalk band of the Jurassic Coast.
Starting at Old Harry, the World Heritage Site runs for ninety-five miles along the south coast to Orcombe Point near Exmouth. This is an area of coastal erosion, where exposed rocks display over 185 million years of the earth’s history, stretching through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Within the stone and mud are the fossilized remains of creatures and plants, from tree ferns to insects, molluscs to mammals, some even found with the remains of their last meal preserved inside them. Rocks span the journey from salt to soil, catching life in motion, holding it still into eternity.
My feet refound the short, wind-cropped grass, the sun, the wind, the salt on my lips, the familiarity of the unknown soothing the way, the magnetic pull of the path drawing me onward. Whatever the outcome, this felt right. We camped on Ballard Down, watching the lights of Swanage stretch across the bay, glittering reflections from the black water.
‘Have we done the right thing?’ Moth had taken four painkillers and sat on a rock while I rubbed his shoulders with a Chinese pain-relief gel we’d found in a herbal shop. It smelt like boiled cabbage and didn’t work, but it felt like we were doing something.
‘How can it be wrong? We’ll pay for a room with money we’ve earned, you’re going to retrain, and I’ll pick up some work somehow. If not I’ll retrain for something too. But we’ll have somewhere to live that’s ours, not living on others’ goodwill.’
‘Yeah, I know, that’s obvious. I meant coming back on the trail.’
‘It’s the most right thing we’ve ever done.’
‘Good. That’s what I hoped you’d say.’
We settled into a warm night in brand-new three-season sleeping bags. We’d sacrificed fifty pounds and space in the rucksack for these. We could manage without plates or a spare torch, but warmth was essential.
Compared to the start of the north coast, the south was easy; occasional steps going steeply down and then drastically back up again, followed by long stretches of easy going across bracken- and gorse-covered slopes. This was why we had wanted to start our journey this way round originally, before discovering that we’d have to read the guidebooks back to front. Reading it in reverse seemed less important now; we were so familiar with Paddy’s writing that even backwards we understood his meaning. Red deer grazed quietly above the path near Dancing Ledge, while rock climbers hung from the cliffs below, each seemingly unaware of the other’s world. We walked between the two, invisible to both, our only traces those of Moth’s left leg, heavy and awkward, leaving uneven footprints in the dust.
Dark massing clouds rolled in clusters across the evening sky as we camped on a grass ledge on the slopes of St Aldhelm’s Head. The currents meet in the waters below the head, clashing in a foaming mass of boiling water. Small boats heading towards Poole attempted one by one to navigate their way through the irregular waves, pushing forwards only to be driven back over and over. A fishing boat approached the area, taking a wide arc out to sea to avoid the confluence, reaching the other side long before the others who were still struggling through the watery mayhem. The light faded into tones of grey and silver. Before darkness completely engulfed us, a slight movement caught my eye on the path and a wide black body came out of the gloom, the white stripe of his badger face shining in the twilight. Two metres away he stopped dead, his regular evening path barred by the tent; time stood still, frozen for minutes or seconds, as all three of us stared into the darkness, unsure what to do. The badger slowly turned and retreated into the bracken, to find another route. We stared long after he’d gone, enchanted by this wild moment imprinted on the dusk.
The next morning, small boats were still trying to cross the mess of tides, under the careful watch of two old men in a coastguard hut.
‘Please could we fill our water bottles?’
‘That’ll be a pound a bottle.’
‘Oh. I think we’ll manage.’
‘Don’t go taking photographs round here.’
Was photography banned? That was a bit extreme; I knew we were getting close to the military zones, but thought they were only training areas.
‘Crumbling rocks, see. Man came up here a few weeks ago, stepping back to take a selfie, over he goes. Next time we saw him it was down there on the beach.’
Moth and his lazy leg stepped a metre further from the edge.
We filled the bottles for free at a spring at the base of West Hill and began a slow, slow walk up Houns-tout Cliff towards the Kimmeridge Ledges, where rock climbers hung in effortless patterns of Lycra and chalk bags. When we were
twenty, we’d spent every spare weekend rock climbing on the crags of the Peak District, but watching the supple bodies swinging across the rock face it seemed as if I was remembering someone else’s life; however hard I tried I couldn’t recall how that ease of movement felt.
‘We were never that good.’
‘I’m sure we were; they’ve just got better kit than we had.’
But that was a different life, long gone, and it seemed that now we were walking slowly out of our current existence into an unknown life where all we could hope for was insidious decay. In another millennium, someone would discover fossilized hikers in the mudstone. Last known meal: noodles. The creeping shadow of our future was taking shape, but I hung on to the memory of Portheras Cove, the tent aloft over Moth’s head, and hoped.
The heat soared as we walked through wheat fields. The dust from early combine harvesters cloaked our packs, hair and clothes in soil and chaff. The year since we’d left our land could be measured by the dirt we’d accumulated, and the rare days we’d been clean. Muddy from the path, green from the sheep, dusty from plaster. Dirt had become a normal part of our life. Emerging from the cloud, sunlight glinted from a car park in Gaulter Gap. This eastern part of the south coast is softer, more populated than the north, where the luxury of washing our heads under a tap by the toilet block and dropping our packs on the grass by an ice-cream van had been just a dream. The pleasure of finding water whenever we needed it couldn’t be underrated, but already we were finding ourselves looking for the more rugged, wild and isolated spots.
A woman lay on the grass with a hat over her face, a huge rucksack by her feet.
‘Hello, are you a backpacker? There aren’t many of us around.’ She sat up and took her sunglasses off: our age and a backpacker, a rare sight. Then it went dark. A vast black shape moved in front of the sun; it could have been an eclipse, but slowly the silhouette of two ice creams emerged from its sides and it sat down.
‘Bugger me, are you backpackers? Don’t see backpackers, do we, Ju? Well, tell a lie, we saw two near Swanage, going t’other way. Said they’d come from Minehead. Didn’t believe ’em, did we, Ju? Looked too clean. Then those other two, but they were just out for the weekend so they don’t really count, do they? We’ve come from Poole. Well, Bournemouth really. We were going to get the bus to the ferry then we thought well no, might as well walk, then we got here like and they’ve got ice creams, bloody marvellous. Are you camping? We’re just camping where we end up. Just washed our feet at the toilet block. Bloody stink, my feet do.’
‘Dave, slow down.’
‘What? Just telling them what we’re doing and stuff like that.’
‘Yeah, we’re wild camping too.’
‘Thought so. We camped on the side of St Aldhelm’s last night. Did you come through that dust? Couldn’t see a bloody thing, could we, Ju? God that was good; I’m going to have another one of them, me.’
The sun came out as he headed back to the van. We looked at each other; then we felt in the pack for the purse. We liked them immediately and Dave’s enthusiasm was catching. We rashly bought two ice lollies, and lay on the grass chatting, which consisted mainly of us listening and dozing, until the sun began to dip below Tyneham Cap. We left them in the car park drinking coffee and headed away to find somewhere to put the tent.
The hillside ahead looked really promising, until we passed a nodding donkey oil pump and came to a six-metre-high razor-wire fence that announced the start of the Lulworth Ranges, where the army hide in the undergrowth ambushing rusty retired tanks, which run all the way to Lulworth, miles to the west. A large sign states no camping, fires, drinking, running, photographs or unnecessary breathing, but it was the weekend so the path was open. We could have gone back and camped in the car park, but would inevitably have been thrown off, or we could try to make it up Tyneham Cap before it got dark, put the tent somewhere out of sight and hope not to get shot. We went through the bolted gate and carried on. Moth had sat in the car park for too long, enough time for his muscles to stiffen and refuse to go far. So we camped halfway up the hill, where we were out of sight of the village and could be away early enough to avoid being ambushed by squaddies camouflaged as sheep.
The night wasn’t as quiet as we’d hoped. I woke to a strange clicking, wheezing sound, first around the tent and then moving towards the cliff. I held my breath waiting for the tent flaps to be ripped open and polished leather boots to appear outside, but the noise faded away, the boots didn’t come and Moth, snug in his new sleeping bag, carried on snoring. Morning broke and we left early, before anyone could know we were there. Then, as we broke over the ridge of Tyneham Cap, Dave and Julie were sitting at a picnic bench drinking coffee.
‘You’re up early, aren’t you? Bloody hell, we’ve only just got the coffee on. What did you think to those deer last night? Got out for a pee and I thought crikey, they’re having a great show. All round your tent they were, deer, probably twenty of them, round your tent for ages they were, then they came over here and down into that scrub on the side of the cliff. Bloody amazing, they were.’
‘I heard a weird noise, but we didn’t see them.’
‘Missed something there, you did. I thought they were roe deer, but that wouldn’t be right, they’re usually solitary, unless they’re starting to get together for the rut, early for that though. Anyway, they were deer and they went over into the scrub, hiding for the day and stuff like that I expect. Red deer, maybe that’s what they were, but it was dark.’
Julie sat quietly drinking her coffee, only occasionally interrupting Dave’s rapid conversation, but smilingly content to let the big-hearted man talk on.
We left them packing their tent away and followed the path in the fresh morning air, down to Worbarrow Tout, past the village of Tyneham, which was requisitioned by the army in 1943. Locals accuse them of failing to give it back, although technically, since the army placed a compulsory purchase order on the land and buildings after the war, it belonged to them. However, the villagers were still displaced, all sense of home lost as the military used their history, their memories, as target practice. Strangely enough, limited public access, a lack of intensive farming and the occasional blasting by small-arms fire has allowed wildlife and vegetation to thrive throughout the ranges. A form of khaki conservation that no one expected to be the outcome when the villagers left their homes as part of the war effort.
The cliffs of Worbarrow and Mupe Bay dazzled white against the sea, Mediterranean-turquoise in the early sun. The steep rise of Flower’s Barrow was a shocking reminder of the true nature of the coastal path. Dry and crisp in the heat, the slippery grass rose to a degree that would have been easier to crawl than walk. We finally gasped on to the top, stunned by views that opened to the north through the rolling hills and valleys of Dorset and west along the white chalk cliffs towards Lulworth. As steep as Flower’s Barrow had been up, Bindon Hill was going down. We could have taken a gentle stroll across the ridge and a slow descent into Lulworth Cove, but missed it and headed down the steep path to Mupe Bay, stopping thankfully halfway down to allow a large family to pass on their way up. Armed with picnic baskets, blankets, cool boxes and dogs they filed past: young aunties having a ‘lashings of ginger beer’ time with fitter nieces and nephews, then harassed mums and dads with collapsible chairs, dogs knocking slower children off their feet, teenage grandchildren grumbling into mobile phones and finally grandparents, stopping to pant at every chance: ‘Remind me why we do this every year?’ They passed as our crunching descent carried on, knee joints losing years of use with every step. At the bottom, we paused on a ledge to look down on huge fossilized growths in the rocks below: four-feet-wide swellings with a depression in the centre, like giant, freshly squeezed acne. Apparently, according to Paddy, this isn’t the fossil of a teenage troll, but the remains of conifers that grew 135 million years ago, in their original soil.
Aching, tired and feeling every step of our walk through time, we stopped at the e
nd of the army ranges to take our boots off. The toenail that had healed over in the winter had again burst out of the side of my toe. I bound it up with tape and hoped it would stay in, before walking through the cobbles at the base of the curved cliffs of Lulworth Cove. White rock cliffs interlaced with black, scattering the cove with a smooth mix of black and white pebbles. Iconically picturesque, the cove is probably one of the most photographed spots on the South West Coast Path, and inevitably heaved with tourists. But as the sun began to drop and the cliffs picked up the muted hues of the late-afternoon sun, their photographs would have been worth the crush. We picked up a leaflet in the village and tried to discern if we were moving from the Cretaceous to the Jurassic period, but gave up and bought chocolate bars and hot water instead. We left the village in early evening and followed the coast of stacks and pinnacles to the vast rock arch of Durdle Door. Dusk was falling over the white rollercoaster when we finally pitched the tent beyond Swyre Head and I watched the last of the light transform the cliffs into blue and pink, warmed not just by the three-season bag, but by the sound of gulls and oystercatchers chattering through the night. A sense of calm washed through me that I hadn’t felt since watching the peregrine on Pencarrow Head and I fell into a long, restful sleep for the first time in weeks.
The drama of the high white cliffs came to an end as the path descended to sea level and a shack selling breakfasts. The morning had been bright and clear, but the sky was darkening, a growing purple hue creeping in beyond the Isle of Portland, highlighting the island with exaggerated brightness. Portland isn’t really an island but a bulge of land that hangs out in the sea, attached to the mainland by a thread of shingle and road. One day that too will erode and it will truly become an island. Virtually out of food, we shared a sausage sandwich and a pot of hot water, desperate not to dip into the luxury of the cash still in the rucksack, but unable to resist the smell of breakfast. A group of divers squelched up from the beach, like penguins in drysuits with flippers in hand. The one nearest the shack peeled off the drysuit to reveal another, very feminine-shaped wetsuit underneath, removing her neoprene balaclava to set her long dark hair free in the rising wind. As she struggled to release herself from the black, body-hugging skin, the elderly fishermen on the next table fell silent. By the time she finally rolled it down over her thighs to reveal a perfect body in a red bikini, they were close to slithering from the bench in a state of self-transcendent ecstasy.