The Salt Path

A couple lose their home and later discover the husband has been diagnosed with a terminal illness as they embark on a year long coastal trek.

Faced with losing their business, their farmhouse and their children to university, married Ray (Gillian Anderson) and husband Moth (Jason Isaacs) are down to their last few hundred quid and decide to go for a walk. A very, very, long walk - along England’s south west coast towards Land’s End. Armed with only a rucksack each, they set off along the rugged coastline and along the way we learn a little about what caused their predicament, about him suffering from the debilitating CBD, and about what makes this couple tick as despite them living and sleeping rough, blagging what food they can and him getting mistaken for a famous local celebrity, they seem to be, and wish to remain, almost magnetically joined together. It’s a simple story that is rich in character with which both Anderson and Isaacs delivering amiably and sometimes quite poignantly. As they trek, we also get a chance to enjoy some of the spectacular scenery of this windswept part of the country and those locales provide for a few moments of (tea-time) peril, some gentle banter and some of that life-affirming stuff that is often delivered in barrels but here a little more subtly and characterfully. It’s all based on a true journey and she took part in the production so it has a sense of authenticity to it, and it makes you think a little along the lines of “there but for the grace of God” as real, ordinary, people take adversity by the scruff of the neck. It doesn’t really need a cinema, but a bit like “The Last Bus” (2021) is one of those British dramas that works.