“I’m not really sure why I’m here, lying in a bin-bag on the side of a hill, but I’m strangely glad that I am,” writes Raynor Winn, part of the way through her latest walking odyssey with her husband, Moth. She won’t be the only one glad. With her previous books, The Salt Path and The Wild Silence, having sold more than a million copies, Winn’s fans are legion and they won’t be disappointed by Landlines. Its pages offer the same potent blend of big themes (the climate crisis, extinction, migration, food security, homelessness, terminal illness, friendship) illuminated by intimate details, small observations, and a sort of magic as simple and complex as love itself. I’ve never met Ray or Moth, but it’s hard not to feel I’d know them at a glance, even from a great distance, by the comfortable glow of their old and intricate partnership, fray-edged and worn to exquisite imperfection.
The story of Landlines is another leap of faith, another long walk. Some things have changed: Ray and Moth no longer pass unrecognised, they are no longer homeless, they no longer have to survive on the most meagre of trail rations, but the shadow of Moth’s illness – a condition known as corticobasal degeneration – has not gone away. In fact, it has encroached further, as the doctors said it would, albeit more slowly than anyone expected. After a relapse and a grim consultation, they do what they have done before in the face of disaster, and hit the trail. Not just any trail, but the toughest and wildest Britain has to offer: the Cape Wrath. I’ll resist spoilers, but it doesn’t go according to plan.
No matter: like the migrant cuckoos that inspire her, and the resident skylarks and golden eagles whose voices and struggles are woven through the narrative, Winn is someone in whom hope swells larger than doubt. There are other avian totems too. Perhaps the most poignant is the golden plover, which manifests for weeks as a mysterious call in the dark. If that one note, sung night after night, could be said to represent any of the themes in this wonderful book, it would be resilience. There are other recurring motifs too – the gift of friendship and the kindness of strangers, even during the strange phobia-inducing times of Covid-19.
Winn seems to have a bird’s-eye view of Britain – a map at her feet, a keen eye for detail, particularly for social injustice. Hers is a voice of empathy and integrity, and her points are never made polemically, but by the simple observation of others’ experiences. She highlights the effects of policy and socioeconomic trends as they ripple, sometimes rip, though people’s lives. When they meet dozens of youngsters roaming with plans to spend a night on the Scottish summit of Suilven, she notes that anyone doing the same in most of England would be breaking the law, in a society where there is “no encouragement to further our understanding of our natural heritage … rather the opposite”.
It’s not only landscape and geography that make this a very British adventure. There is an obsession with tea and salty chips that will be familiar to most long-distance walkers, and an understandable preoccupation with the weather, particularly precipitation. Water permeates the pages – but it is punctuated by bursts of dazzling light that are a special property of both our beloved rainy isle and of Winn’s writing. The walk becomes, as life often is, a quest for these moments, “a hope, a need, a prayer for the dance of light to resume”.
• Landlines is published by Michael Joseph (£20). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
