We lost everything and became homeless in our 50s, just when my husband was diagnosed with an incurable disease – now Gillian Anderson plays me in Hollywood films about how we survived

The plan came to Raynor Winn in the most unlikely places.

It was during the hiding bailiffs under the stairs when her farm was about to come back that she saw a book that had been on the shelf for years.

It was the story of a man who had walked the road in the southwest coast-de 630-Mile walk from Minehead in Somerset, via Devon and Cornwall to Poole, Dorset-and she knew that it was what she and her husband had to do moths.

“We lived a dream life in Wales,” says Raynor. “When we first came to the house, the roof fell, but we had our imagination of what we were going to do and that is what we did.”

They made their bread hosting tourists, but a bad investment meant that they suddenly lost everything in their fifty.

They got less than a week to leave, the only positive creature that their two children were gone at the university.

Just when it seemed that things couldn’t get worse, they did that.

“In the few days we had to pack, Moth was diagnosed with the degenerative disease corticobasal degeneration, which causes problems with movement, speech and memory, and has no healing,” says Raynor.

Author Raynor Winn is depicted with actress Gillian Anderson, who plays her in the Zoutpad (to be seen on 22 May on the Special Screening of the Salt Path in the Curzon Soho))

Deciding to take the walk was an act of despair.

“We were about to become homeless and it seemed to do the most obvious,” says Raynor. ‘Fill a backpack and go for a walk. Follow a line on the map and see if that would bring us the next day, because there was no goal at that time. ‘

From 2013 they took the walk over two summers and shelter in the winter in the barn of a friend.

When Raynor decided to write about it with the help of the notes that Moth had made, their daughter suggested that they see if an agent could be interested.

Raynor’s book The Salt Path was published in 2018 and was a bestseller (as well as coding a new nickname for the sea walk)And now it has changed into a life -confirming film with Gillian Anderson such as Raynor and Jason Isaacs as a Mot.

It follows them as they struggle in the rain and cherish in the sun. We see them becoming mentally and physically stronger, stimulated by the people they meet and the beauty of nature.

“There are three characters in our story – Moth, me and the path,” says Raynor.

“What grew over time was the feeling of strength and support we took from the natural world and only placed one foot for the other.”

Gillian Anderson as Raynor Winn and Jason Isaacs as Moth Winn in a still from the Salt Pathh

Raynor Winn said that the actress ‘did an incredible task to catch that feeling that I was lost in life’ (depicted LR: Gillian Anderson; Jason Isaacs)

The worst times were when people were recovering after she told them they had lost their house.

“But we also met incredible people. They often had very little, but offered us everything they had. That feeling of communities that exist outside the mainstream comes into the film. ‘

It was during a scary moment that Raynor thought a feeling of strength. ‘It opens the movie and it’s my favorite scene.

‘We were camped in this little inlet and we had our tent, which seemed like a good distance from flood. But I woke up at 3 o’clock to realize that the tide was about a meter distance and still came in. We grabbed the tent and ran to a high site. And I realized that Moth had sustained a beach with a tent when he couldn’t put on his coat weeks before he couldn’t have put on. That is when we understood that something happened to his body that was not predicted. It was a miracle. ‘

Raynor and Moth spent a day with Gillian and Jason when they were filming in the Valley of Rocks in Exmoor.

“When they told me that Gillian Anderson would play me, I was shocked,” says Raynor.

The Zoutpad is based on the book of the same name by Raynor Winn. The author said the story is about finding a way to get up when life has taken you down ‘(depicted LR: Gillian Anderson; Jason Isaacs)

The real couple – who became homeless after he was legally forced out of their B&B – traveled the same uninterrupted path from Dorset to Somerset in 2013.

Author Raynor Winn said that Jason Isaacs (photo, right) who plays Moth in the film, has ‘the same bubbling’ as his real counterpart (depicted, left)

“She is amazing. How could she possibly portray me on my roughest? But she has done incredible work by catching that feeling that I have lost in life. I could see why they chose Jason. He is the same as moth. ‘

Moth may have only had two years to live after his diagnosis; 12 years later he is not ‘healed’, but nature keeps him strong.

“The point of the story is that it doesn’t matter how difficult things seem to be or how much you have been told that you can’t go further, there is always a way,” says Raynor.

“The point is to find a way to get up when life has brought you down.”

The salt path is in cinemas from 23 May.