Pobřežní cesta – Winnová Raynor (2020)

This open and optimistic personal account explores how difficult it is to cope with grief and how healing the natural world can be. Above all, it is a story about home, which can be lost, rebuilt and unexpectedly rediscovered. Raynor has just learned that her husband Moth has an incurable illness, and they have also lost their home and their work. With almost nothing left, and little time, they decide to embark on a 1,000-kilometre journey along the South West Coast Path, following the English coast from Somerset through Devon and Cornwall to Dorset. They walk through coastal landscapes and along cliffs between sea and sky, carrying only the essentials in their backpacks. With every step, encounter and difficulty, a simple walking trip becomes a journey through life. The book’s contents are in Czech. Raynor and Moth are a middle-aged couple who run a family farm in Wales, where they raised their children. After losing everything because of a bad investment, they become homeless, and only days later learn that Moth has a rare degenerative illness. They buy a used tent and two backpacks with their last money and set off, living on just £48 a week throughout the journey. Their account is brutally honest: they are often hungry, have nowhere to wash, and face distrust from others, yet they continue to recognise the beauty around them. Their journey becomes one toward self-awareness, a pure experience of life’s basic elements and hope.