The Salt Path filming locations: the trail is 630 miles long — the crew used a handful of spots, and one of them isn't even on it
Marianne Elliott's adaptation covers a 630-mile walk in 115 minutes, which only works because the unit never attempted to walk it. Here is where the film was actually shot, including the counties that have no coast path at all.
The South West Coast Path runs 630 miles from Minehead to Poole Harbour. The film gets through it in 115 minutes by shooting about a dozen carefully chosen places and quietly skipping the other 600-odd miles.
The Salt Path is Marianne Elliott's feature debut, written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz from Raynor Winn's 2018 memoir, starring Gillian Anderson as Raynor and Jason Isaacs as Moth, with Hélène Louvart on camera. It shot in the summer of 2023, premiered at Toronto on 5 September 2024, opened in UK cinemas on 30 May 2025 and took $17.7 million.
The path, roughly in order
The production did work its way down the real route, picking the stretches that photograph hardest:
- Minehead, Somerset — the official start of the path, and the film's.
- Porlock Weir and Bossington — the early Exmoor section, including a cream tea at Kitnors Tea Room in Bossington.
- Valley of Rocks, Lynton and Lynmouth, Devon — the most dramatic thing Exmoor has on offer, used accordingly.
- Clovelly and Hartland, Devon — the cobbled village turns up in the trailer.
- Bude and Sandymouth, Cornwall — north Cornish cliffs.
- Padstow, Daymer Bay, Polzeath and Port Quin — the Camel estuary crossing and one of the film's quieter scenes.
- Fistral Beach and Holywell Bay, Newquay — crews were spotted at both in summer 2023. Newquay is where the couple find the world too loud.
- Rame Head, Cornwall — St Michael's Chapel on the headland, used as the midpoint.
- Bigbury-on-Sea, Devon — the south Devon stretch, with Burgh Island across the causeway.
Exmoor National Park and Somerset Council both put out tourism notices about it afterwards, which tells you how the region read the film.
The bits that are nowhere near the coast path
This is where the maths stops working. The shoot also took in Usk, Chepstow and Cardiff in south Wales, Box and Shepton Mallet, and — least coastal of all — Leigh Woods and the UWE campus in Bristol.
A university campus in Bristol is roughly 25 miles from the nearest saltwater, and about 40 from the coast path proper.
Wales is the one that makes narrative sense. The home the Winns lost was a Welsh farm, and the memoir opens there, before the walk starts. Everything that happens indoors — the house, the bad news, the institutional rooms — had to be shot somewhere, and somewhere is easier to find near Bristol and Newport than on a clifftop.
The part nobody planned for
In July 2025, six weeks after the UK release, The Observer published an investigation questioning the memoir's account, reporting allegations about how the Winns lost their home and raising doubts about Moth's diagnosis. Winn denied the allegations. Sony Pictures Classics subsequently pulled out of the US distribution deal, and the American release was rescheduled to 22 May 2026.
None of which changes where the cameras stood. Rame Head is still Rame Head.
If you want to walk any of it
The single most efficient day out is the Valley of Rocks, which sits between Lynton and Lee Bay and takes about an hour on foot. Rame Head is reachable by ferry from Plymouth. Clovelly charges admission and has done for years. And Minehead is where the path starts, which is the only location in the film that is also mile zero.
For the record: the film's 115 minutes cover a walk that took the Winns months, across a path that takes most through-walkers seven to eight weeks.