To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The real Salt Path: how the couple behind a bestseller le...

I read Raynor Winn's book The Salt Path and her other two books. I was looking forward to seeing the film at some point and to reading her next book. I felt sorry to read about the challenges the couple had faced, especially with regard to losing their family home and with Moth's health. Now, having read the article in today's Observer, I feel a bit stunned and am not sure what to think.

Calling a journalist ‘this lady’
just sounded a bit strange.

Maybe the film makers thought they needed to come across a bit more sympathetically...

Yes, but still… and they actually don’t come across badly in the film. They also seemed very in love, which is one of the major plot lines of the film and always a good selling point for a film.

For members?

I listened to the preview, she has an awful reading voice.

i saw Simon Armitage when he was doing his Walking Away thing around Cornwall, reading poetry for a bed for the night and a few more organised readings too. In fact I went to his reading in St Ives. Can confirm he is very un-Moth-like!
Incidentally he has a medical condition which affects his back, and described in some detail how hard he found stretches of the path (I too can confirm this!).

Also, the bit where Ray says 'oh no, he's not Simon Armitage' and then they get turfed out made me clench my fists with 'why are you being such an idiot? It's completely obvious what's happened but for heaven's sake just go along with it, eat your lasagne, get a night's sleep in a proper bed then leave!' Though I guess that would make them look more calculating than was desirable..

Yes, I'm wondering if 'Tim and Sally Walker' own these properties and are kindly letting 'Moth and Raynor Winn' stay in them? Owning property does not fit in with their desired narrative so they have to invent generous benefactors.

And if the benefactors are real, how do they feel now about lending their property to two people who may not be what they seem?

Me too. Anyone who knew about SA and his walk would probably be aware of what he looks like and it ain't Moth/Tim.

Tiresome book, unlikeable people so I chose not to waste my time watching the film.

I just listened to the preview and agree. I couldn't handle a whole book with that narration.

Excellent detective skills, Widdlin!

Incidentally he has a medical condition which affects his back, and described in some detail how hard he found stretches of the path

He needs to walk more then, obviously, and he will be cured.

@AWanderingFool😂
clearly the poet laureate is a prize fool not to know this! 😂

And fine with peddling the bullshit that progressive neurological conditions can be put in reverse by taking long walks.

Publishing is a morality-free industry.

The vice-president of the USA, JD Vance, did the same thing. He wrote a book and most of it was fabricated. It made him rich and famous. Couple that with the president of the USA, Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies and a defendant in many other crimes, and I’d say the US is a felon country. MAGA supporters do not care about law and order. They want a white male driven country, the way it was ‘in the good old days’, in their eyes.

😂😂 I would also love it if he wrote a walking memoir.

A very interesting biography of the mysterious 'Izzy Wyn-Thomas' on the 'about' page of that Gangani publishing website linked upthread.

Izzy Wyn-Thomas is an exciting new voice and author of our first release; How not to Dal dy Dir. An irreverent look at rural Wales and City finance, her book has been described both as 'an offbeat view of minority culture' and 'a beginners guide to asset-stripping'. Izzy, who has spent much of her life in North-West Wales, says her book grew from the idea that nothing is as it seems, and every story changes in the light of the readers viewpoint.

🤔

I’m devastated by the Salt Path ‘lies’. It meant so much to me

https://www.thetimes.com/article/94a85307-8a4f-444a-a8ee-ab81739277e4?shareToken=7f7ba42cd538c0e58a77b56a18680888

If they ever make a film about what now seems to be the real story, I nominate Martin Kemp for Moth/Tim. He looks very like him in that Country Living piece IMO.

Although it would be interesting to see JI/GA reprise their roles I suppose.

Sounds like it was written by AI! And what does ‘How not to Dal dy Dir’ even mean? Why is it half in English and half in Welsh?

Omg the camping on the beach...I shouted at the book when I was reading it!! WHYYY?! I mean, I'm no expert lol but I have done lots of camping and even I know that beaches / the sea has tides, and the sea is likely to come in at some point?!

The month before we had had a full audit and the auditors had picked up nothing.

Bloody hell, @BeachPebbleWave - what's the point of them, then?!

Good call!’he does look like him!!

On casting — entirely coincidentally, I listened to the Kermode and Mayo podcast today, when they had Jason Isaacs on talking about the film. He was so audibly genuinely enthusiastic and admiring about Moth’s courage and humility and goodness, it made me actually feel sad.

I've lived in Wales. It's a bloody stupid title, incomprehensible to non Welsh speakers and annoying to those who are IMO.

I was also similarly surprised at this scene was in the film! I think their characters in the film come across as gritty and stoic, but also as naive (cf the ‘bad investment’ and the beach-camping, and the whole idea to go for a 600+ mile walk when you’re at the lowest point in your life that you’ve ever been). I suppose the suggestion is also that desperation drove them to do the walk.

I remember thinking it was unflattering to portray them like that, but they had to have some ‘character flaws’, I suppose, to make them seem believable.