Thread 4: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Second article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

Third article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

I've just skimmed through the Sophie Raworth interview posted above and if Sally is to be believed, (Whoops! Argument falling apart already.) Moth wrote notes in the margins of travel guides etc and she sort of spun them together into something more like a real book.

Kind of like a latter day, low rent, (Only they never pay any rent) Dorothy and William Wordsworth situation.

I saw an interview somewhere saying RW ‘had never written anything until the autumn of 2016’.

I’ve been puzzling a bit over how the timings fit together. When did they go to the cider farm? Before that they were living in the chapel in Polruan, where they still seemed to be in December 2018, when the Guardian profiled them and Moth was studying horticulture at Plymouth (he was ‘out’ when the journalist visited).

They did the walk from August 2013 - summer 2014, and someone they met towards the end apparently offered them that Polruan flat. So what happened between 2014 and 2016, when she started writing the book? If Moth was studying, what was she doing? How did they support themselves? The Big Issue published the article that became the basis for the book in 2017 and then the book appeared the following year - quite quickly.

I can’t remember which site it was now but I did read a comment from someone saying they worked in publishing and they’d seen the first version of TSP on the slush pile…!

Raynor compares herself unfavourably to the nubiles ‘in the kitchen three beautiful young women greeted us & I was suddenly very aware it wasn’t just my home I’d lost’. ‘I felt every inch a scruffy fifty year old with ragged hair’. The tone in parts is he’s still ‘got it’ but she’s past it & menopausal. She’s sensitive to being seen to look old I found that a bit sad. Not much mention of it being better than the alternative etc given underlying theme etc.

I think that might be why the link to the other book published earlier by Gangani by Izzy Wyn-Thomas possibly has been pulled.

Sally Walker is, however, listed as a shareholder on the companies house documentation for Gangani Publishing Ltd...seems Tim just set it up with himself as sole director.

I have to admit that I never 'smelt a rat' when I originally read TSP.

In contrast, I did find it extraordinary that she and Moth managed to effectively walk from John O'Groats to Land's End (Landlines) in 2022 including the extremely arduous Sheigra Trail in Scotland.

Even experienced walkers struggle with completing that trail in adverse weather. How on earth somebody wiho'd had CBD for 15 years could have completed the entire walk, struck me as fantastical. Something just didn't add up.

I don't think he's as far as Stafford, might be Penkridge, and he's not Brummie enough. Sounds more like one of the villages round Wolverhampton.

They probably had people emailing them about it and got fed up with it.

I’ll stick my neck out and say this is likely just a minor bump in the road for the pair in question. These days, there’s really no such thing as bad publicity they’ve reached a much wider audience thanks to all the attention. With a team of crisis managers, a thick skin, and a strategy in place, I expect they’ll continue on as before. I also don’t see Penguin walking away; they’re heavily invested in the ‘product’ and have no reason to want it to fail. While this quiet corner of Mumsnet might be on the side of truth, influence and success are often found elsewhere. Sadly, in the world of social media and late-stage capitalism, values like ethics, fairness, and integrity rarely take centre stage in fact, they often get in the way of the relentless pursuit of wealth and fame. And much like with Brexit, people don’t like to admit they’ve been conned, so they double down on the deception instead.

With the Melton Mowbray connection in all this mess, it really makes me miss Sue Townsend.

What would Adrian Mole have made of this? He'd certainly be sending a revised manuscript of his bildungsroman, "Lo, The Flat Hills Of My Homeland - An Ode To Leicestershire." to Penguin Random House.

I thought Cooper was the relative of Moth’s who leant them the money, think he was called “James” in the Observer article, and he is no longer alive. He had a business which failed. I find myself wondering if the money she took from the business owned by Mr Hemmings was invested in Cooper/James’s business. Hence why Cooper/James then loaned her the money to pay it back when she was found out. That would kind of fit with her version of events and with what the Observer investigation has uncovered.

He sounded quite Black Country/West Midlands to me. Randomly, I was reminded of Jude Bellingham - who’s from near Dudley - when hearing Moth’s accent. I’m not at all Brummie or from the W Midlands though, so I could be barking up the wrong tree completely though. I just quite enjoy hearing different accents and working out where people might be from haha.

It's a while since I've read it and had forgotten the whole passage. That actually irritated me at the time, rather eliciting empathy. Very Eeyore.

He was born in Burton. The accent isn't Penkridge, it's more countryfied there. He's moved around a bit and no doubt his accent has been diluted.

The whole idea of them receiving a loan in lieu of repayment is so preposterous that the observer version is the only credible one!!

I agree that they can weather this storm - a lot of people haven’t read her statement but have decided she’s a poor victim

and no one has really picked up on the diagnosis issues

i suspect it will only go bad if more comes out.

This pretty much confirms it from RW/SW in her statement (image so may be a delay uploading). Companies house Gangani Publishing Ltd has TW as director and TW & SW as shareholders. An image on the website looks like SW. So pretty conclusive in my book. I'd bet my house on it.

They actually come across really nicely in that.

Oh, I adore all of Adrian’s early poetic works and to this day can recite his ‘Do You Weep, Mrs Thatcher’ from memory. I would pay good money to hear Gillian Anderson do it in her Thatcher Voice.

I agree that her 'defence' is very ambiguous and intentionally, I assume.

Her comments could be read in several ways as you have pointed out (and I did in previous posts.)

She appears on the one hand to be excusing herself either from making accounting errors which were genuine errors, or taking money from the business (which was stealing.)

When she says she had no evidence I took that to mean she couldn't find the paperwork that would show she'd 'innocently' mislaid accounting info that would show she'd made errors, so it was interpreted by Hemmings and the police as theft.

The vagueness of it confirmed either she's an inaccurate writer who can't explain herself coherently, or she's a very canny writer whose intention was to be ambiguous.

I’d have burst in on the oil anointing & asked them to do me afterwards. It’s quite passive & obedient for the feisty (?) Raynor?

Oh who cares where Moth was born? it's not really the point is it?

The thread is getting very side tracked IMO from the essence of it.

You'd bet your house on it – but would you raffle your house on it? 😁

She talks about it in The Wild Silence. She seems to
have spent the time between the end of the walk and starting to write hiding in the flat in Polruan while Moth studied. She talks about there being no vacancies locally, and talks again about her lack of qualifications and employment history, but there’s no reference to her working, even casually. They lived on Moth’s student loan.

But the dates aren’t clear to me, either. I think the first database event in TWS is Moth going back to university after the Christmas holidays, but given that he’d planned to start his degree immediately after they finished the walk (loan would have come through in September) I think this must be halfway through the second year of his course, as there’s a reference to living in Polruan for a year,

Brilliant. Love Sue & Adrian Mole.

The names remind me a bit of Martin Amis: Keith Talent, Guy Clinch, Nicola Six…

Paul Calais (reminiscent of house in France)
Raynor Winn
Izzy Wyn-Thomas
Moth

I don’t expect it was a loan in lieu of repayment, it was a loan so the Walker’s could pay back the Hemmings the money they had stolen and put into Cooper’s business. Cooper wasn’t giving them their investment back.