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

Me neither.
2days of "legal advice" and this is what she comes up with.

They left the meds behind in the book which seems v odd with such a serious diagnosis.

https://archive.ph/GtroI

hmm

Amy Liptrot grew up on a farm in Orkney[3] and studied at the University of Edinburgh.[4] She lived in London for ten years, resorting to alcohol and drug use. After losing her job, her home, and her boyfriend because of her alcoholism, she returned to Orkney to rehabilitate. She recorded her experiences there in her first book, The Outrun, published in 2016.[5][6][3] She gave birth to a child in December 2018. As of 2019 Liptrot had been without alcohol for eight years.[7] As of 2024, Liptrot lives in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, England.[8]

She contributed an essay on wild swimming to Antlers of Water, a compendium of Scottish nature writing produced during the COVID-19 pandemic.[9][10] Her book The Instant was published in 2022. It describes a year she spent living in Berlin after the period covered in The Outrun.[11][12]

All people you mentioned are cut from the same cloth. Grifters will grift, some may be more successful than others.

I don’t get the impression that she thinks she’s done anything wrong. Her boss had more money than her, she needed and felt she deserved more money so she took it. When she was found out she didn’t want to get a criminal record so she found someone else with money and took out a loan I imagine she had no intention of paying back to pay the first lot off. But she sees herself as a good and nice and kind person who has fallen on hard times and she deserves these things and people with more than her obviously don’t deserve their things and you can take them off them and it just balances out. From the free cups of tea and nicking hot water for a shower to paying off your embezzlement with a loan, it’s the same behaviour and motivation. Marketing this behaviour as being a free spirit and at one with nature is genius.

I'd like the investigative journalists to take a close look at the neurologist who gave bizarrely glowing review on Wikipedia and who possibly is the same neurologist who wrote the Feb 2025 letter that references discussions with them about questions being asked about Tim's illness when the film is released. It's quite odd in my opinion

Yes agree - it seems very odd

Seems like it's always some of the hardest days of her life, and they are always having life changing experiences. TW said moving to Wales and becoming Head Gardener was life changing. The walk was. The diagnosis. And then the book and film success is.

It's a real see-saw, she'll probably be glad of some new hardest days to spur more bleak passages in future writing.

Realise this sounds cynical but after reading the codswallop of a statement have very little sympathy left.

Not investigative journalist, but that's a good spot.

She's removed many of the details on the letters, but the neurologist's initials are RD.
The weird book review was written by Rhys Davies:

"Rhys Davies MA, BMBCh, PhD, MRCP, is Editor of our Book Review Section. He was accredited as a Consultant Neurologist on the specialist register in 2009 and is currently a Consultant Neurologist at the Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Liverpool and at Yssbyty Gwynedd in Bangor, North Wales. He has a clinical and research interest in cognitive neurology"

People I know with personality disorders have such a high level of reality distortion it's frightening - they rewrite in their minds - so yes she could well believe parts of her own bullshit.

She'll know on a deeper level that she has lied, but there will also be denial and excuses; wrongdoing is downplayed and minimised.

I hope not. I liked The Outrun and, whilst Amy Liptrot comes across as quite a difficult person, I didn't get any "this may not be true" vibes.

FWIW here is the full review, which is mainly notable for being worse written than The Salt Path;

"We don’t often review best sellers in ACNR, still less travel books. But ‘The Salt Path’ is a bestselling travel book with a neurological twist. It is written by a woman married to a person recently diagnosed with Corticobasal degeneration. And for good measure, they have just contended with legal and financial catastrophe too.
It is a medical book in the sense of showing the limitations of our profession. Perhaps the best that can be said for Medicine here, is that it comes out of the story better than the Law!
A point that’s highly relevant to medical practice, however, is a recurring theme of The Salt Path: when you hit rock bottom, the only way is up. That’s if you allow yourself to try, and are willing to risk that you might die laughing in the effort…What was that they said about the best medicine?
While Cornwall comes out better than either Medicine or the Law, the hero of the piece is an abstraction of the indomitable human spirit. It inhabits all of us from time to time, except the most unlucky. It certainly inhabits the travellers on ‘The Salt Path’ as they journey on; and one perceives that, having journeyed, this spirit will be all the stronger in the event of future travails.
I must say that Raynor Winn (et al!) provide a compelling (if not scientifically irrefutable) case for the benefits of positive action and of physical therapy, even for the ghastliest of neurodegenerative conditions. Of course, this is something which resonates with data presented more formally by our colleagues in Rehabilitation Science of late; that includes a paper in a very recent edition of the ‘other’ Clinical Neuroscience journal which comes through the door of many UK neurologists.
The Salt Path is a ‘feel good’ read for clinicians in Neuroscience; there can be life, even when there is no cure. I think its positivity might also benefit some of our patients, perhaps many of them."

I think her statement muddies the water. Journalists have to stand up their stories, especially one as potentially damaging as this. The fact that she wanted any discussions to be confidential says it all. You either refute everything or you don’t. Personally, if employer said I needed to repay thousands of pounds over a ‘mistake,’ I would tell them where to go.

Cooper, the ‘friend’ has re-emerged but she doesn’t address the letter to the court from the relative in the Observer article.

I may have read this wrong but she says Moth’s condition can only be confirmed after his death. How do they explain the disappearance of a brain tumour?

If, as she is asserting, nothing in the article is true, then her lawyers would have taken action as the article is libelous. Why is she still waiting on legal advice?

For me, her statement fails to pass the sniff test. She is tugging at the heartstrings of her readers. I thought it badly written and would be very surprised if it had been passed by her legal team as it opens up so many questions.

That's shocking, tbh

Is everyone else getting ads for Welsh cottages and farms for sale on this thread?

I live less than 5 mins from where the “French house” is. I don’t have any special information but I think I can give a good perspective on that element of the story. There’s not the slightest chance that that property would have been under threat from a “developer”. It’s basically a farm building and mostly vineyard adjacent (not fancy vineyards).

It’s hard to estimate the value without knowing the amount of land attached, but back when they bought it it would definitely have been cheap (and in no-one’s wildest dreams worth the £200K+ of their remortgage). For a comparison, as of today you can buy a nice 3 bed house with a pool around here for under 200K. So a tumble down wreck in 2007, I don’t know… £20,000 maybe?

Still the claim that an estate agent said it wasn’t worth marketing is also nonsense. An estate agent will take anything on. No skin off their nose… and the purchaser pays the agent’s fees here, so it wouldn’t even have cost them anything to try.

The claim that there is no electricity, water or sanitation sounds unlikely. How do you think that the vineyards next door, their owners and workers live and function? Or the other houses in the hamlet? There are also many campsites in the area if they did need facilities.

I also think it’s untrue that they haven’t been here since 2007. A local friend told me a very strange story. A woman (who she now recognises from the photos) befriended her on Twitter over a shared interest in organic gardening. The woman said she had a house in SW France, nearby to my friend, and asked if she could meet my friend next time they were here.

In due course that did happen and the mystery woman and her partner came to lunch. My friend was bewildered as the woman appeared actually to have no interest in gardening at all and spent her time asking intrusive financial questions. When my friend asked where their house was, bizarrely the woman said “she couldn’t remember”. Eventually the meal ended, the couple left and my friend never heard from her again, not even a thank you note. This was around 2015. So…? Who knows… maybe it was RayMoth… maybe not. But a strange story.

Lastly, for what it’s worth, RayMoth looks very vaguely familiar. I’ve can’t shake the feeling I’ve seen her round. Maybe in a local bar, maybe in the supermarket. I don’t know. I think there’s a lot more to the French angle than meets the eye. And I don’t think they’d have to be hiding/not visiting because of French taxes. A polite visit to FranceServices in your local town would be enough to sort that out. They’re very helpful about that kind of thing here.

I think she may have written the book believing her own lies. Some people actually do this- their fabrications become their truth.

I can't help but think that when Penguin Michael Joseph read that statement they'll be crying into the shredder.

There's nothing in it or the medical correspondence that says the Observer was incorrect.

Again, I really hope not. I follow Chloe Dalton on Instagram and she's posted so many photos of Hare. No tales of terminal illness, just a rescued leveret, raised against all odds to become an adult hare.

Rereading the Feb 2025 letter, does anyone else get the impression that the doctor is writing it because they have said people may question the diagnosis? It’s a very odd letter that reads more like a character reference than a normal consultant letter.

Remind me never to fabricate a story on Mumsnet. There's sources all over Europe who will be validating it😂

Time to draw a line under this and move on - these threads have long since ceased to be a place to discuss shock and confusion at the Observer article and have turned into witch hunts.

Some of you won't be happy unless you have access to every piece of medical evidence and will still use semantics to dispute Moth's diagnosis.

@Saltpathpuzzle

She talks of a relative owning the adjacent property. Have you any idea if that's true? Not to name the relative or anything, but that's a part I found really odd (as well as everything else).

Perhaps you could contact Chloe Hadjimatheou?

I think you should get in touch with investigative journalists! Very interesting.