Thread 5: 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 item in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

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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

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Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

And it wasn't a victimless lie either.
I have seen lots of posts on social media from people with CBD /family with CBD talking about the weight of guilt that they couldn't "walk themselves better"

And the whole industry peddling natural "cures" for terminal conditions feeds into a culture where people think it's fine to suggest to friends with devastating diagnoses things like " have you tried yoga" "maybe it's because you were stressed" " why not try the paleo diet" etc

Don't! I used to write GCSE modern languages text books, and each time I wrote a course of books there were at least 15 of them (Years 7-11 teacher's and students' books plus worksheets). I wrote about 10 courses in French, German, Italian and Spanish, and each time I wrote a book the publishers used to send me 6 'author copies'. So that meant I had around 900 (150 x 6) copies of books I had written - and who reads their own books? It was almost a blessing when modern languages virtually ceased to exist as a subject and I had to move on to other work. I was fortunate that soon after I had stopped doing it my garage, where I kept them, had a flood and destroyed most of them.

You're late to the party - I hope you've brought a rope !

Yes, the £600 thing did sound a little ill-advised, to say the least. After all, if Martin Hemmings was unable to pay his employees without it and it never appeared in the bank, he was presumably unable to pay his employees after all. That's not the kind of thing a small business owner isn't going to notice (I used to run one, and I remember the monthly nightmare of chasing creditors so that I could pay the bills).

My brother has Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and he has to keep walking and exercising as part of his chronic disease. He also has kidney problems as well.

He looks healthy but if he becomes ill, he's in serious danger. He got Covid god knows how and I helped to look after him, when visiting my mum who he lived with. It took him weeks to get a clear test.

Wondering if it's an arthritis thing with MW. I don't believe he's faking an illness but I can't believe it's CBD. Not even an outlier case.

The £600 thing smacks of her having done it for so long she believed he'd never notice anything at all. She became very greedy and arrogant.

As so well explained by Jason Isaacs, the arc of the story was that they were swindled and made homeless through no fault of their own.

The whole point of the book is the power of walking and the power of nature. If he isn’t terminally ill, they didn’t do most of the walk, they had options other than camping at random and soup kitchens for shelter and food, they were actually running from their own criminality and fecklessness then what’s the point of the book?

I have only been to Cornwall once and I hated it because of the people I was with - what’s stopping me writing a book about my marvellous journey on the swcp I’ve never been on and marketing it as unflinchingly honest and a true account other than my own morality and ethics?

It does have a scoop feel to it for sure. Really deep dive and I think useful. Sad the kids get named but they are adults and this is all within the public domain.

I think that the timeline of the walk is the least of their (and our) problems. As various pps have said, memoirs rearrange times and dates and events to make a neater narrative, as well as leaving things out. Although it might have been better not to be quite as clear as she was about dates in the book.

Having said that, though, if it turns out that what they did is substantially different from her account, it does matter. Because she is presenting this difficult walk as what helped Moth get better.

And - for all the people who say that this account doesn't matter - go and have a look at Reddit. There is more than one person with CBD on there who either got false hope, or felt terrible that they were unable to walk and cure themselves, or who have been berated for not walking when they were barely able to leave the house. Reality does matter, and this kind of dishonesty has massive consequences.

That's funny! 😅
The horror of so many copies.

I wonder if her portrayal of the people they meet as being unfriendly and judgy of their homelessness is actually more a reflection on how she feels about herself

her big mistake was allowing this to be marketed as ‘unflinchingly true’ but I imagine that’s the only way she got the deal. And the publisher was right as it proved hugely successful!

my local indie bookshop has it in nature - which is fair if what she has said about the nature on the walk is true!!!

That article also has a photo of RW sitting at the kitchen table of the 'flat in Polruan' in the chapel they were offered - an offer from a kind stranger of accommodation – a flat at the back of an old chapel. That is where I have come today says the journalist.

It looks pretty modest and not the red kitchen of the holiday flat in the picture linked upthread.

ETA the article has been linked a few times but we are on thread 5 now!

in psychotherapy it's called "transference"

There's more than one flat there.

I've just watched the Sophie Rayworth interview for the first time (the 2020 one about The Wild Silence.

I'm struck by just how very convincing Sally Walker is. I'd be completely taken in by her too. And I like to think I'm a relatively cynical person. But knowing what I know now, I can see it's all emotional manipulation. Everything she says is designed to promote an emotional response. There's nothing neutral.

But I did notice she fiddled with her hair and glasses a lot in this interview. At the time you'd put it down to nervousness about appearing on camera for an hour with a big name journalist. Now it looks like a physical 'tell' that she's not being truthful.

I wonder if Tim was initially given the potential CBD diagnosis (in 2015, not 2013), because most people that have CBS symptoms do suffer from CBD, even though there are other illnesses connected with the symptoms.

However, Tim's illness was very mild and indolent, so much so that by 2019 his consultant wondered if he may be suffering from a rarer illness.

From PSPA website: You may have also heard the term “CBS”, which stands for Corticobasal Syndrome. Although CBD and CBS are often used interchangeably, they do mean different things, which can get confusing. CBD is a pathology, the thing that is causing the disease in the brain. CBS is a syndrome which is a collection of symptoms. CBD in the brain can show in life as different diseases in life, but most people diagnosed with CBS have CBD causing it, which is why they are used interchangeably.

I notice the last clinic letter she put on her website was from a north Wales NHS trust.

I guess getting onto such a bind is human and relatable. A partial fib that gains legs, grows and runs away with you leading to more fibs to cover the original.

Very human

It's also a sign of a weak character.

They ought to have been more transparent with their publisher early on, who may have given suggestions to mitigate a future fallout, such as changing the blurb to something like ' a semi autobiographical book' or 'semi fictionalised' ' partially based on true events'

It's not nice to see two people getting a national trouncing like this, though it is deserved.

What do you think they could do to recover some of their public standing from this?

A barefoot interview with a well known TV personality perhaps?

I have asked myself if SW retrofitted the 2015 CBD diagnosis into TSP which she started writing in 2015 on the basis of notes scribbled in the margins of Paddy Dillon's guide to the SWCP. TW may well have been struggling physically in 2013 during the walk, but maybe the diagnosis in Liverpool just days after the court judgement about losing their house, never took place and was "artistic licence". Just speculation on my part. Maybe a definitive 2013 diagnosis of terminal CBD from a specialist in Liverpool will surface in due course.

This seems a common response. Everyone who has met her seems to think she's lovely. The same with Moth. In the Times article about the former neighbours it says: "Griffith Lloyd remembers the couple fondly. The gregarious Moth — whom he knew as Tim — was always willing to lend a helping hand with farm work."

This is one of the interesting elements for me. Most of us think we can tell if someone isn't a very nice person. It feels unsettling that they hid it so well - that they both appeared nice, kind, decent people on the surface.

If they were American, all it might take is a tearful apology, a public appeal for forgiveness to Jesus, and a fresh start at the nearest megachurch. But unfortunately for them, they were cursed to be born in Britain where charlatans and fraudsters aren’t quite so easily forgiven, and the path to redemption is far less theatrical.

I would be reaching out to Bear Grylls - he's already baptised Rusell Brand after all ! They will probably need to move from the UK if they want an easier life. Maybe a restoration of that French ruin is in order.

I know with my neurological condition people often travel a long way to see a neurologist because there aren't many with the specialist knowledge in it. So I am not sure that can be taken as a clue to where they live (and I am not sure we should go looking for such clues, that feels like stalking)

It's my understanding that the end of the first leg was 17th Sept when the son drives them to Bristol. We also have them attending a play further back on the path that could only have happened on the 16th Sept when the play opened.

In the book they say the leg ends at the start of October but we already know about other inconsistencies in the walk timeline to infer they simply did the walk earlier than the book says. Given they met the son in Newquay between 21st and 23rd July (and son said he hadn't seen his parents for 7 months) I think it's fair to believe they then began the walk closer to this date than one Thursday in August (the 6th is the earliest).

In short, I think they visited son and started the walk end of July and finished mid Sept, asking son to drive them to Bristol, not asking for money for a train fare.

Sorry if that probably all sounds a bit confusing to grasp.

I do have an element of sympathy about his illness being picked apart, despite doing it myself.

However, Sally Walker has told the world her husband was diagnosed in 2013 with terminal CBD and that consultants doubted he'd be alive two years later when that's not the case. His diagnosis was 2015, and consultants referred to it as mild and indolent.

She also peddles the idea that walking has reversed CBD, with brain scans showing this, and that's incredibly dangerous and cruel.

Thinking of the people who took hope from this, those who may have overexerted themselves, and those that felt guilt that they weren't doing enough for loved ones goes a long way towards extinguishing my sympathy.