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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Thread 4 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5370609-thread-4-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

One thing is for sure. The past and their misdemeanours are definitely catching up with them as they normally do.

I'm just surprised it's taken this long.

Whilst I completely accept she/they would never have imagined that they would have gained this traction and notoriety from writing the first book and then subsequent ones, it's always very ill advised to write any form of article whether a magazine or similar (let alone a book) and lie about embezzlement and the root cause of your homelessness as there are people who can correct this key fact quite easily. As indeed they are now doing.

There's a huge degree of arrogance in thinking that the financial trail of bounced cheques, financial fraud, unpaid bills etc are not going to catch up with you.

Then the media marketing and personal appearances where you can be easily recognised and "boom" it was always going to implode.

It's an established cider maker, the owner also owns a distillery https://www.hayefarmcider.co.uk

The farm has produced some cider - the brand is Haye Farm Cider, their Instagram shows them with a stall at LostFest (a small local festival) for example. But it’s clearly a very very small operation, their brand has very little presence locally which is notably different from other local cider producers here.

The cider IS sold locally. I've shared the Haye Cider Farm instagram account before which includes shots of the cider bottled, labelled and up for sale, including at Great Cornish Food, a foodhall in Newquay. Additionally, he could be selling it into other markets than local where there is already a lot of cider available.

Not sure why posters are speculating over Bill Cole and his business, to me it seems he just had the misfortune of crossing 'paths' with our pair of fraudsters.

https://www.instagram.com/hayefarmcider/

Why postpone when you can pivot? I feel Penguin are missing a trick.

Totally off-topic, but I’d love to go there one day!

I’ve even done them a blurb to go with it.

Agreed. And from filmed interviews I've seen, whenever she answers questions around her favourite part of the walk, it's very much the same generic response: "the imposing cliffs, the wildness, and the taste of salt"...always the salt. Much of the time her responses are simply regurgitating the book verbatim, especially the metaphor about starting out as jagged rocks and by the end they've become smooth, sea-worn pebbles.

@OurSal Queen of all the threads! 👑😍🤣

This reminds me of the past catching up/‘economic tsunami’ of the ‘ Izzy’ book/s plot.

My point about the cider farm is more that the owner had a huge opportunity to make his cider brand very visible thanks to the TSP connection. Why didn’t he?

Hilarious!

Also @Fandango52 plus one re the Minack. Very lovely by all accounts!

Re the memory of the theatre evening. At this point I'm assuming everything from Raymoth is fabricated or at least untrustworthy, however... from the Regents Park open air theatre performance I went to one of the things I recalled most was the fireflies dancing as the sun set...maybe I need to write The Grand Union Canal Path 😂

One of the reasons I find this so riveting is because we bought a ruin in France, at the edge of the Vercors plateau near the Italian border, in 2002. Ours had a new roof (for quick sale), but the old one had collapsed inside and was still there, along with the rotten remains of the floors and staircases. We had never done up a house before, but with the help of friends and neighbours we removed all the rotten wood from inside so that we had an empty two-storey stone box with a roof. The next year, with the help of a friend, we installed an upstairs floor and a staircase (€100 from Brico Dépot). And then, every summer, in the school holidays, we went out and fixed a bit more of it. Our kids were aged 8-10 during the time we did it, and they helped us a bit, played with the local kids, and got good at French. Now fast forward to the 2008 financial crisis, and we lost our UK equity because we were over-mortgaged, and because my work - writing modern language text books (see post elsewhere) - had collapsed when modern languages were removed from the GCSE curriculum in 2004. We didn't have the house (re-)possessed, but we sold it for exactly what the UK mortgage was ('you leave with nothing - except a French almost-ruin'). We then rented in the UK for a few years, but it was nuts to pay rent when we couldn't really afford it and owned a property outright that we could move into, albeit not really habitable. So in 2013 (coincidence!) we finally moved out here and moved into the only-just-not-ruin. The electricity was connected a few days after we arrived, but there are still quite a few things that we never got round to doing, because once you live somewhere you get used to it, warts and all. We paid £25K for the house in 2002, and it represents our entire equity, although it is obviously now worth more (not that much though - property price inflation in France is extremely slow). I offer this story simply as a means of pointing out that, when one is down on one's uppers and has nowhere to go, there is another way forward...

I think I've sussed out the owner of the adjacent property to TW and SW's property in the Village du Dropt.

I believe he is Martyn A Walker (b 1961) in Burton on Trent. His linkedin profile says he went to Wulfric Comprehensive in Staffordshire in 1973-8 which would make him the right age. He moved to Nouvelle Acquitaine in 2007 (the same time TW bought the property in the Village du Dropt) and is currently restoring a chateau. He also describes himself as an author and had his only book (Stopcock) published in 2012. And I believe he is also the uncle of the naval architect (James E Walker) who works in Southampton and posted the rather unflattering comment about his uncle and aunt (TW and SW) on LI.

Amazon.co.uk: Martyn Walker: books, biography, latest update

I don't think it can be - the article is 2018 and didn't the relative/uncle die in 2016?

They already tried that with the ‘How not to Dal Dy Dir’ by Izzy Wyn-something, which they self-published as part of their attempt to raffle off the house on which they already owed a mortgage and a loan of £100k (plus 18% interest) and it didn’t sell well! They needed the hook of it being ‘unflinchingly honest’.

I’m interested in the summary of that book from Goodreads that someone posted on this thread. The walk mentioned sounds very similar to some of Landlines (or maybe the new novel about walking the cross pennine way?). But both of those are supposed to have taken place more recently, after the Salt Path events, aren’t they? So is she clairvoyant? Or did they hike those paths in the 2000s, long before Moth’s claimed diagnosis and the house loss? Or could it all be made up entirely?

Edit - actually I’m not sure where I read that the novel describes a hike - just rechecked Goodreads and DM and neither mention! I may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick about that.

He does mention Rick Stein.

3rd November 2023

Haye ho!
Further to our update earlier in the year, we are delighted to update, and with Bonfire Night just around the corner, to make a bit of noise about our cider feels entirely appropriate! As you can imagine, it was a quality problem receiving a lot of interest in Haye Farm Cider following Rick Stein’s brilliant flag waving.
Of course, we were hoping to have cider before now but as traditional cider makers, we can’t just turn on the cider tap at will. However, the good news is that since the wonderful exposure on Rick Stein, we are pleased to report that we have now bottled our 2022 vintage and have started stocking local shops on the farm. This will grow but initially, we are delighted to be in the following:

Not sure why posters are speculating over Bill Cole and his business, to me it seems he just had the misfortune of crossing 'paths' with our pair of fraudsters.

I agree - sorry I wasn’t sure what a ‘tax advantaged business’ was - I thought maybe it was land held to avoid death duties without anything actually happening on it, but I’m pleased to be proved wrong.

Bravo. I think I found earlier in the week that Martyn is the father of the naval architect James Walker, but i could be wrong so will check that.

yes, apologies, Martyn is indeed the father of the naval architect

Fantastic work journalists would be mad not to draw on your excellent sleuthing, no matter what some people on the threads have said about Mumsnet as a source!

@MyGodMyThighs

My point about the cider farm is more that the owner had a huge opportunity to make his cider brand very visible thanks to the TSP connection. Why didn’t he?

Many reasons spring to mind. He's successful in his own right and may not have needed or wanted to. Their marketing focuses on the cider farm's 800 year history, something which SW refers to herself (describing it as history in a glass).

They also felt out after the initial charming, he may have had doubts. She may have pressed (no pun intended) early on for a reciprocal promotion deal or asked for a large fee – she charged Crisis an apparently hefty appearance fee for a TSP book reading! – and generally made him uncomfortable. Or set his 'are these grifters' radar off, something that may happen a lot sooner when you're in regular close contact.