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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Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

Yes, she'll probably take the Gregggggg Wallace defence.

I hadn’t considered that angle, but it’s very true. Their lives must have been completely upended, and I can’t even begin to imagine what that feels like. The few times in my own life when I’ve experienced shame and humiliation—albeit many years ago I remember feeling as though there was no hope, and life seemed both pointless and crushingly oppressive and that emotional weight can be overwhelming, even without the glare of public scrutiny.

ETA: this started off as about the state of the house on the farm owned by city trader, but helps slightly with dates because there's a reference to TSP going into paperback (seemingly spring of 2019). They seem to have been paying rent on the farm since the previous October, when they start working on the house, but didn't move in till 2019.

@AldoGordo, from what RW says in TWS, the farm owner (named as 'Sam', with soft hands and wearing designer sunglasses) on their first meeting says no one has understood his vision for the place (implying he's had other, previous tenants that have not worked out? there's also a reference to the previous tenant's livestock) and would they like to come and live there and 'put nature back into this battered landscape' and 'wildlife back into its hedgerows' -- would they manage his vision for the place, which is a 'biodiverse farm that still keeps a few sheep and makes cider, but puts nature first.'

RW represents her first response as being mistrust. 'We would need to put the past behind us, walk away from the memory of where trust had led us before.' The reason 'Sam' doesn't move there himself is because first his wife had cancer and then his children were doing school exams and too happy and settled in London.

The house has apparently only been uninhabited for a period of months, because 'Sam' had planned to sell the farm, but it's apparently in terrible, uninhabitable condition, with pools of standing water on the floors, serious mould, mice, and a dangerous heating stove. And then someone vandalises it before they can move in.

It's not clear to me why they are paying 'Sam' rent for an uninhabitable house (there's no reference to cider being made at this point). At this point they seem to be living on TSP's advance.

They start working on the house in October but say they won't be moving in till after Christmas, and then in February RW says TSP is about to go into paperback (which was in 2019), meaning she has lots of demands on her time, and Moth is talking about 'being in no position to buy livestock' and how they need to tell 'Sam' that they can't farm the land themselves, only come up with a rewilding plan, the orchards and cider-making. He wants to go with R to her book events and also to do another walk (which is the Iceland walk).

Celebitchy is obviusly a banned url !

@sualipa I've been trying to work out what your take on all this is, as your posts are intriguing. Having just had a quick glance at your previous posting history, I can't help but wonder.

www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20r4p55vdvo

Unbelievable that Penguin is doubling down on supporting them. It just makes them look complicit (which I guess they are at this stage).

@sualipa Pro AI tools can now ingest the raw data from sprawling online threads and attempt to make sense of the noise offering summaries and surfacing key patterns. 😂I think you might have just given yourself away

I think she does sound like a fairly troubled individual, even if you think purely of the way she presents herself in The Wild Silence in particular. While Moth is studying she lives reclusively in the flat in Polruan, to the point where locals don't recognise her after she's been living there over a year. She's not working, not seeing anyone, not talking to anyone but her husband and children. You'd call her agoraphobic if it weren't for the fact that she's fine in open spaces without people, she's insomniac, and she sounds profoundly depressed, alienated and isolated.

I think I was surprised when I first read it that she wasn't happier with the immediate success of TSP (because there's no fizz of pleasure and delight of the kind you'd expect from a first-time author whose book is selling, getting good reviews, winning prizes etc) but it would make more sense if you see her as profoundly uneasy about the success of a book of 'massaged' half-truths and omissions. I mean, every time she did an event, she must have been worried about contradicting herself.

Bookmarking :)

I think they’ll ride this out & many will continue to identify & empathise with Raymoth (who will make ££). However, IF they are guilty of more than ‘just’ embezzlement in time this may come out & success may not be sweet. Understatement. If essentially ‘nothing to see here’ & people exaggerating any unpleasantness plus. All will pass.

I've gone right back on the Haye Farm Insta and it seems cider was being produced there in 2017/18/19. They were (and it seems still are) in collboration with Colwith Farm who make Smuggled in Cornwall gin (it and the cider sound lovely)

A couple of posts from slightly after that period do look as if some hedging/rewilding work is going on but I really question exactly how much Raymoth had to do with the brewing side.

Am I the only one my person in the world who’d completely missed the book, the film, articles, interviews…?

I'm just along for the ride. I don’t think they’re evil, but they’re certainly disreputable, and I find the whole media circus fascinating. I also happen to have too much time on my hands. As I’ve said before, I haven’t read their booksnor do I particularly want to or watched the movie. That said, I might soften on that, given that I’m now tangentially invested. I enjoy using my research skills to add substance to the conversation, so others can digest it and share their opinions. It keeps my mind engaged and distracted from more serious matters.

If I’m being honest, it’s a bit like watching bank heist movies where you end up rooting for the protagonists to get away with it. It brings out that inner spoiled child in fact, when I was a kid watching Scooby-Doo, I was always secretly disappointed when the gang caught the wrongdoers. In real life, of course, I’m scrupulously honest and fair-minded with my friends and family.

I also find everyone’s contributions fascinating, insightful, and dare I say it moral, which is a lesson well worth learning.

And for the record, this isn’t like the Nicola Bulley threads, which I found deeply distasteful and frankly disgusting. There’s nothing more to it than that I have no connection to them, no agenda, and no interest beyond what I express in the threads.

Sally is the author of her own misfortune (pun intended) so nothing like the Nicola bulley thread

Moth " um, no, not at all. I know we, we like so many folks, we enjoy reading and we thoroughly enjoy taking books and stories apart and trying, you know, to express our feelings and you know and just discuss a very good story but no not that she could write. No completely surprised me"

From the interview with Raworth on YouTube, right at the end.

I reckon there's more to who's the author.
Who set up the Walker's original publishing house, Moth was the senior figure in that.
MothTim gets to be the hero all the way through.

Advantages to RaynorSally being the named author. Could be a tax thing, could be Simon Armitage had already nabbed the man writing about the SWCP slot.

Raynor is not a natural public speaker, even after many years of The Salt Path being rehashed, is she trying to keep the story straight, guarded with Gillian. Moth on the rare occasion he does speak is faster, more to the point, charming to Jeremey Isaacs.

The other point I note is that in every interview, when asked about Moth he's generally 'very well, this evening' or some other very short term timespan. There's never ' he's had a good run recently, or this summer has been amazing or even comments about a bad few months. Or maybe I'm just cherry picking the couple of interviews.

So is Moth in hiding most of the time for fear of being rumbled. Does he go to the local gym? Lead local walking groups? What does Moth do? Is he busy googling and writing whilst Raynor's off at book festivals and touring.

For the record all these posts are my own work if you can call them "work" !

Thanks for that summary! I'd be really interested to know if they mention having been or never been to Iceland before because RW's instagram account shows them there in Feb 2017 for at least 10 days between posts, which is clearly 2 years before what TWS suggests.

We've just been away from Cornwall for 10 days and my garden has quite successfully re-wilded itself in my absence.
My neighbour embraced 'no-mow May' and what was a garden football pitch now looks like a long established meadow.

This whole re-wilding thing ain't hard around here.

I’m a little confused by rewilding

if somewhere has been pretty much abandoned wouldn’t it naturally rewilding itself? So did it really need them?

Plot twist: Raynor turns on Moth and admits he wrote the books, he is the covert narcissist in the relationship and she felt she had to go along with him. Turns out she's also a victim of his schemes and plans.
Etc etc

@sualipa and others have mentioned the late and very great John Diamond. I followed his work for a long time including the period where he had cancer.

Some years later, my late DH had a head and neck cancer, not identical to his but some of the treatment was the same. I often thought about JD and his brilliant, brave (although he'd have hated to be called that) unselfpitying account. He told the truth and I was deeply grateful to him for it, especially the lack of false positivity. It's the difference between real and inauthentic and it comes from honesty.

It's also thanks to him that I knew you can put alcohol through a PEG feed which helped one night when nothing else was working.

(I know it doesn't sound like I have much luck with health husbandwise, but it's OK. They were and are great blokes)

I hear you. But I'm not meaning following up in terms of digging deeper as an investigation. I know proper follow-ups take time. I'm also a journalist as it happens. What I mean is that simple pieces of evidence that could be brought up in the general coverage, such as the diagnosis date discrepancy, have not been touched on. I think it's extraordinary. Yes, its not hard evidence, but it's as valid to raise as what the Observer did with approaching 9 neurology consultants to seek their opinion on a man's health they've never examined personally.

I think if there has been heavy use of chemicals, ripping out hedges, etc it can take a while but I get what you mean. I'm just not sure Haye Farm and its environs fitted that bill at the point they were there, but I could be wrong.

If Raymoth end up blaming "the caretaker" we'll know where it came from!