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

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?

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

Either way, it was a paid job.

Only if the rebuttal was complete and fully backed by watertight evidence I would have thought. If the journalists have more information then that will come out whether it's this Sunday or some other time in the near future.

It'll be the, "Oh hell, we've had to go to France!" report. They've obviously got in person footage of the now infamous pigeon tower, which I have studied almost forensically.

The camera pans slightly to the left, presumably where the actual dwelling is, then cuts out.

Ros Hemmings is doubling down in the Times
https://archive.ph/g3sOO

Sitting at an outhouse on his neighbouring farm this week, John Griffith Lloyd, 75, reminisced about his former friends. “Are they still on the run?” he said.

🤣 John obviously hasn't been reading the news. Mind you Sally and Tim made pretty rubbish fugitives considering they've put themselves squarely in the public eye over the last few years.

Mea culpas and cop outs

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/the-salt-path-authors-apology-is-a-classic-of-the-genre-3799096?fbclid=IwY2xjawLeIvNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHli2xDztv614dlNnOn-MijtjIuCOIU5GKymRI7iuqDrHs4lKmZncIGxMv2B8_aem_1P2EG4PkkQlY14zZIweWzQ

Is this their house in Wales featured in Escape to the country? 🧐

I think she emerges as an unhappy, isolated, rather tormented person in The Wild silence, certainly, though whether you'd put that down to a MH crisis, guilt at past misdeeds, worry about Moth's condition, fear that the omissions and half-truths of TSP would catch up with them after it was published, I don't know.

What always interested me about TSP is how angry, bitter, self-righteous and emotionally untidy it was (compared to say, other recent high-profile nature-ish memoirs like H is for Hawk and The Outrun). It's just such a misanthropic book! With a few exceptions, other people are almost all awful. Which could of course be projection, or self-justification. Maybe one of the things that interests me about the Observer allegations and RW's 'rebuttal' is that being able to fill in some of the omissions actually makes way more sense of the first two books.

She ascribes so much to her longing to hide away and commune with nature, and to this being a lifelong thing, but in fact it never seems to make her particularly contented. It seems more like the self-soothing of someone who can't cope well with other people. Or for whom it's easier to think other people can't be trusted than to look too hard at her own decisions.

Wow - so they really did go on the run!! Leaving a note in their car saying how unfair it all was

wonder why she lost her job at the hotel?

I can help out somewhat here as I posted about this in thread 3 or 4. We have no info on when or why he left this job. But the 2015 medical letter says that he was able to ‘continue working, while contending with his symptoms until a couple of years ago’.

The inference being he was by 2013 too ill to work. Or that’s what he told the dr. But he was not too ill to walk the SWCP and wild camp for months on end. But there was no mention of benefits or disability payments in TSP and they seem to be penniless walkers.

I don’t know much about what benefits they may have been entitled to but I suspect some are means tested. My theory is that as they realised the charge on the house could be called in and that they could lose it, they tried to sell it for a high price ( it was on Escape to the Country at £435k) which would have cleared the mortgage and charge and left them £100k leftover for living. Plus the mortgage of £230k may have been because they remortgaged at some point while both were working to extract the funds in case they needed to walk away from the house (they knew Sally was embezzling from her employer long before the employer did.). Perhaps they didn’t claim benefits because they had £200k in a savings account. Which they were able to keep because they didn’t declare bankruptcy.

This is from way back now, but I've only just caught up on Thread 4.

@HolyPond "(I’m assuming that the farmhouse looks nice now because the Walkers renovated it, as described in TWS, not that they were lying about it originally being in a bad state…?)"

I wouldn't assume that at all!! 😁

Also, @sualipa Bill Cole comes across as a pretty nice family man who's actively involved in his cider farm business. Obviously haven't met him but not sure we should be slurring him.

You recall roughly when this was on Today? I've been trying to keep up with this but struggling! I'd like to listen

Hell Fire. That really is doubling down.

Gosh, this really isn't dying down like they hope.

It was just before it ended so around 8.55am

Her bookkeeping job, no less...

Makes you think!!!

Well. That's quite some reading. Thankyou.

Plus the sudden move to wales put down to their kid getting out of the house

Rather than being neglectful parenting perhaps they had the same issue and had to run away

running away seems to be their MO so maybe they will disappear off to australia

Ros is a hero. ❤️

You assume she really had a job at a hotel in Abersoch. Perhaps they knew there was a job going at Hemmings and Moth invented a sob story to help her get it. It seems to be their MO.

“The Walkers, who had two young children, Rowan and Tristan, took odd jobs for work. They drove an SUV, converted a cowshed on the property into a holiday let and bought a patch of land in France in 2007.
Tim did plastering and building jobs, while also working as a gardener at Plas yn Rhiw, a National Trust property. It was here that he came to know Hemmings, who was then also an employee.
“He came into work one day and said his wife had lost her job as a bookkeeper at a hotel in Abersoch and he was a bit worried,” Hemmings said.
Coincidentally, the bookkeeper at the surveying and estate agency run by her husband, Martin, in Pwllheli had recently retired. Sally Walker was given a part-time job. “She was very, very pleasant,” Hemmings said.”

Interesting that the book had been the talk of the town but she chose to keep a dignified silence

also interesting the bailiffs turned up just after they did their flit

i reckon the document trail from ‘cooper’ is going to be very clear

I feel sorry for their children. It must be grim reading about your parents being thieves and liars.

Oooh, good spot.

I think the Times was wrong to name them.

Would think this article would be one of the final nails in their coffin.

If more to follow from the Observer, then in a rational world with a moral compass, game over for the post modern equivalent of Bonnie and Clyde.

But in a dystopian Philip.K.Dick world (Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall etc) who knows!