Thread 6: 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 5 Thread 5: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

NB Please be careful when it comes to naming or implicating people who aren't in the public eye or have no connection to the story, especially where details are unclear or still emerging i.e. DON'T DO IT.

Keep on the path. No saltiness. Thank you.

New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the three Observer articles before posting.

That page from the bbc is also archived in 2012, and it has Tim's picture from back in the day.
archive.ph/9riE

Maybe the journalist was fed wrong information?

I know what you are saying, but I don't like to accuse someone of faking illness unless there is concrete proof.

There has been no terminal diagnosis.

Father was a plasterer according to the tribute on his obituary. Brother who owns the chateau in France is a builder and one of his sons ( the one who isn't a naval architect) is a painter (& decorator)

Just catching up after a week off horribly ill - ahh, real chronic illness is a lot less convenient than the made up kind.

I do think they went for something more obscure than the now tired and oft disbelieved things like Fibromyalgia/ME/CFS, on purpose. Something more devastating and exotic sounding.

I also highly doubt the welsh 'farm' was a farm a la Clarksons - thousand acres or more, or even a 40 acres of hill sheep. I suspect more a 'modest small holding' hobby affair of a few acres.

Real farms, even small intense market garden or fruit production, takes a LOT of work, tight management, hiring regular staff and occasional staff... but Moth wasn't well, and Raynor supposedly doing all this, plus working for the Hemmings, plus looking after Moth, plus looking after B&B guests...

As the kids used to say. Chinny reckon.

Sometimes people do ask questions no-one can answer. It’s allowed!

Old article in the Times with pic of young Raymoth

https://images.app.goo.gl/SBHyqHEsd6HcbLFv8

Fetching tweed/shorts/neckerchief combo.

Breast cancer. My mistake.

Isn't CBS/CBD always "terminal" (as is life itself). The timelines to terminality (6-8 yrs on avg) appear to be important.

Where did you see this? I read the original article she wrote last week and 2 things stood out. 1. The style and content was almost identical to the opening of the published book. 2. There was text at the end that said something like "Raynor Winn's book The Salt Path publishes in 2018."

Now, this is strange only because I've seen interviews with RW where she states The Big Issue piece is what enabled her to find a publisher. So how could TBI have known to include when the book was publishing? More inconsistency.

"But in October 2021, Bill says, Moth surprised him with an announcement. “He put his head in his hands and he said : ‘We went to the hospital this week and I’ve been told not to plan beyond Christmas.’” Bill was horrified. “I just went : ‘Oh my God!’ and gave him a big hug.”
Bill’s friend Richard, who asked us not to use his surname, was present for the conversation. “It was extraordinarily emotional,” he recalls. “Bill was close to tears. Moth also told him he thought he would already be dead if he hadn’t been living on Haye farm.”

"When Winn’s third book, Landlines, was published in September 2022, Bill read how, in the winter of 2021, soon after Moth had finished another long walk, a neurologist told him his brain scan was “normal”, implying that the walk had drastically improved the symptoms of his condition.

The timing in the book seemed to indicate that this was ­happening at around the same time as Bill recalls being told that Moth was dying.
“I was reading it on a train,” Bill recalls, “and I just went : ‘What the hell?’ It just makes no sense whatsoever.”

From the new article in the Observer today. I can't see why Bill Cole would have any reason to make this up?

Yes I'd clocked that and thought it was interesting.

Here

https://www.bigissue.com/culture/film/the-salt-path-raynor-winn-gillian-anderson-jason-isaacs-interview/

I agree. This is the most uncomfortable aspect of The Observer exposé.

I think few posters or reporters are saying his health concerns are completely made up. However there is a great deal of difference between:

a) His being diagnosed at some point with CBS, in a mild, indolent form

and

b) Raynor/Sally writing and saying that he was diagnosed - at exactly the same time they were made homeless and set off on a 600+ mile walk - with CBD, that this was terminal and she expected to lose him in 2 years, that a positive brain scan became a negative brain scan after walking, with Tim/Moth then telling their landlord he had 2 months to live.

Like most other people I wish Tim/Moth well, but I also agree with the CBD charity PSPA that there are many questions to be answered. It would be none of anyone's business if the Walker-Winns hadn't chosen to share and monetarise his health over 3-4 books, numerous interviews, a major film, merchandise and so on.

I know. It does seem he may have fibbed about a terminal diagnosis, but the letters indicate that he has some health issues. At the moment there is no concrete proof that he doesn't.

I am not defending these two! But personally just feeling cautious about this one aspect.

So much shit is thrown at people with disabilities and I don't want to do that, because the letters indicate there is something going on. Even the Observer is being very, very circumspect at the moment.

Very prepared to change my mind if proof comes to light.

I think Moth looks less like His Divine Kempiness when very young, but as the latter was usually pictured under a heavy layer of New Romantic slap at that time, it's hard to tell.😂

(80s guide to make up for both sexes. Apply lots. Then apply more.)

He quite likes himself, doesn't he?

I agree but I think the central issue isn't whether Tim has an illness or not, it's the fact that both he and RW have misrepresented/lied about its severity and timeline to create a best selling book and dupe readers and people like Bill Cole on the way.

Let's agree Tim has CBD, fine. But The Salt Path used this to spin a yarn of a serious terminal illness when so far the earliest evidence they've given is a 2015 letter that tentatively suggests possible MILD CBS. This is not only 2 years AFTER they took the walk of hope, but it's also a mild and atypical form that does not align at all with RW's description of Tim's symptoms and terminal diagnosis or her subsequent desperation in TSP set in 2013. It's a massive inconsistency in the "true" story that was sold to millions as a "true" story.

I agree @DisappointedReader . I wish noone ill health and this conjecture now is about the disparities in what they themselves have said.

Looks more like Nick Heyward to me in that old photo with the tweed and shorts. <shows myself to be a member of the older club>

He looks very 80s album cover & not dressed for any kind of walk. Ray looks far more practical.

Haircut 100 haven't aged as well!

https://haircut100.com/

Why is there this sacredness to questioning a health diagnosis? From the couple that clearly stole tens of thousands of pounds?

(And if you don't think he was in on it, you're a mug. Where was all that money coming from?!)

Now that is very interesting indeed!

I ownder if read about him somewhere and decided he'd have a botany degree too.