Thread 7: 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

Fourth item in The Observer
‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...

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Thread 6
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Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting.

To all - Please be careful when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with possible visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail.
Keep on the path as we have done together amazingly well for six threads so far. No saltiness. Thank you.

The DM piece adds a few strands to the narrative:

• it torpedoes SW's rebuttal claim that the property was bought in 2007, with a family member, to prevent a land developer buying the plot
• the neighbour who is interviewed in the DM article, indicates that it was a joint project with TW's younger brother, Martyn, to enable them to bond
• The local mayor is adamant that taxes are still owed on the property, refuting SW's claim to the contrary
• the purchase price of the property (a few thousand euros) doesn't seem to explain the Walker's need to embezzle £64k from the Hemmings
• when the Walkers bought the property in the Village du Dropt it had been uninhabited for some time. Although you could pitch a tent on the land, you couldn't really live there. So, in a sense, I think this backs up SW's narrative that they were indeed homeless when they embarked on the SWCP. I don't think decamping to France and pitching a tent on a bramble infested plot in the middle of nowhere was really a viable option for them.

I can sort of understand the reasoning behind poor equipment in book 1, but why wouldn’t she have proper boots by book 3?

In a way this gives them hope. This kind of detail would make me throw the book across the room, but some people seemed to like the book.

GA finding Raynor guarded while JI and Moth get on fabulously fits with Tim being the creative one. Sally is guarded with GA as she is wary of giving herself away as ‘just the mouthpiece’ rather than the writer to an established and reputable actress of several decades. Tim doesn’t have the same concern if the book is largely his writing and storyline anyway. Tim and Jason can build a genuine relationship based on two creatives who ‘get’ each other.

Crumbs, there are so many threads out there, that trying to retrieve those comments is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack! Let me try and do some digging!

True. However the relative's wife "Rebecca" was quoted or paraphrased in the Observer as saying that she recalled her husband said to Ray or Tim, "no relative of mine is going to prison." Something to that effect.

I also think there were court documents describing the purpose of the loan.

Yes, I had similar thoughts yesterday. Just so hard to fathom their decision making.

At one point I thought I had an epiphany but it was a false alarm and I just can't make sense of the finances.

• In 2007 they bought a French ruin by taking out a loan against their house (according to Salray). Why?

• In 2008, Salray had embezzled, by then, a total of £64,000. Why? Was some of this actually used to purchase the French property as opposed to a loan? Or was it used to pay back the loan against their house? Was the rest being saved under a mattress for a rainy day and used to pay back Hemmings the initial theft?

• But then we have a claim that Salray also had 4 credit cards in Timoth's name (according to Tim via wife of relative), likely maxed out. Why?

• And then we have the bizarre loan of £100,000 with 18% interest charged against their home by the relative, which only makes sense out of desperation to pay back Hemmings and avoid criminal charges.

• With Salray now unemployed (though Timoth working till 2013 according to letter) and still with the original mortgage and potential cc debt (assuming the loan only covered the Hemmings fiasco) as well as all living costs, how did life not unravel until the house was repossessed in 2013? It suggests some of the embezzled money remained to live off, perhaps frugally. But why not try to sell the French property sooner than 2013 when they claim to have first enquired about selling it?

Another interesting thread to this video is that Sally says they spent one day with GA/JI and that was all her contact. But that JI had "a lot of follow up calls" with TiMothy to try and make sense of his illness and how he moved and how he coped on the walk...

@Aspanielstolemysanity Yes, that is interesting that they spent the day together. I wonder how suspicious Gillian really was. Sally is so brazen. Also the interviewer says Gillian even looks like you! And Sally totally accepts this, with a straight face. I would say, wow, thank you for the compliment!

Interesting article in the Spectator today. Confabulation is a great word !

Spectator article

And lots of head shaking while she says it too!

I saw this the other day but never picked up on the body language. That's very interesting. Looking down can be a sign of something untrue, or discomfort, shame or guilt. Not always, but in this overall interview context it looks compelling. It's the only time she looks properly down. Other times it's just at the mic. Seems significant.

Is there a way to read this without a subscription?

Was it Go Fund Me? I have always thought that site was used by scammers to take in money that they then don't have to declare. It's just an income stream.

If it was Kickstarter or one of those then there's a different process: you have to be somewhat accountable under the terms of the site. But, that said, people do still default.

It was a Kickstarter.

there is nothing the English like so much as a good disappointment

I think The Spectator has been reading our thread titles!

If you type the website address into the top search box (the red box) on this page, you should be able to read it: archive.ph

She buys new ones and doesn’t break them in properly! Then when she tries to buy new ones, they don’t have her size. I don’t know, I wondered if it was an attempt to create some kind of mini-jeopardy, given that the walk in Landlines was completely optional, and even the most skeptical of their readers must have known that by this time, TSP had sold incredibly well, and there’s no financial need to skimp on food, equipment, accommodation etc. In fact, there’s visibly no ‘need’ for the walk at all, other than as a book subject.

And what were they thinking with the very odd house lottery?

I work in a pretty busy independent bookshop. SP was selling very well when the film launched. Last week, following the media revelations, my managers decided to leave a pile of SP in a prominent place by the till thinking some new sales might be being generated and I deliberately kept an eye on it. A few customers read the blurb on the back. One, who was buying a different book, had a brief chat with me about what they were reading in the papers, but no copies of SP, or Winn's other books, actually sold.

Creative writing about nature or nature-based travel has increased massively over the last few years. The UK's Wainwright Prize is a barometer to that. From 2014-2019 (I think), there was just one award for nature writing. SP was nominated in 2018. The genre has expanded so much that by this year there are now 6 awards, each with separate sets of judges: three for adult's books and three for children's. If I've counted correctly, this year's longlist nominations add up to 35 adult and 34 children's books in total. New and better writers than Walker are emerging all the time. There are now UK Master's degrees (and many other courses) which specialise in nature and travel writing, adding in a new stream of motivated, potential new authors as well.

Regardless of the truth of what she has already written and the outcome of the current publicity, the market for Walker/Winn's work will surely sink. It's already being overtaken.

On a different note, I've seen nothing yet about not-for-sale, advance proof copies of On Winter Hill being available anywhere. Publishers send lots of books out in that format (often with blank, or draft covers) to named reviewers for endorsements to be printed on the covers, and to bookshops and online or print reviewers just to drum up the pre-sale publicity. It could be that PRH had an early-enough heads-up about the initial Observer article that they managed to hold off letting any proof copies leave their control. They will have been aiming for a major pre-Xmas launch with their original October publication date.

Yes, and what stood out to me was only the physical aspect is mentioned, not the psychological and mental aspect of coping with a terminal diagnosis. Seems as if the physical aspect is more important to get right to play a convincing Moth, much like the books (in which we never get any sort of insight into his mental struggle or fears).

Does she explain why they can’t just delay the walk a couple of days to find a shop that sells the right boots?

It could be that PRH had an early-enough heads-up about the initial Observer article that they managed to hold off letting any proof copies leave their control.

That's a good point, if they knew as far back as March.

I wonder when Sally told them.

Here you go:

https://archive.ph/6tpb1

Did anyone else spot that she set up a go fund me page last year to help. Cover the cost of printing the " journals," for her up coming gig with the hurdy gurdy band?

Oh come on. It was Kickstarter, a perfectly legit platform for creative projects. And the 'hurdy gurdy' band are a super-group folk band in their own right, all talented musicians. (I assume you are using 'hurdy gurdy' as a pejorative term here).
It's this kind of lazy assumption and gossip that makes people more sympathetic to the story, tbf (outside of MN!)