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.

Absolutely. How dare a Welsh person have a Welsh accent in...Wales.

He ‘ate a cereal bar and was ready to move on’.

That’s some cereal bar!

It's very hard to understand SW's belief that the people she meets on the walk are in some way prejudiced because they don't suspect that she or Moth are homeless. Surely they are just being perfectly rational?

Most homeless people I have encountered over the years have been located in large towns or cities - close to facilities and often, asking for money from passers by.

I did once meet a homeless pilgrim in a monastery near the Swiss border on the Via Francigena a few years ago, but apart from that I have never knowingly met a homeless person/couple walking with a backpack in nearly 40 years of long distance walking across the UK and Europe.

The simple fact is that most (there are some exceptions like Finding Hildasay) homeless people don't embark on long distance walks!

@GogleddCymru (enw ffab, diolch!) thanks for the tip off on where the Daily Post is updating on this. Still nothing on the website. I had a rootle around the Facebook story reporting on Raymoth's response, and these comments stuck out for me:

"what happened would certainly have taken its toll on Mr Hemmings. He was a lovely man, decent and genuine."

"I worked for Martin and he spoke of the embezzlement many times with a heavy heart, he couldn’t believe why she would steel [sic] from him when he gave her a job and considered them friends, so sad he was a kind and trusting gentleman."

"I agree with you XXX. Nobody ever had a bad word to say about Martin Hemmings. A trusted and very well respected man. I feel for his family."

"He was my cousin and whilst we knew about the theft, not the name of the thief. I was so fond of him. Funny, kind and generous. He was devastated by all this.
I remember the whole of the Llyn Peninsula was at his funeral"

Completely agree about the Group A vs B that's going on in the thread. Some people really really don't want to believe the truth!

And Wales, a country where they’ve apparently lived for 20 years, so it’s not like they’re new arrivals and somehow terribly surprised that people who sound Welsh might live in Wales.

You'd have thought they would have learned a bit during their time there.

ETA Welsh, and the fact Welsh people speak it and have an accent. Mad.

When they were made homeless, what happened to all their furniture and other belongings?

Can you imagine a Welsh person writing about being at a council office in England and being spoken to by a girl with a strong English accent (?)

They learnt the phrase 'Dal dy Dir'!

@TonstantWeader

It's really heartbreaking how they destroyed Martin Hemmings' life.

That is a very good question! If you look at the Escape to the Country video, it would seem that they had a lot of belongings, quite apart from '500 mile walkies'

Yes! My parents (late 70s and early 80s) often go for long hikes. My dad likes to wear his clothes until there's more mend than original at times.

Do you remember the tracksuits with two white stripes down the sleeves and legs? He had a red one. Mum mended it with knitted not-quite-matching patches after he'd worn it with gaping holes for a month or so.
And then there was his shorts that he'd worn to decorate the house and never quite recovered that were a favourite for hiking, although they were better than the skin coloured ones he wore that made him look naked from the waist down from a distance.

They often are not the most rag-taggedy people on the hikes.

In fact the people they tend to roll their eyes over are those with new everything who clearly have bought the latest gear but don't have a clue.

Isn't it, @MrsKypp? And not a shred of a toss in her 'rebuttal' statement. Almost the opposite, in fact.

And how they are willing to sully his memory. So many people have said ‘well he was an estate agent - hardly trustworthy’. Arseholes

And were they homeless? Or were they just on a long holiday between homes

and then to backbite with the bit about mistakes were being made in the business, when he had died and couldn't reply.

Yes.

SW and TW are pure evil.

they say they paid market rent in the offered flat but didn’t need to give references or a deposit. Was the rent coming from his student loan? And can you apply for a student loan without an address?

completely agree. Appalling. I don't want to sound too stalker-y, but Mrs H's page is full of good works such as support for the RNLI Pwllheli and Plas y Rhiw amongst other things. I know who I think is decent and who isn't in all this <gavel>

In a friends barn apparently
"After closing the door for the last time we had two weeks to put our few belongings into a friend’s barn and try to work out what to do next."

This is a good question. I've seen an individual's (keeping anonymous) FB post made in Feb 2015 that said helping Raymoth move was a nightmare because they had so much stuff. It struck me as odd because I thought they were in Poluran from 2014 to 2018. My best guess is they were moving stuff from storage that they'd kept before the repossession. But "loads of stuff" doesn't quite fit with the homeless and penniless vibe.

ETA - the stuff could have been moved from the friend's barn to Poluran... though wasn't it a small one bed flat?

My elderly dad used to run marathons and a fave outfit of his included an old, torn running vest from his first marathon.

He could look a right state in it to be honest but he never used to care what people thought and I don't remember any comments about it really, I think people thought he was just a bit eccentric (which he was)

I guess the bailiffs would have taken anything of worth so not left them with much

Won't anyone think of the powder blue Rayburn????

There seems a mismatch between a complete lack of empathy with people they have wronged or have met on the walk and not approved of and empathy towards generic groups such as the homeless or the rural poor who are living in the shadow of wealthy 2nd home owners or those suffering from disabilities.

Good observation