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
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5372494-thread-6-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

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.

@Redheadedstepchild
Hmmmm... Maybe they throw one egg at the window of someone they don't like, then disappear without a trace.
The Mystery of the One Missing Egg
I've lost interest in the Salt Path

@outofofficeagain When you click on it, it comes up with your name as having shared it!!

I've reported your post.

A lot of thought's gone into that image. I wonder how different it would all have been if he’d looked like Roy from Coronation Street?

Thank you for this sentence @WynkenDeWorde , so much 😂

From looking at the early years picture of Raymoth, I do get a New Romantic sensibility. It wasn't all dandy highwaymen and floppy shirts, there was always a bit of what we'd now call a fogeyish style element with the boys even when not in their natural environment, ie a nightclub. Ancient tweeds, tie as a belt ala Fred Astaire, that sort of thing

I think he's found something that works for him and he's stuck with it for decades. He looks good and I agree, Roy from Corrie would have been far less magnetic.

The brother probably didn't want the property sold either so perhaps feigned ignorance of Tim's whereabouts if he had been approached. Or the mayor simply didn't know they were related even though they are both Walkers. It's an ongoing mystery

@outofofficeagain I've reported because your name is showing on the share in case you don't see this quickly.

It does look like a very interesting article and thanks.

In the released photos he does look universally dapper. He was very good looking as a young man & that slightly van (?) type too usually got through the girls leaving heartbreak at 18 in school etc. Or had a girlfriend who was also styled up like Banana Rama or similar.

Also love the Roy comment! No anoraks for Moth! :)

*vain not van!

I had a poke around on a hiking Reddit, which was being quite technical about whether people thought the Winns had genuinely walked the SWCP or not.

It featured a lot of unexpectedly fun insights into fake hikers, including a link to Youtube videos by someone who claimed to be the first teenager to solo hike Land's End to John O'Groats (which among those in the know is known by the acronym LEJOG, which tickles me). The Reddit thread is full of hilarious nuggets about how this kid's hair remains freshly cut throughout the 39 days he supposedly hiked, his blinding white runners and socks remain blinding white (yes, he's not even wearing hiking boots), he never mentions route, food or equipment, his rucksack moves like it's stuffed with newspaper when he lifts an arm, and he is apparently is walking in the wrong direction (away from John O'Groats) in several videos.

(The hikers of Reddit conclude that he walked and camped for a night or two, then gave up, drove the route and periodically got out of the car to take photos and film whenever there was an appropriately lonely and scenic-looking background, generally near a main road or stopping point. Apparently there's one video where he talks about not having seen anyone for the whole day's hike, it's so remote, but there's actually a busy car park just off the A82 just out of shot. 😀)

Back to the Winns and the SWCP, while I'd certainly always assumed they had walked most of the path, several commenters on that Reddit, several of whom have walked the SWCP, find hardest to swallow that two people, even fit and well, could walk the whole thing on the inadequate diet RW says they ate, or to credit so many people being terribly surprised that 'old' people are long-distance hiking, as so many ramblers/LD walkers are middle-aged that it wouldn't strike anyone as all that unusual.

But surely there are less breakable and flatter objects to hoick up your sleeve or tuck down a crevice than a raw egg? That would provide a complete meal without any cooking?

A certified vegan protein bar?

Just off the top of my head.

General consensus is that a lot of 'A Time of Gifts', was entirely fabricated. Same story for another travelogue classic - In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin (cf his biography by Nicholas Shakespeare)

Here's what @outofoffice posted, an interesting article about what Sally Walker said about the loan and how that corresponds with reality.

https://jackburgoyne.substack.com/p/the-salt-path-investments-and-debt

Thanks everyone!

She writes reasonably well I think, but I do wonder if we’ve forgotten what really good writing looks like. Only set to get worse as no one really reads widely anymore. It’s all about the ‘feels’ though nowadays.

So people who smelt a rat

hikers
anyone who knows anything about finance
psychologists
people from cornwall
eta people with experience of life limiting illness

people who didn’t smell a rat

agents and publishers

I don’t think she’s a great writer and not award worthy but she’s not terrible

At the moment I am going through a Japanese fiction phase and the writing is quite sparse but effective

Have you got any further details about A Time of Gifts?

I can't find anything in an (albeit cursory) look on the internet that references anything at all about it.

To add to people who didn't smell a rat
-.anyone in the media (source:.endless breathlessly credulous newspaper and TV interviews with the WalkerWinns)

Raymoth had a go at Cider Farm owner for being a city slicker never getting his hands dirty. Moth however doesn’t dress like a gardener & doesn’t look like he has the calloused, working hands they revere.

Was there any follow up on the questions that excellent article posed?

People who probably smelt a rat
Extended family eg nephew
Residents of Pwllheli
Gillian Anderson and film team
Health charity
Cider guy

I've finally caught up (but missed a big chunk of thread 6!)

I haven't read the book, will do a charity shop trawl and find a copy to flick through though.

As my username kind of suggests, I live very near the SWCP, I was on the beach/SWCP earlier, it was a very low tide so the walkers were out in force, most of them are older and a bit dishevelled and many are carrying tents, I don't recognise the looking down on those like Raymoth that is suggests, these communities are used to and welcoming of those walking the coast.

Well, this has encouraged me to replace my copies of Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" and "The Road to Wigan Pier". I've "lent" so many over the years.

I'm sure some of his accounts were exaggerated/ concertinaed a bit. He had a soft middle class landing when he needed it. He was, as a previous poster said, rather a misogynistic wanker IRL. The quality of the writing though and the basic sentiments are pure gold and much has the ring of absolute truth, even at a many decades remove.

I also don't think he was an embezzler or invoked terminal diagnoses to sell books (even when he was actually dying young)

I’m not sure the charity did and cider guy definitely didn’t

(I meant when reading the book - cider guy was clearly taken in)

And Emmaus by the sound of things - it's very unusual for someone to only be a trustee for a few months