Thread 8: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

Well, this has turned out to be slightly longer than the dozen or so replies I expected when I started the first thread!

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

2nd Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

3rd Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

4th Observer
‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...

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husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

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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 extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct 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.

We have done amazingly well together - in the main that is, not mentioning any names but you know who you are! - for seven threads so far. I can't be on the threads as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion ticking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.

No saltiness. Keep to the path. Thank you.

*true north

I don't think SA has translated Beowulf but Seamus Heaney certainly did, SA a big fan of his.

Ah, my bad. The Heaney book being the one Moth carries?

I think taking taxis and using a bag transfer company are highly unlikely given they had no money - which is one of the key pillars of the book!

And I do believe that part.

I think some poetic licence may have been used for timing and the order of events, but that is not unusual.

@Uricon2 Raynor definitely well read/knows poets etc .

There are salt roads. They were important in the Middle Ages when salt was a vital commodity . The Hanseatic League transported salt from Lüneburg in northern Germany and sold it all round the Baltic -all those herring to preserve. The Salt Path for me conjures up the sea and tears. Quite a good title

TBH I don't believe they had no money.

I do. I don't think the entire book is made up.

I would probably think so. It is an odd thing to be lugging around when you're carrying everything on your back, but perhaps he loves Anglo Saxon poetry.

It's Heaney's translation of Beowulf that Moth is carrying.

Raynor says he's apparently carried it on every trip for years, though it's never clear why. Does he have a particular devotion to Beowulf? Or to Heaney? Though Moth doesn't seem particularly moved or perturbed when he's told that Heaney has died two weeks earlier, when he reads from Beowulf in St Ives.

Actually, that offers the possibility of a bit of internal dating between the Walkers' and SA's walks.

Simon Armitage starts his walk at Minehead on August 29th. He discovers Heaney, whom he knew well and was very fond of, has just died, when someone from the BBC calls him for a quote on August 30th, when he's on the leg between Porlock Weird and Lynton.

Moth is told by one of the people listening to him read from Beowulf in St Ives, that Heaney died 'two weeks' earlier, and they notice a poster for Simon Armitage's St Ives reading 'on Sunday', which happens (acc SA on September 15th),

Thats the thing isn't it - they've told so many significant lies that it's hard to believe anything.

Unless there is irrefutable evidence that they were somewhere else, doing something else when they claim to be walking the SWCP, I can't see how it would be possible to prove anything or how much they actually walked?

It just comes down to their word against other people's opinions and speculation about whether they were physically able/likely to have completed it all.

Or am I missing something?

Depends what you mean by 'no money'.

I believe that if they had access to cash beyond tax credits, it was borrowed.

I'm not saying it's all made up and I'm not saying they were flush either. But when some things are in doubt, it opens the way to put many more things under scrutiny....

I posted the below on the previous thread which may help explain my position regarding their penury.

My hunch is that they weren't as penniless as they claimed. We already know the house loss and Tim's illness are based on alternative truths or exaggerated. So why should we believe they had an empty bank account and no belongings of value?

The penniless aspect hasn't really been scrutinised here. The book conveniently gets around it by claiming all of their savings went into legal fees. Only then do they represent themselves which is what causes them to not follow due procedure with the shining white letter of truth.

But given what we now know about the court action, is it plausible they spent all their life savings on legal fees across 2 to 3 years to stop being sued? I'm not a legal expert but is it possible to stall litigation when you are being sued for a debt that is demonstrably something you signed up for?

Meanwhile, as I mentioned in a previous post, it's become evident they moved "loads of stuff" in 2015...stuff which most likely was the contents of their repossessed house. In short, I don't buy they were penniless.

I could be wrong, of course. But doubt exists.

On the money, I think fair to say on their uppers. They don’t budget well & blow money on things when they get their benefit. How they can fuel up on such meagre & non nutrient dense rations is very odd especially as Moth ill. Someone does say on Reddit thread they’re out by a few pence on price of Cadbury’s fudge :)

I live in Cheshire and there's a saltline trail, old railway track, close to me. It's gorgeous to walk and full of wildlife. A corridor of wilderness.

I have walked the SWCP, and nobody in their right mind would have wanted to go anywhere near my socks.

Even I didn't like touching them.

Thank you for detail & clarification. The dates do feel slightly off? Beowulf clearly a money spinner, maybe earns its place in Moth’s rucksack…(?) :)

If that's the case then it's another inconsistency because they were driven to Bristol on the 17th Sept.

@AldoGordo, I wouldn't necessarily see the trip to Bristol as necessarily indicating a two-week discrepancy, only that their son picked them up (does it say from where?) and drove them there.

It's possible, isn't it, that being picked up by their adult son and driven to Bristol (do we know why and for how long?), just completely undercuts the narrative that they're penniless, alone in the world and desperately hiking the SWCP because they have no other choice.

This makes it look like a much more casual, 'Let's do a long-distance path as a cheap holiday, like we used to do in Scotland before the kids, and break off to go to Bristol for the weekend' thing, not a desperate bit of survivalism and brave railing against fate.

If they'd leaned less into the 'absolutely no choice, penniless and homeless' thing, they could have just said they took a break off the path for a weekend, and it was lovely to be clean and under a roof again.

Sections of the SWCP are undoubtedly very tough, even for an able bodied person. When they reached Portheras Cove SW says that they had walked 243 miles and slept wild for 36 nights. That means that they were averaging 6.5 miles a day. They seem to have spent a large amount of time sleeping or holed up in their tent. So I'm not sure how many calories they needed each day. Certainly Moth had lost weight (described during the incident when he runs up the beach holding the erected tent above his head). But I wonder how many calories they needed to consume each day. Maybe they could get by on noodles the odd pasty and a finger of fudge as described in TSP..

Actually, he hasn't mentioned socks or passing them around at all in what I've skimmed of his SWCP book -- maybe that was just for his Pennine Way walk?

I think he specified in Walking Home that it was an unworn, clean sock, that he thought it was just more private than putting money visibly in a hat!

ETA I'm wrong, the donations sock also accompanies him on the SWCP.

More important than his painkilling meds that were left behind? Though I can see that striking a chord with their audience. Poetry turns out to be more restorative than evil Western medicine etc.

@sualipa I found the "Chat" Simon Armitage ode profound and moving. Damned AI! I must be hormonal

It's true, it's possible they went to Bristol, had a rest and then gone back to the path. But is that realistic? It's an awfully long way away and it's a big ask to get their son to drive 3.5 hours there from Newquay, simply drop them off and drive 3.5 hours back to Newquay (the post said it was a Newquay to Bristol round trip...i assume he picked them up from wherever they were.) I think it's far more likely that this is when they stopped the 1st leg and they asked the son for train money. In which case, there is at least a 2 week discrepancy.

Or pinched