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.

I suspect this is for the birds, but my jaw-drop whistleblower would be a jaded doc, just retired or changed careers, so willing to be struck off for breaching confidentiality, but is taking a moment to treble-check their legal position regarding it being a public interest exception to prevent further harm to others. Or somesuch.

Maybe for release on 23rd October 🤔.

As official Fudge correspondent I happen to have googled know that there are 98 calories per bar. So if that really was their main diet then not many would be my guess.

That would be gold! But I think a medic would be unlikely. My money’s on a relative spilling more tea.

Thank you fudge correspondent! Indeed, not many. I know have the ear worm ‘a finger of fudge is just enough…’. For those who recall.

I think relatives too. I have the feeling the trail of destruction didn't start with Ros and Martin Hemmimgs.

I’m hoping her former employer at the abersoch hotel

or someone who knows why they fled to Wales in the first place

Because it is not the real world, but seems to be one woman's perception of it.

From Psychology Today (2021)

• Stranger homicide is extremely rare.
• Young men are more at risk than women of being murdered by a stranger.
• Women are far more likely to be murdered by man known to them—a family member, friend or intimate partner—than a stranger.

So it is a shame, if that book is being marketed that it is unsafe for women to go out alone walking. I probably have greater odds in being flattened by a car on the way home than I have of being murdered... Does that mean at every road junction I should be overcome with anxiety, not leave the house, etc. I can now see why youngsters have such terrible mental health if they are give such fear mongering books to read...

Just listened to this - I was a bit surprised how confident one of them was that Penguin would not be affected by this scandal, and that the Walker/Wynns would be the only ones to experience "reputational damage". Penguin might well continue merrily spinning money out of the books, but I would suggest that they have also suffered reputational damage.

It just seems a bit easy for publishers to say 'well the author signed a contract, how were we to know?' and wash their hands of any responsibility.

If you had been the editor/s looking at this book, wouldn't you have asked a few basic questions about how the couple 'lost their house', and how come they were apparently completely penniless, with nobody to help them, and wouldn't you have asked (tactfully of course) for a few details about Moth's diagnosis? These clarifications need not have been included in the book, but the publisher surely would have wanted to be satisfied that the basic premises of the story were true?

@SpookyMcTaggart you would be suprised how many people don’t even register the money and business people behind the ‘artists/authors etc . I do think this authors reputation is somewhat trashed - Penguin? Not so much .

Not sure, but I began (slowly when I can be bothered) working out their route and daily mileage and the recommended time it would take per day...I was intrigued to find some early days (not the first, which was about 8 miles) take only around 2 hours for an average walker (not Walker) based on Google estimates on the SWCP. So they seemed to be very slow indeed, given they had "nothing else to do" and had considerable daylight in August. And probably didn't need many calories for minimal distances. I say this with the caveat that I've not looked into the accuracy of googles time estimstes or cross-refernced them with difficulty/exertion required for the different coastal stretches. I feel this has exposed me as a geek.

PRH publish 15,000 print books a year. Of course none of them are remotely in the league of TSP and there will be some reputational damage, but I suspect it will blow over. People have short memories. The Hitler Diaries by Hugh Trevor-Roper was exposed as a massive fake but I can't for the life of me remember who the publisher was.

It might be a medical secretary or typist/admin person. An NHS temp admin worker disclosed confidential information about Fiona Harvey in the Baby Reindeer case.

@AldoGordo you’re not alone. I found myself looking at historic temperature charts the other day when I was at a passage in TSP where she described the sand as blisteringly hot (or similar) in the middle of September. As if it was remotely likely to have been accurate 🙄

@SpookyMcTaggart I agree that they're perhaps more definitive than I would have expected, but they are normally pretty spot on in their assessments going by their professional experience.

I'm pottering around various different sites in the hope of getting an early hint on what the Obs is going with (possibly the LinkedIn nephew?) and there's a guy on Chloe H's X feed who is sceptical about the SWCP walk. She's trying to get a chat with him.

Separately, I offer DDog as the wild pooing correspondent. He's an expert, I promise you.

I think, annoyingly, it might be a friend or relative drafted in to counter the current loss of reputation by praising RW and saying what a wonderful woman she is..so kind and selfless. Nothing like this has appeared to date at all, which seems odd...surely most people have someone they can drag up to speak in their defence.

I think it was the German magazine Stern, and then the diaries were validated by Hugh Trevor Roper, a historian on the Sunday Times. A long time ago now (1983) but people remembered it for ages.

If Sunday's Observer article could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the 2013 CBD diagnosis described in TSP was hogwash and that the whole premise of the book (exposure to nature via long distance walking halts progress of terminal neurological illness) was fictionalised, then I think the entire debate over TSP (unflinchingly honest memoir v literary snake oil) would be largely settled.

Let's see what tomorrow's article brings!

RayMoth will blame PRH, PRH will blame RayMoth. There will be back and forth for a while and then the whole argument will quietly die a death, everyone will forget about it, RayMoth will publish the last book and then sit very very quietly somewhere, spending the money.

That's my prediction. If the blame is spread, RayMoth supporters will feel vindicated, PRH are a HUGE publishing house and do not need supporters (who's going to stop buying all their books from all their authors in protest?) I'm a published author (but of fiction) and, despite writing about domestic and disability issues, not one editor has ever asked me if I have first hand experience of any of it. So I don't think any publisher (I'm not with PRH, I'm with a different house) is really over concerned with the actual, factual truth of what their authors write. Truth is subjective will be their narrative.

Why do people think there will be another Observer piece?

So SW signed a loan document they didn’t understand and investment they didn’t understand

maybe she will claim that when she signed the contract saying TSP is factually correct she did it not understanding what she was signing

Adrian Mole was taken in- I learned of the episode through reading Adrian’s diaries (I’m about 10-15 years younger than AM so too young to have registered the Hitler Diaries in real time.

@Noblepine8 CH the journalist tweeted something the other day to suggest a new piece coming out.

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse"

Yep - but mistakes were made….

Yes, those mysterious publishing documents that few of us understand. I wonder if Raymoth will be so bold to say PRH conned them into it. 😂