Thread 9: 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 ...

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 visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as this will only encourage them back to the threads.

We have done amazingly well together - in the main that is, not mentioning any names but you know who you are! - for eight 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 assume they got their terrier when they moved to the cider farm — perhaps the Polruan flat had a no pets policy.

Coincidence, which I don't believe in.

I kept meaning to bring the cats up (secret cat corresondent), but it was at the time of "the big distraction"...seems @mycatismyworld is perfectly placed to fill the (walking) boots of cat correspondent. (Obvious pun intentionally omitted)

The story of the terrier is they rescued it because a farmer was going to drown it in a bucket. So they asked to keep it.

Wicked farmer, saintly WinnWalkers.

Do I detect a theme?

AldoGordo · Today 17:21
The story of the terrier is they rescued it because a farmer was going to drown it in a bucket. So they asked to keep it.

Oh my this is becoming like the The Legend of the Noble Walkers. My son said that it would make a good anime - when she wrote that they woke up in a meadow full of ladybirds hatching (I mean they are black dots but in the cartoon they would be in all their colourful glory and sparkling). A peregrine circles over them when they spot where they are destined to be ... and so on and so forth ...

I think that is a very good idea. Yes it may confuse new posters but, let's face it, there is a lot on these threads to confuse them and the rest of us. Everyone can join in or not as the mood takes them.

Don't worry, @TonstantWeader (on Wales) 's dog is now on paw as our Rovering Wild Poos Correspondent.

Disappointment and Thread (Dis)Order

Yes, the theme of ‘everyone else does everything wrong’.

They farm too intensively, they overgraze, they don’t lovingly handfeed their 19 year old ewes bread and bury them in the field they loved, they don’t bring up their children ‘running wild and free on the land’ (I did snigger to myself when Raynor says in TSP that their daughter was cutting her travels short for a PR job in London, which she clearly thinks is not at all rock’ roll), they’re not properly in love after 30 years together like her and Moth, or they marry staid farmers rather than blond eco-warriors, they walk the SWCP on a schedule unlike her and Moth, they put extensions on their houses rather than ‘lovingly restoring’ ancient farmhouses (the snide remarks about second home owners hit a bit ironically in view of the French property), or they work in the City and have soft hands and designer sunglasses rather than working on the land.

And actually, they shuffle meekly into council accommodation and get jobs, rather than doing the free-spirited thing and walking for several hundred miles to attune to nature.

The ladybirds hatching is a bit strange. They emerge from their pupae cases, as it's the larvae that hatch from the eggs 😁The passage in the book reads [my bold]:

Rather than layers of sweaty salt, my legs were crawling in ladybirds. I stood up and found they were all over me. In fact they were everywhere. Over the tent, the stove and, as he stood up, Moth too. Their tiny feet all heading towards the sky as they lifted into flight, migrating towards their first breakfast from our outstretched arms. A lifetime spent in the natural world had taught me how the ladybird parent lays hundreds of eggs in an area where there’s a high population of aphids, so that when they hatch they’re in the right place for a ready meal. But they were too special and the shiny red wonders too numerous: there had to be more to it than that; they had to have a meaning for us. We stood in the early morning, watching hundreds of tiny creatures stretch their wings for the first time and lift into flight from our fingertips. No, I couldn’t be scientific about it, and clung to the myth of the ladybird bringing good luck, carrying it with me in a rosy, spotted glow. I watched the pink aura lift from Moth and tried to believe in miracles.
See www.rspca.org.uk/documents/1494931/0/TN+From+egg+to+ladybird+%281%29.pdf
PS may I be the biology correspondent... please???

True story and unflinchingly honest, unlike all those lying, made up memoirs that gullible readers lap up.

I'm literally wetting myself at this

I hope you're literally being metaphorical, like how Simon Armitage is both real and unreal in The Salt Path - a being that inhabits the liminal spaces.

I just can't get over the lottery-book idea. I mean, I'm a multi-published, award winning author and even so I struggle to get traction for my books when they first come out and it can take a year or more before they really start reaching readers in any numbers. Did RayMoth seriously expect her first attempt at writing and publishing to sell in the required numbers to raise enough money to cover the house cost? I mean, seriously?

When a quick Google will tell you that the average author makes £7,000 a year?

Hello! I'm really behind because I took Sunday off with my wonky donkey neuro symptoms but I'm, "Back, back, etc" in the words of Smash Hits.

I believe the word is, "Intertextuality."

Here's a bit of gossip that has been doing the rounds for years but really is just gossip:

Helen Fielding knew, or at least knew of, Keir Starmer back in the university/Students Union days and Mark Darcy the human rights lawyer is a very loosely based thumbnail sketch of certain aspects of Keir's general demenour.

Could I ask whether the brother with the French chateau ever ran it as a B&B do we know?

I think the farmer drowning the dog is a fib. No farm ever has an intact bucket, they have usually been run over by the tractor or are filled with sump oil and despair.
Dogs are too valuable especially a terrier, control the rats.

But Moth says TSP was writing first ever done & Ray says for Moth’s eyes only…at first.

I've not come across any suggestion on this. I know it was opened to the paying public to look round, like a tourist attraction I guess, akin to a stately home here. But I think that was short lived.

I'm going to be camping on the SWCP for the next few days. Anyone got any requests?
I'm going to read, wander, swim and eat so nothing too energetic.

I'll be crossing the Tamar so my scone eating will be under scrutiny.

cream or jam first.

If not, quick, borrow the litter tray!

😂 re: buckets.

Just to add, the story was how the farmer had dogs for ratting and this was a new litter. The pup they rescued apparently had wonky legs so couldn't be useful so the farmer was going to drown it. I'll try to find the source - was recounted in a RW interview (possibly even the Rick Stein episode but really not sure).

The article someone linked above said they were contemplating it as a possible future plan, but hadn’t done anything about it yet at the time of writing — that they were taking the restoration slowly, not pushing themselves, and taking off every weekend to brocantes to buy furniture for the chateau. There was some joky remark about future guests having to be ok with spiders.

Vroomfondleswaistcoat · Today 17:54

Although it appears she won a £10,000 prize for a first novel, for her second novel?!

Thanks for creating thread 9 @DisappointedReader

Was me!