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've (luckily) never had to deal with it personally but sadly a friend has (it was 'only' around £7k taken from her business so a lesser sum but devastating).

She said it felt like the person who did it may as well have come into her home and stolen, it was such a huge breach of trust and very personal betrayal.

I've never had cause to give thought to the level of planning involved, but you must have to really plan and cover your tracks - it's so conniving and sly.

Raywin and Tim-mothy remind me of the couples you see on Grand Designs. Smug, pompous, dodgy, can talk their way out of anything, claim not to have a penny but always seem to find surprise millions in the bank. They just jab and weave their way through life and always come out on top (if looking utterly ridiculous).

There’s no way the old sheep called it mere minutes before they had to vacate the farm is there?

That came out of nowhere and escalated fast!

Stands on chair, hair tied back to evade flying jam and cream. May as well keep my mouth open.

Skon!

Oh good spot! '3)' clearly went for a walk.

😳

@ Wales Correspondent Is there a Welsh word for scone?

We do like a Welsh Cake too here.

The (correct) judgement is made!

Sconn
Raspberry jam (homemade)
Two plain scones (not a pesky raisin in sight)
One jam first, one cream first
Or (my preferred option)
Plain scone split in half, one with jam first, one with cream first, put them together and eat 😀

Thank you very much. I have indeed and I think almost every poster really appreciates that.

OR
(Warming to a theme and threatening to derail)
Cheese scone
Devon butter
Quickes mature cheddar
Otter Vale Devon Fire chutney

Thank you for keeping us (mostly) on track @DisappointedReader.

Here's some local gossip.
Proper years ago in Welcombe, just off the Coastal path there is a big house which hosted swingers parties. Apparently they kept them selves to themselves and were ever so polite when picking up the Sunday papers.
Obviously it's changed hands a few times (Notably Vivianne Westwoods son) since then but hilariously Kirstie Allsop bought the house next door round about the time she was also complaining about Nigel Mansell driving race cars near her other house. Location, location, location.
(Note the Kirstie stuff is public record & interviews , she filmed her TV series there and brought her partner with COVID here during lockdown but it's available to let to mortals)

This is pretty close to Moth's massage fantasy location so possibly someone was chatting in the pub and the whole thing got accidently added to the journey.

I get that this is controversial and an identity issue (am not from the UK and never really get scones, so have no skin in this game), but doesn’t putting the jam on after the cream sort of drag the cream off the scone’s surface? Unless it’s quite loose, wet jam?

Actually it was a literary pilgrimage that gave me a dislike of scones. I had to smallest scone in the world in a Brontë-themed teashop in Haworth. It looked as if it had been cut out with a thimble, my sister got the giggles and it all got a hit Withnail and I.

There should clearly be a Salt Path-themed banquet eaten on the path. Noodles, followed by fudge bars, followed by rhubarb-flavoured ice lollies. (Are rhubarb ice lollies actually a thing? I’m now so dubious about the smallest claims of TSP that I’m raising my eyebrows about everything…)

I've been trying to work out why I care about this story, and, other than loving a good mystery (see second part of my username), I realised it's possibly to do with a really unpleasant experience in my family - a person who won the trust of elderly family members by being lovely, 'genuine', interesting, thoughtful, a hard-luck case, etc etc... and stole money systematically from them over a long period. Getting the money back wasn't the problem, the problem was the emotional and relational damage.

And having put quite a lot of effort in to liking the TSP author when I read the book, because I felt sorry for her even though I thought her decisions were mad, I now feel emotionally cheated.

Anyway. Back to cricket:

for comparison with TSP (see previous post) a genuine incident from when I was walking part of the SWCP with DSs and DH on the last day of the Lord's Test against India (ie last Monday)

We pause at a stile in the early afternoon. DS2 immediately takes out his phone. There is reception! He announces "118 for 8". Two older gentlemen on the other side of the stile stop in their tracks. "What? What's the score? Great! Who's in? Who's bowling? [Excited multi-way discussion of England's chances, relative merits of various players and tactics, etc] Thank you!!"

Just saying, anyone walking the SWCP during the Ashes who cared enough to carry the radio would not only have listened to it at every opportunity, but would also have had a ready-made topic of conversation with some significant proportion of the other walkers. Would definitely have discussed that more than Simon Armitage (though I think in the timeline Armitage starts where the Ashes end).

Maybe ‘Grant’ was Phil Spencer (balding, pink) and one of his bevy of beauties was Kirstie in a blonde wig?

Hello, I’ve lurked the entire -path- nine threads and have questions.

Were there subsidies paid for the sheep?
Why did the W’s target the Scottish Smallholders with the lure of winning their ‘farm’ if they bought the book? The smallholders are not known for their wealth and it was a poor show to ask £ nigh on a tenner if memory serves me properly.

Handling fleeces is hard work but your hands are cleaner and softer than a city bankers when all is done innocent face

Having a small holding of approx 1.5 acres does not qualify anyone to be a cider farmer.

Finally, I love the fudge for sale idea from the Roving Fudge expert but worry that people might, oh I don’t know, walk away with it without waiting to pay? Sugar and time costs, you know.

🤣 (Please give us the laugh React option back, MN!)

Did you take a screenshot of the Gangani photo as I can’t find the website?

Tim was the director of Gangani and both Tim and Sally were shareholders. That info is in the public domain so I guess Sally felt it needed to be referred to in the (non) rebuttal. But in itself that doesn’t prove Sally wrote it even if the photo looks like her. That could just be how they chose to market the book to improve sales. It could be written by either of them or by a third party who doesn’t want to come forward and claim it.

If it was written by one of them, then, unless they choose to confess, we will never know. Perhaps if someone could find a copy they could analyse the writing style and deduce it to be similar to TSP. But that still wouldn’t be concrete proof. Or the content might be so close to elements of the Walkers’ lives that it was clearly written by someone who knew them well. But I could write a fictional story around elements of my friends’ lives and that wouldn’t make it their book. I wonder how many copies were sold? It wouldn’t surprise me if it was less than 100 so the chances of one turning up are pretty slim.

You are my scone spirit animal.

I'm sorry to hear you've had to deal with it. Thanks for the insight and I agree with you.

A major issue for me is that Raynor/Sally Walker would have been going into the offices every day - well, maybe not every day if she was part-time - and facing her bosses the Hemmings and her colleagues. Not only facing them but interacting with them, chatting with them, having a cup of tea with them. While all the time stealing from them. I can't imagine being able to do that unless my earthly life or my children's earthly lives, for example, depended upon it. Even then, I'm not sure that I could carry it off without shaking or breaking down, especially with people I knew and who trusted me. I say that too as someone who has had to keep my composure in some very difficult situations in life, personally and professionally.

Here under a profile of the author? How Not to Dal dy Dir by Izzy Wyn-Thomas | Goodreads

The Gangani website was taken down, presumably as part of crisis management when the Observer story broke. A pp has linked to the archive on at least one of our threads, so I'm sure someone will pop up with it for you soon.

If you scroll down a bit there’s what purports to be an imported post from Izzy Wyn -Thomas’s blog from July 19 2012, where she says she’s just packed a large consignment of her book to the US but her local indie bookshop in Wales refuses to stock it?

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6442697.IzzyWynThomas/blog

Sorry, this may have been posted 30 times before, but I haven’t seen it.

Quite weird, with the author apparently camped out outside her local bookshop, which refuses to stock it because of ‘nationalism in the land of the passionate patriot’?

Sconn. And cream then jam. Really craving one now!

Not sure what correspondent I could be. I am not from the West Country but I did live in St. Mawgan for a short while as a small child (RAF brat). I have walked a small part of the SWCP.

I know how to morris dance. Any call for that?!

I know there are Devon and SWCP Correspondents, but you can be our Devon, SWCP and Scones Correspondent. The interview process is quite strict however and you have to send me a basket of Devon cream, jam and scones so that I can assess your credentials.

Cream first! It's instead of butter, isn't it? And would you put butter on top of jam, or underneath?

See?

Cream first.

@Choux

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130101085304/www.ganganipublishing.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20130101085304/www.ganganipublishing.co.uk/

ETA: copy and paste from the https Web archive bit, after 'blank' to the end. Sorry, messed up on posting.