Thread 10: 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...
Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn
Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^
Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 4 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5370609-thread-4-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 5 Thread 5: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
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?
Thread 7 www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5373425-thread-7-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 8 www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5375023-thread-8-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 9 www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5376712-thread-9-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting. There are currently 10 items on The Observer website The real Salt Path | The Observer

To all - No saltiness. Keep to the path. 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 - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for nine very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.

Keep calm and eat fudge.

Thank you

I'm working my way through. But they don't give an actual date for starting the walk. Just 'early August'. She does talk about very hot days early on in the walk. Getting up to 38 degrees one day (Duckpool/Grant/Lasange). But I can find no evidence of these temperatures in historical weather data.

I've had a cursory glance at newspaper archives, and can't see any court reports involving this Timothy Walker in Staffordshire between 1976-82. Of course if he was off being a crusty protester elsewhere, he could have been in court elsewhere.

Another anomaly - the consultants letter states that his mum died in her 50s but she actually only passed away in 2018, well into her 80s. A consultant error? Or a lie from the Walkers?

Looking at the article - https://collider.com/the-salt-path-trailer-jason-isaacs-gillian-anderson/ - I think JI just says “He'd fallen through the roof of a barn — they were farmers — and the doctor said, “Oh no, it's not arthritis. It's a fatal neurological condition, and you don't have very long to live.” He doesn’t say the next bit about saying goodbye and being careful on the stairs.

How callous would that be for a consultant to say to their patient to ‘be careful on the stairs’!!

I read an MSN article someone posted the link to 1 or 2 pages ago. I cut and pasted directly from that article

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/jason-isaacs-worked-closely-with-the-remarkable-real-life-man-behind-the-salt-path-adaptation/ar-AA1q263c

This seems to be what Jason said & seemed to have understood. It’s quoted in above (expand to read all). it’s what Ray said on the One Show re: routine apt that turned out to be anything but.

You know how when your a teenage and you are convinced that your favourite band member is destined to marry you but then they go off and marry someone their own age who they've actually met IRL bastard leaving you utterly crushed. I would imagine that's kinda how Jason is feeling now he's realised Moth might not be Santa after all.

Right, so all sunbathing on chicken shop etc all a fiction? I only skim read.

Ah sorry! I’ve found that article and can see it says those bits in it: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/jason-isaacs-worked-closely-with-the-remarkable-real-life-man-behind-the-salt-path-adaptation/ar-AA1q263c.

I have a feeling the bit about being careful on the stairs and saying goodbye to everyone you know - is maybe a bit of poetic licence from JI or Moth, but obviously not sure. If the doctor had really said that, it sounds very unprofessional.

Ray trots this out in interviews.

The falling through the roof bit is also written in TSP when they are about to get the diagnosis. No mention of arthritis, but general age/work related pain.

To add not the saying goodbye part - Moth says that after another later apt to Bill at cider farm, lasting until Christmas.

Jenn Ashworth (whose book about walking the coast to coast path someone recommended on one of these threads, I think?) says her consultant said 'Be careful on the stairs' to her when she's diagnosed with a 'benign' brain tumour which, among other things, disrupts her balance...?

In all the interviews I saw with Jason he was saying that Moth was told to avoid the stairs completely and say goodbye. Which admittedly I thought was a strange and fairly impractical thing for a consultant to say.

As you say I would think there's some artistic licence at play and I can't really see why JI would do, so that leads us to the incredibly proven truthful WalkerWinns...

About a minute in on One Show clip
both Jason & Ray reference what consultant had said at this ‘routine appointment that turned out to be anything but’. Along with ‘don’t get too tired’. They flag taking care on stairs twice.

That does make sense, of course, and I realise it’s a very common and understandable thing for surgeons to say. I’m also remembering now that Moth is also told in the film of TSP to take care on the stairs.

Sorry, I think it just sounded glib and rude to me when I read it in the MSN article linked to earlier, so I got annoyed! 😂

Well that doesn't really tie in with the medical letters does it.

Penguin has deleted the chicken shop story, while leaving the rest of the "Raynor Winn" page up. Which makes me think she told them (or implied anyway) that it was non-fiction, preposterous though it was as a story, and Penguin's now decided it's too risky to keep it up.

There's an archive link to the chicken shop story here: <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250708144458/www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/raynor-winn-lockdown-hope" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20250708144458/www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/raynor-winn-lockdown-hope

We don’t have sight of early ones for context,

What puzzles me if told to take care on uneven ground & not get over tired why you’d think it was a good idea to do the walk? I’d try & prevent my husband doing it, not encourage. A stroll outside, sure, but that? Let alone with no proper food & then forgetting needed meds.

There is something about a consultant saying to Moth to "be careful on the stairs/don't walk too far/don't tire yourself" in TSP/TWS/LL. Just trying to find it now. Not sure if it's the initial diagnosis consultant or one that he sees later on.

Hello everybody! I'm on catchup here because I've been distracted by another thread about a mysterious foursome, comprising of an older couple and their, "son" and, "girlfriend" turning up a mumsnetter's house, claiming that their coastal holiday home had been flooded or somesuch nonsense and that the older man knew OP's husband from about 2008 when he worked as a typesetter at a publishers.

They offered their astonished hosts a bottle of rosé wine, some Aldi chocolate and a half eaten punnet of strawberries and continued to stay for three of nights, never going out but just scrolling through their phones.

It sounded like the clan Winn Walker going on the lam, so as an ex Bond girl, I had to check it out.

My other theories were: Foreign agents planning on murdering the family and assuming their identity or shapeshifting aliens with the same MO.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5379622-impostor-guests-our-3-night-emergency-guests-werent-who-they-said-they-were?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

I certainly thought it was supposed to have been true, rather than a metaphor for Covid isolation, or the dissociation of urban life, or veganism or whatever!

Thank you @FloreatAmbridge & I think you’re correct. The question remains, what else is metaphor, etc?

Found it!

This is from TSP (Penzance stage).

"What had the consultant said just three months ago? ‘Don’t tire yourself, or walk too far, and be careful on the stairs. Don’t carry heavy weights, or plan too far ahead.’

So it was the initial diagnosis consultant in Liverpool Raynor says said that to them. Although she didn't include this earlier in the book when she wrote about their consultation with him.

Convictions for what??

Possession of cannabis perhaps?

Or criminal damage while being a self styled eco warrior.

TSP

”what had the consultant said just three months ago? ‘Don’t tire yourself or walk too far and be careful on the stairs. Don’t carry heavy weights or plan too far ahead’.