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
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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

Hope these upload... I took these photos of an article in the spring 2025 edition of the South West Coast Path magazine, published several months ago. Just found it on my campsite! No journalist sightings so far but I will be seeking Haye Farm Cider later. Their website claims it's stocked in a shop in Fowey... 😄

I'm attending online.

I think we have 2 or 3 correspondents covering it so far.😎

I would like to have joined them but I'm far, far away from London. I have a major project starting too later today for some weeks and potentially months, but will join online if humanly possible. Otherwise, it will be great to read first-person reports on here!

@AldoGordo Today 11:08 I think this is worth a read and will possibly resonate with a few of us here.

Yes, thanks it reminds of a reaction from someone in D Mail comments, from their Welsh locality, when challenged on his knowledge: When they left in disgrace .......... Tim’s parents rented a large property in ..... . His father ...... had plenty of room for them to stay. Not homeless. They were on the run!
(heavily edited)

I am, online.

Failing that, do treat yourself to Fowey Valley range - have been given the cider, creme caramel, etc., as gifts.

I've sent you a PM @mycatismyworld

I've booked online for the observer thing too.

I think it's safe to say that Charlotte Bronte would be squirming in her grave at the calibre of writing that gets published today.

Very much worth a read - thanks for linking.

I agree that RW’s response, focussing hugely on Moth’s illness and deflecting from the alleged theft, seems designed to garner public sympathy. It’s by far the less uncomfortable of the two issues. She could go on to claim that the initial medical appt did feel devastating and that life as they knew it was falling apart. She could claim that she has the kind of personality which catastrophizes and that what she wrote was a genuine reflection of how she felt.

far less comfortable to face the allegation of theft head on and either admit she embezzled the money or issue an outright denial.

im also getting far more of a sense that they were running away too when they left Wales for the south west.

I don't have any problems with her pseudonym (Raynor Winn). A lot more memorable and marketable than Sally Walker? If John Le Carre (aka David Cornwell) was a case in point.

Me too

Also attending on Monday online.

Authors having pseudonyms is pretty common.

Husbands taking on the pseudonym's last name less so.

Unheard of, I'd say. Why would they? I've made this point several times on social media in response to 'But pseudonym!!!!'-type posters, to no avail as I've never had any sensible reply ('You're just clearly jealous' doesn't count as sensible).

It’s interesting that a commenter on that article allegedly met Moth at the Hay festival & their interaction. He was very quiet yet friendly & acknowledged they’d been swindled & were now in a very good place .

In her rebuttal the name changing feels a bit of a straw man I felt. No one is frothing over this aspect, it’s nowhere near the most important thing.

’smiled and nodded’! So again, not verbalising outright that they had been swindled, but implying agreement. Makes me think of the interview with RW and Jason Isaacs where he goes ‘ I’ll say it because you can’t: you were conned out of everything.’ I guess hearing other people say it, helps them to believe it?

Yes, exactly.

@gattocattivo I think this interaction also speaks of his quiet humility that many comment on.

funny though that RW makes a big thing of him being garrulous and always having a story for his audience.

I wonder whether he’s changed and now presents this more reserved face in public (similarly RW apparently always sticks to the script in interviews and repeats things verbatim.) I suppose if there are huge great secrets they wanted to keep covered up, it’s easier to do that by saying little and keeping to the exact same story. As I’ve said in previous threads, on some level even if subconsciously, it seems an enormous burden to carry. Most people would feel incredibly anxious and on edge to have become so well known (and well off) on the back of something downright dodgy (and criminal if the allegations are correct.) It must be like a house of cards - looking very impressive but in danger of collapsing any moment.

I agree. I do think the "plenty of writers use pseudonyms" argument falls apart in this case, not only because of the husband also having a pseudonym, but because we know of other plausible motivations for them to want to create distance from their past selves. Ordinarily, yes, hardly unusual. But we can't consider this an ordinary situation. I don't think they were "on the run", however. Rather, I'm of the opinion SW wrote a book about her life and likely didn't want people who knew of her past to know she was the author, in case the truth might come out. Of course, that doesn't help once she started appearing in magazines and on TV. But now it's caught up with her. The Polruan blogger said he first knew them as Sally and Tim...so the name changes seem to be tied to the book, just not as straightforward pseudonyms, but something more motivated.

But does Moth use the name Winn? Isn’t it just that journalists, assuming for whatever reason that Winn was Raynor’s marital surname, assumed that it was therefore also Moth’s?

That would be my take on it.

Possibly - but I've never heard or seen him referred to as 'Moth Walker'.