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

I spotted that a couple of weeks ago and questioned if it was legitimate, not that they'd care

Just catching up on the thread ☺️

If Sally was going on holiday with the entire Walkers family how would the father be able to answer the phone? If he was supposed to be on holiday 😂💩

Report to @AldoGordo as another potential discrepancy 🤔

@Animaladina I haven’t read TWS, so I don’t know if there’s further detail on this anywhere in there. But presumably Moth’s dad is asking Moth and RW what the other options are apart from answering the phone - e.g. should he just let the phone ring (as RW’s lie will be found out if he answers the phone)?

Is there still that fourth space on the website ready to fit another article, or have they rejigged the page?

Did caller display exist in the early 80s? Otherwise Sally’s parents phone the Walker house in a moment of suspicion, Dad innocently answers the phone and they hear his mum talking in the background, clearly not touring Scotland, and Sally is in major trouble with her parents…

Who, in fairness, may have a point, as they do almost die on the side of a mountain.

Very good point! 😂😂

I don't think it did -you dialled 1471 afterwards to get the number, but you could get it I think late 80s/early 90s as my parents got it, but you did have to pay for it as an extra service so very few people had it.

I suspect it was probably the dad basically letting them know that he wasn't going to be covering for them, so If they phoned, then the game was up.

Early 80s our neighbour still popped round to use our phone! it was a phone with a round dial, too- it felt very posh when we got one with buttons in about 1990!

I think 1471 didn’t come in till mid 90s (I was a teenager then so it was important to me!!)

I can’t find anything about TSP on the observer front page (not sure where their stuff would be now it’s been moved). Looks like the story has all gone away tbh.

I reckon they’ll be saving anything they have up for the event tomorrow

you dialled 1471 afterwards to get the number, but you could get it I think late 80s/early 90s as my parents got it, but you did have to pay for it as an extra service so very few people had it.

1471 was a bit later. In the early 80s you would ring the operator to ask what number had just rung, and you could ask whose number it was too.

But why would they? It’s just a free ‘how we got the story’ event, not a press conference. I think if there was more to say, it would have been in today’s Observer, unless there’s some significant legal impediment.

Apparently the original story a fortnight ago was absolutely huge for the Observer in terms of reader stats. I don’t think they’d pass up another chance to get that again if the material were there and usable.

(Perhaps the Walkers, now that they are no longer self-representing little people pitched against the Might of Clever Barristers, are now All About the Law, and happy to employ their Own Clever Lawyers.)

Indeed, seems a little odd. For what reason would the Winns phone the Walkers if they thought they were away? The only reason I can think of is if the Winns were suspicious and wanted to try to catch them out. But more likely, a made up anecdote.

If someone is going to tomorrow's event, I'd be very interested if they could ask these two questions: "Are legal threats or action against The Observer having an impact on what you are publishing abiut this story?" And "Would you be free to tell us if they were?"

The Press seems to have suddenly stopped publishing articles about a week ago, around the time when HumanKindness said that Penguin had made a statement of intent that it would support the author (and despite Chloe H having said sonething like"this week's Guarfian will be worth buying"). My guess is that injunctions may have been issued to shut down reporting.

We know that the embezzlement has been continued to be supported and given air time by the BBC.

There is an article in MailOnline today, which I can't read because I don't have a sub. But from the headline, it looks a bit like harassment to me, as it's about where they're living now.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14943275/The-secret-Cornish-hideout-Salt-Path-couple-taken-refuge-furore-memoirs-fabrications.html

I'd say there's a strong possibility of legal injuncting, combined with dark warnings about a decline in Moth's health, even threats of self harm.

One thing that is crystal clear about this couple is that they have a long track record of using woe is us to manipulate others and control events.

Well, it’s not so unlikely, is it? The Winns, according to Sally, hated Moth for being a ‘lazy’, non-driving, landless ‘townie’ and were totally against the relationship.

If they suspected it wasn’t in fact a ‘safe’ family holiday with Sally in her own room being chaperoned by the Walker parents, I suppose it’s perfectly possible they might call the Walkers’ house in a fit of heightened suspicion while they were supposedly all away. (Bear in mind that Sally says she’d never been away from her parents for more than a day…)

I mean, I think there were far more obvious parental reasons to think Moth/Tim was bad news than being a townie or having long hair. Even given the late 70s/early 80s’ general disregard for health and safety, by Sally’s own account he takes her climbing for the first time wearing unsuitable slippy trainers, and she lets go a rope to take a photo, meaning he falls off the rock and has to go to A and E! And on this famous trip to Scotland, he lands them on an exposed mountainside miles from a road in the middle of a dangerous storm in which they lose their tent and most of their belongings and could easily have died of exposure.

Even before you add in the fact that Sally is completely obsessed with him and will follow him into any unwise or dangerous situation, and that she says herself they frequently skipped college and work to be together, he’s not exactly any parents’ dream.

Well, someone on this thread said there were press camped out locally where she knew the Walkers were staying…? I suppose this is it.

Readable version of this at
https://archive.ph/4C7r

This sounds about bang on the embezzled money to me.

thats their modus operandi right from the get go. It’s always someone else’s fault or responsibility. RW’s response to the original Observer article was exactly in that vein: major focus on Moth’s health (thinly veiled subtext = ‘if people carry on saying nasty things, they’ll be responsible for his decline in health’) The embezzlement issue was glossed over with ‘mistakes were made.’

Highly manipulative. No one wishes ill health on either of them, but equally, all the people who’ve been conned are entitled to know the truth. That includes the general public who’ve bought the book, paid money to attend events etc, plus of course those who’ve been directly harmed by the embezzlement or through unpaid debts.

18 July at 1830 hours was the post I had in mind, where HumanKindness refers to "distress" of the author and family and says that Penguin has given a "very clear statement of intent". Reporting on the background (i.e. past events) continues for a bit after that, but as far as I can see then seems to stop suddenly.

Archive version

archive.ph/4C7ra