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

Yes and can't help laughing at the D Mail's - thanks @PrettyDamnCosmic -aside to her defence:

‘It’s not about every event or moment in our lives, but rather about a capsule of time when our lives moved from a place of complete despair to a place of hope.’
And, given where the couple are now living, it is clearly a very good ‘place’ to be.

A huge Cornish estate with a farmhouse and acres of land which must command a market rental rate of many thousands a month…. Yeap, they’re in a pretty good place!!

Though I wonder whether anyone can truly feel at peace and enjoy something if it’s been obtained through dishonesty? I doubt most people could.

Just listening to this from Australia:

ABC Radio National Sunday Extra (about 11 mins)

Questions about the Salt Path - ABC listen

The story of a couple in their 50s walking the 640 mile coastal path in England has been a surprise blockbuster with the memoirs of Raynor Winn selling more than 2 million copies worldwide. But an investigation from the UK newspaper The Observer into the couple has raised questions about why and how they lost their home.
Guest: Chloe Hadjimatheou, narrative editor at The Observer

The Mail on Sunday can reveal how the author and her husband have swapped sleeping under the stars for a stunning Cornish estate complete with farmhouse, swimming pool and its own private beach.
Not only does the 190-acre property provide plenty of space to indulge their love of camping and walking, its remote location has recently also come in handy.

If the MoS article is remotely accurate and the WinnWalkers are living high on the hog on a 190 acre Cornish estate,, then it's difficult to see SW re-emerging as a credible social commentator on the iniquities and unfairness of capitalism, the British class system, the restricted access to estates owned by the British landed elite etc etc.

There is a passage (p86 about the Clovelly Estate) in TSP which runs:

The boy on the harbour (sic) had got under my skin. I understood his sense of them and us in the village. Growing up as the daughter of a tenant farmer on a large country estate, I didn't have to ask him to explain who "He" was. As a child watching people in the village 'doff their caps' to the landlord, treating him and everybody connected to him with reverential respect, I empathised with the boy's disdain. It was that upbringing which drove me to join socialist rallies, protest against the poll tax, protest against the American nuclear warheads at Greenham Common,protest against anything really.

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.

It doesn't say where they are, only that it's a country estate with a private beach. It goes into detail about the surrounds, that's all.

Having read this now thanks to the archive link provided by pps, it could not be classed as harassment and is fairly restrained for the DM.
Archive link again:
Revealed: The secret Cornish hideout where the Salt Path couple have taken refuge from the furore over memoir's 'fabrications' | Daily Mail Online

I imagine their emotions are anger towards The Observer, and self entitlement that only makes them feel wronged.

I doubt they care about the embezzlement, only that the relative's business went bust and likely blame him for them losing their home.

It was that upbringing which drove me to join socialist rallies, protest against the poll tax, protest against the American nuclear warheads at Greenham Common,protest against anything really

I wonder what form that protesting really took.

As for Tim, he seems like he'd be involved in anything he felt was trendy, rather than out of principle.

Fair point - I see what you mean

One would think they'd have phoned the Walker parents before the trip if they had real concerns.

A huge Cornish estate with a farmhouse and acres of land which must command a market rental rate of many thousands a month…. Yeap, they’re in a pretty good place!!

The article says they're renting it.

Yes, it’s weirdly restrained from the DM. No photographs of the surrounding area, or the entrance to the estate etc. (Don’t know what UK law says on this?)

Maybe the previous poster who said friends of hers had confirmed the Walkers were living nearby, and that there were photographers hanging around, can confirm whether this 190-acre estate fits with what the DM has said, without being any more identifying?

I mean, in the Walkers’ shoes, that’s what I’d do. Hole up somewhere inaccessible where the house was way off the road, and wait for the story to die down.

So presumably able to pay the several thousands of pounds ... unless of course they've found someone who believes one of their sob stories again.

Though I wonder whether anyone can truly feel at peace and enjoy something if it’s been obtained through dishonesty? I doubt most people could.

Thankfully for society most people couldn't. Unfortunately a significant minority could and perhaps we are seeing this with the Walker-Winn-Wyns.

Some people of more modest means who experience a very significant change in circumstances - for example a major lottery win, unexpected inheritance or business success - do experience psychological and relationship issues as a result. This can also apply when the gains were ill-gotten, with added underlying feelings of fear of being exposed and guilt - at least on some level - to live with.

It’s hypocrisy on an epic scale isn’t it?

I wonder whether the fact they’re renting this place is another way of salving their consciences, feeling that they’re not really hypocrites, I mean, they don’t actually own it….

again, this fits the way this seems to be their approach to a lot of ethical issues. They find a way of spinning it to themselves that they aren’t really acting in a way which conflicts with the socialist principles RW spouts about at length. I expect they revel in being able to say ‘But we’re still not homeowners’ (they rent the massive house and land, and remember the French property is just an uninhabitable bramble patch!) Totally airbrushing the reality that they’ve got pots of money.

I won't Google "190 acre estate Cornwall private beach".

Well, given a conservative estimate of what she’s earned from the books and the film deal, surely that’s not in question. They have lots of money now.

Which begs the question why don't they buy somewhere? Who wants to be privately renting in their 60s if they don't have to? Why spend thousands a month renting?

Honestly, it seems fairly clear to me that RW’s political principles, such as they are, were just borrowed from Tim when she was a sheltered teenager obsessively in love— all that protesting the poll tax, anti-nuclear, socialist stuff were just her way of sticking two fingers up at her stuffy parents, and allying herself with this ‘wild free spirit’. If he’d been a Young Tory, or selling the New Worker on the streets of Leeds, or breaking into animal testing sites with PETA, I imagine she’d have followed him without thinking just the same.

Which brings us back to that other confusing discrepancy:
Where they have to keep moving for his condition but he has to keep re-reading the book or else he'll forget it??

Because they can enjoy the benefits of living on a 190 acre estate with access to a private beach, complete privacy etc etc. If they were to buy such a property, it would cost them (according to the MoS) article, north of £8.5m!

I think this is a case of "jam today", and very in-character for the Walker-Winns. The estate is worth about £10 million, according to the article. I've seen the Walker-Winns described as worth about £4 million, based on book sales and the film deal. Not wealthy enough to buy "a 190 acre estate with a private beach", but wealthy enough to rent it for a couple of years, while the money lasts. Future living arrangements are a problem for tomorrow.

Yes, I think you're right.

Maybe they'll get around to finishing off the renovation of the one property that they DO OWN - in the Village du Dropt!

To avoid headlines like ‘SALT PATH SCAM COUPLE BUY LUXURY ESTATE’? I mean, they must have known this was likely to come out at some point.

The richer they look, the more tangible assets they have, the more it damages the brand.

And while you might argue it’s irreparably damaged now, anyway, I’m not so sure it’s not salvageable with a canny pivot in the fourth book, especially if Moth can be produced as demonstrably iller by that point.

Then it becomes ‘See, he’s as ill as I said, and you’re just quibbling about diagnostic timelines, and yes, we made mistakes at a pressured time, and I’m really sorry, I hated all the lying, and I’m so relieved to be able to be honest now.’