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

Indeed. It's like watching mass hysteria / emperors new clothes in action, but then so much of life is like that these days - reality and so called 'must watch' cult TV shows - we are in the age of the influencer. Influences don't tend to actually be life changing people in the end. It's all smoke and mirrors. Likes and follows relies on sheep like mentality.

I very much feel a sense of "well we did do a walk in Iceland, but let's spice it up a bit for the book."

I might have dozed off before that.. Really, it was the dullest part of the book— the only ‘event’ is Moth losing two teeth to a very cold Mars Bar, and Raynor having a panic attack having to sleep in a crowded hut with a bunch of other hikers because the weather is too dangerous to camp outside overnight.

(Which goes some way further to me thinking that it’s less a ‘child of nature who needs to be free’ thing than someone who just isn’t capable of being around other people at all. She’s an isolated farm child who spends her time stopping up rabbit holes (and never mentions having a sister) till she meets Moth, she stays indoors after the SWCP walk unless she’s up on the cliffs, to the point where people in tiny Polruan think she’s only just arrived when she’s been living there for a year, and even though it was her idea to leave the cider farm and walk for one week in Iceland, she’s panic-stricken by the proximity of others.)

One can’t help also noticing that she keeps trying to make them still sound poor on the Iceland trip. While she admits TSP ‘sold quite a few copies’, and they’ve flown to Iceland with brand new cold weather gear, and stay in a hotel, she specifically says isn’t it great instead of pitching a tent on the scrubby grass under the flight path, and makes a point of saying they’re using the same rucksacks and the same noodles, and Moth accidentally buys a tin of beans for the equivalent of a fiver sterling. It’s as if she’s trying to make it not sound like it is, a holiday.

Do you (or anyone else who's read TWS) recall anything about RW breaking a toe on the Iceland walk? (I'm following up an inconsistency lead).

I just searched ‘toe’ in my Kindle version and no results? I don’t remember her injuring herself, in any way.

Thank you.

So, this is not a definite inconsistency because what I've found still remains within the realms of possibility. But here follows some info...

• Various posts on reddit suggest that the

Landmannalaugar trail is open in mid-September (based on people having booked hiking tours), but roads could be closed depending on weather.

• I can find no info whatsoever that says the first Sunday in September marks the start of winter in this region, or indeed anywhere in Iceland (please share if you find anything that does)...plus the country marks the Autumnal equinox. Also, the closure of things seems to be judged entirely on weather conditions and not a definite calendar date.

• If Raymoth started their trip 5 days before the first Sunday of September then they were rather overly worried about winter setting in because the 1st Sunday fell on the 1st of Sept!

• If, for arguments sake, they believed winter started on the 8th Sept due to the 1st being too soon, then this would place them in Iceland between the 3rd and 17th Sept, assuming it was a fortnight-long trip as a reviewer described. Nothing odd about that, but....

• SW was due to give a sold out talk on 20th Sept 2019 at Rye Arts Festival. She ended up postponing until November, telling organisers she had broken her toe. So she either broke her toe on the walk, or in the time between getting home and the talk. Or she made it up as an excuse. Either way, she chose not to write about breaking a toe in TWS. (NB: I searched for any news items or updates from the festival to see when the event might have first been cancelled but nothing came up, not even on their FB page or archived web pages...it was only mentioned in a Nov article after the fact).

• There is a peculiar absence of SW Instagram photos between June 2019 and March 2020. One would think photos of Iceland would be particularly worthy of sharing. Has she deleted some that might suggest she wasn't in Iceland in Sept or is it genuinely that she didn't post anything, including in the the run up to the publication of TWS when she finally posts a photo of signed first pages to be inserted into the books?

How do we know RW broke her toe, out of interest? I’m just wondering as I didn’t know about this - and can’t find anything about it online, but haven’t done a very thorough Google.

I seem to recall a story about Moth breaking his toe after it gets caught in one of the sleeping bags? Can't find it though, so maybe I'm misremembering.

It was reported in the Rye News in Nov 2019 after the rescheduled talk had taken place:
https://www.ryenews.org.uk/culture/a-passion-for-nature

https://www.ryenews.org.uk/culture/a-passion-for-nature

The 2019 Rye Arts Festival finally came to an end on Sunday November 3 with a talk by writer Raynor Winn.
The talk was originally scheduled for September but Raynor broke her toe and couldn’t travel, which is ironic because her book, The Salt Path, catalogues her 630 mile walk along the South West Coast Path.

Totally not the point but my mind is now ruminating over how one breaks their toe on a sleeping bag!

Broken finger - apparently in LL when he was stuffing a sleeping bag into its bag.

@FightingTemeraire (Which goes some way further to me thinking that it’s less a ‘child of nature who needs to be free’ thing than someone who just isn’t capable of being around other people at all. She’s an isolated farm child who spends her time stopping up rabbit holes (and never mentions having a sister) till she meets Moth, she stays indoors after the SWCP walk unless she’s up on the cliffs, to the point where people in tiny Polruan think she’s only just arrived when she’s been living there for a year, and even though it was her idea to leave the cider farm and walk for one week in Iceland, she’s panic-stricken by the proximity of others.)

This interview incorporates TWS, as well. I find her quite boring to listen to, but at 30 mins in. she explains why she doesn't like being near people. It makes me feel as if there must be something wrong with me and she is fine? 👽
Bing Videos

I’ve just watched the film in a spirit of comic scepticism, and while I quite liked both lead performances, GA’s accent seemed to lurch between ‘vaguely northern’, ‘faintly Cockney’ and ‘slightly Liverpudlian’, sometimes in the same sentence, plus they both had a lot of costume changes for two people living out of rucksacks for months. I mean, GA had nice pyjamas! I once had a similar pair from Toast. And some lovely knitwear. And no visible body hair after two months on the path! And her black leggings were always clean!

And despite being made up to look slightly weathered and dry-haired, she still looked effortlessly striking and starry compared to Grant’s ‘beauties’. (And Grant was Trent Crimm from Ted Lasso!)

I wonder why, having made Polly so cartoonishly awful, and established the shearers as ‘blokey’, the film doesn’t go with the book’s idea that Polly was lining up one of them as a paying tenant, rather than Moth suddenly wanting to go back and walk?

Good morning! I haven't caught up yet but did not desert the trail, in hospital since last Sunday with sepsis. I'm starting to feel better and hope to be home soon.

As I was carted off I did manage to throw SA Walking Home into my bag and have finished it in dribs and drabs. Loved it. Some really moving moments like him explaining why he was carrying his granddads WW1 campaign medals with him as a reminder of real hardship and sacrifice. He is also decent about the people he meets and mockery is reserved for himself.

Oh, @Uricon2 glad to hear you’re on the mend, how scary!

@FightingTemeraire i would agree. I get a limited amount of social anxiety and I hate crowds these days, I almost felt quite sorry for her while reading TWS, but I do feel it comes
from a deep distrust of other people. I wonder if she was bullied when young? Or brought up to be suspicious of others? Both?

@AldoGordo Wrt the broken toe, she had problems with her toe in TSP, losing the nail, and she mentioned it again in passing during TWS walk, but I don’t remember the details of what she said. Maybe bad boots again? I still have the book so I can have a look later.

How would breaking your toe stop you giving a talk? You can travel with a broken toe, I broke a toe and drove 100 miles the next day, it was fine. That's a really thin excuse for cancelling a talk, even if it's true.

The only thing I can think of is if she broke to toe and bashed her face or got other injuries just as she was leaving home to travel to Rye so she needed to go to hospital for assessment instead of travelling to Rye. So it was the timing of the injury rather than the injury that meant she couldn’t appear as planned.

I read it as pure projection; she ascribes to others what she is herself. Untrustworthy, out to exploit, someone to be deeply suspicious of.

Yes, possibly. There is something very odd in hearing her talk about her reasons for mistrusting people (as in the interview linked by @TheBrandyPath) when you know that the ‘betrayal by a friend’ she puts it all down to didn’t happen. Or, if they did make an unwise investment, it’s certainly not why they lost their home.

I’ve just watched that bit of the interview and I do get this sense of exceptionalism from her, which I think she realises too because then she talks about recently becoming aware that we’re all so similar. That makes her seem warmer. When she’s saying how she’s never lived among people or in a village, only on remote farms, it’s somewhat more giving a sense of ‘not like the other girls’- you know? Superiority. Maybe that is the chips on my own shoulder coming out.

I wonder (if RW ever does give a confession) she’ll say it all comes from a deep seated self-hatred, which she’ll no doubt ascribe to her childhood. Of course, it’s no justification for the hurt she’s caused to other people. And this is assuming she ever does confess. I suspect the victim mentality is so deep rooted that she’ll never be able to admit if she did steal from her employer

@FightingTemeraire @Stravaig @AlertCat @gattocattivo Thank you I think the same. Phew! I thought I'd arrived in an alternative universe.

Wow @Uricon2 so glad you're on the mend! How scary and unpleasant for you 💐💐

I would like to make clear that I am actually horrified by the above interview, I shared. This is because it was hosted on The Grief Channel where people may be listening avidly at their most vulnerable time. I do not mean that she cannot share grief. I feel it would be very difficult - if you had listened and were helped by her - to find that it is she who causes deep mistrust ( I am very sorry for Mr Hemmings and family).