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

They offer up a luxe spare room/bathroom so Ray can shower & Moth’s massaged in luxury. A multi (?) millionaire with a private PA likely has at least one guest suite/guest bedroom. Even a common or garden millionaire probably has s guest room especially if as social & generous as Grant & bevy of beauties.

Do they ever say they stay in a cabin etc in TSP on a balmy night? I can imagine they’d prefer to be under the stars as per usual.

I agree. That’s why I think the first option - that they asked to camp out in their tent - is the most likely

Sorry if this has already been posted, but here's today's new podcast from Chloe Hadjimatheou – the one that she referred to in her meeting last night:
https://observer.co.uk/listen/the-slow-newscast/the-real-salt-path-1

Tent watch: looks like the same tent. I wonder if someone could work out which tent it was. It would be epic if it was then discovered the tent only went on sale 2 years after they allegedly did the walk.

looks like Sally is wearing the same dress in both photos too. I have to say that she doesn’t look unduly thin in the face or arms. Walking 5-10 hilly miles a day on meagre rations would probably by a 1-2k calorie deficit per day. Over 2 months that could be a 20lb fat loss - maybe more. Obv if they did it over two summers it’s spread out more and you could put back on some of the weight lost. Is the orchard photo when they start walking or near the end?

It’s supposedly a once-used Vango weighing 3 kg that they bought for £38 on eBay.

As regards where they met Grant, they say they’d had the option to head off the path inland to Morwenstow refill their water bottles but choose to keep pressing on towards Bude, which they expect to get to later that day (but dont), and just after the lose it by the locked toilet block at Duckpool. So pretty early.

But it doesn’t seem to have the orange colour of the Vango logo like most of the tents on their website. I guess the brand may not have had that logo 12 years ago. It does have orange guide ropes.

https://www.vango.co.uk/

Just listened to the podcast; it was very moving. It has a lot of John's testimony, the man who does have CBD, and whose hopes had been raised reading the book, only to be dashed when Chloe Hadjimatheou's article came out.

I feel quite angry that Sally Walker and her lies have deeply affected people who really suffer from CBD, and their loved ones.

In Landlines, the miraculous brain scans were obviously a way of explaining why Tim remains so well. The reality being that, at worst, he has some mild symptoms that don't affect him much.

I'm glad their nephew, a very well respected person in his field, called them out as pathological liars. It serves as a reminder of what they're both capable of.

Oh sorry! I cycled most of the way there and fast walked the rest (honestly!) so didn't look on here again before the event. I only got the site up on mobile after it finished and then there were so many new posts that I didn't see yours! Would have been great to meet and chat with you.

Almost like it's just for the photo op...

I think the tent might be a Vango Mirage 200. Some pics on this review match. Not sure on date of first manufacture. AI on Google said 2015, not sure on its reliability.

www.hikersblog.co.uk/vango-mirage-200-tent-review/

Just listening to the podcast. It actually says that the Walkers and Hemmings spent Christmas Day together!

I just listened to this...gosh it's damning. They used to go to the Hemmings' for Christmas dinner! How could they sit there, knowing they were stealing from these people? Never mind the poor CBD sufferers. I'm more shocked now than when I read the initial article to be quite honest. The nephew's statement makes total sense.

I agree. I'm much more angry now, with the additional information.

I found it interesting that Ros Hemmings said she found Tim a bit unsure of himself when he was gardener at the National Trust.

She says he was "...not very forceful...not very innovative...very nervous about doing the wrong thing..."

I thought, well if he's borrowed a degree in botany from a man with the same name, but doesn't actually know much, he would come across that way.

I wondered too for same reason! I tried to give her a 'knowing look'.

The review says 2015 too for the first version.

Listening to the podcast now.
Do we know yet where the original tip off came from?

I think it was a Vango Halo 300 - they are made so they don't collapse when you take the pegs out, thus could have been carried up the beach by Moth at Porheras Cove. They did exist in 2013.

Yes, that was my thinking too. It sounds like he bullshitted his way into the job and had to be very careful not to slip up.

I don’t think we do. I’m also listening to the podcast, and hearing the story of the man with CBD is so sad. He is so open about how horrible and cruel the illness is and about how he used to be active and walk as much as possible before diagnosis but couldn’t manage much walking now because of his tiredness and pain. I’m feeling particularly angry at the Winns now.

Embezzlers are a breed of their own.

Thank god for journalists like Chloe H and her colleagues at Tortoise media. I just hope this investigation makes more people to come forward who can shed more light on this, I really hope we can get to the bottom of it - unlikely, but you never know. I really don’t want the Winns/Walkers to get away with the fraud, misery and lies - it’s making me so angry.

I'm intrigued by various comments made by SW in interviews that she wrote TSP based on margin comments written by Moth in the margins of Paddy Dillon's guide to the SWCP. I think that is highly unlikely for several reasons:

• Moth was carrying the guidebook in the pocket of his camo trousers. It would have got drenched during the walk. He is never described in the book as taking notes in the guidebook
• In one interview SW claims that she had originally planned to take an A5 notebook on the walk to make notes, but had decided not to in order to reduce the weight of their backpacks
• however, she contradicts herself in the TSP when she describes Moth writing notes in a notebook in pencil
• the photo attached below shows that SW's comments (it seems to be her handwriting) in the margins of a Paddy Dillon SWCP guidebook which looks pretty pristine. It's pretty obvious from these comments that these were written up afterwards
• There is also what appears to be the bottom of a postcard of the Minack Theatre protruding from the previous page (you can see the writing Murray King (they make postcards and are based in St Ives) and the Minack Theatre logo if you look closely.

So what? Well it suggests to me that TSP wasn't based on notes taken during the walk in the margin of Paddy Dillon's guidebook as claimed by SW on numerous occasions. It was much more likely based on recollections of the walk annotated into a second copy of the SWCP guidebook some 2 years after the walk was completed, massively increasing the likelihood that significant amounts of the walk were embellished.

It is this model. Weighs just under 3kg. It existed in 2013 according to Vango website documents for pole replacements.

I’ve been thinking back to the Belle Gibson case, and what undid her in the end.

I think it was when she started doubling down that not only did she have advanced cancer but she had several different types. That’s when it became really implausible. It also coincided with people reporting her when they never received money that she’d promised to donate to them.

I think the other thing is that BG was quite naive, and the Winns/Walkers are a lot more calculating, which has meant their lies - because we know they have told some whoppers - have generally been just credible enough to believe and/or hard to disprove. It makes me angry that they’ve embezzled people and have not been brought to justice for it. I really hope the full truth about the walk and his illness - whatever that is - comes out in the end and that, if need be, they are taken to court and that they pay for what they’ve done.