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

Back in the day my flatmate absolutely raved about A Child Called It and the sequels. I read them and wondered if all that had happened how he managed to physically survive.

I tried to read the first one and couldn't even get halfway. Cannot understand how people can enjoy reading them. Maybe for the triumph over adversity aspect I don't know but too harrowing for me.

I would imagine that Chloe H and the Observer have unleashed investigations into all the misery memoirs at all the major newspapers, especially as we are now void of any UK political news. So if they weren't entirely true we may soon find out...

What kind of envelope does that to an innocent, scatter-brained woman like yours truly?

Private Eye for your entertainment... part one

...and part two.

Images for part one currently under review

And while I am spamming you with the press, this article from the Grauniad feels quite on the nose in several places:

"the Charity Commission has finished writing its damning report into Ingram-Moore and her husband, Colin. It published the results of its investigation in November last year and found the family had personally benefited from the Captain Tom Foundation, with “serious and repeated” instances of misconduct and mismanagement, as well as “misleading” the public. Ingram-Moore called it “selective storytelling” and said the commission had a “predetermined agenda”."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/22/grifter-guru-hannah-ingram-moore-tiktok-reinvention-inspiration-all

Yes. His father passed away in Criccieth or thereabouts. When he moved there I couldn't say. Not sure about his mother - apparently she died in her 50s (read that somewhere but can't recall where).

Just looking at my 2019 edition of TSP and cross referencing with the OS map. There is a Babbacombe Cliff between Westward Ho! and Peppercombe. They were heading for the stream at Babbacombe but it had dried up. Ray left Moth on the path and went to fetch water from Peppercombe to revive him.

"Ingram-Moore called it “selective storytelling” and said the commission had a “predetermined agenda”.

The brass neck of the woman! Incredible.

Can't help thinking this bit from that Guardian piece is prescient for our salty friends, though:

cancellation culture which, as things stand, seems to mean a few months of criticism before you can forge a new career on the back of all that notoriety and try to connect authentically to the same general public you previously let down.

Maybe RW is revising On Winter Hill as we speak, with an 'even more unflinchingly honest! No really, this time it is' strapline from Penguin.

I have mentioned Belle Gibson and Penguin a few threads back.
A consumer affairs regulator is fining Penguin Australia A$30,000 for publishing a book by Belle Gibson, the wellness vlogger who reportedly lied about having brain cancer.

www.thebookseller.com/news/penguin-australia-fined-belle-gibson-book-328488

I think that may be genuine name sharing between Babbacombe Cliffs and Babbacombe near Torquay on the south coast. There are several beaches called Broadsands around the south west too. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day!

Hi thanks, I stand corrected. This is the good side - we are all learning many things. It is very detailed - I think the guide book must be good, to be fair she does constantly mention Paddy.

I guess the problem is most books don't have wide readership or make much money. The economics of employing a fact checker when you have no idea of whether a book will make an impact probably don't add up.

It's different for newspapers that have a much wider audience and are more likely to be scrutinized.

The A$30,000 fine mentioned by @Animaladina would be cheaper than the cost of an employee to fact check so they possibly just decide to risk it.
This was the article that was by a publisher that goes into it in more depth

The Salt Path revelations should be no surprise to anyone... https://share.google/4EN8UnrXv8deC6Qlu

To me, two well-written 'overcoming difficulties' books are Once in a House on Fire by Andrea Ashworth - an abusive childhood, and Bad Blood by Lorna Sage - an unusual background

Maybe Hannah I-M will interview RW for her new TikTok channel?

Sorry Animaladina - I hadn’t made the connection!

"true to my memory ... My memory is still what I wrote."

Sounds a bit like Prince Harry and Spare - not known to be accurate even for things like the QMother's death.

The photos from SW's IG feed (there's one of SW in Grant's meadow) and numerous snaps of the walk which have appeared alongside various articles, together with her assertion that they walked between 2 and 10 miles a day (depending on the weather, how they felt etc) based on notes written in pencil in the margins of the guidebook by Moth (perhaps subsequently reannotated in a second copy of Paddy Dillon's guide to the SWCP) I can largely accept.

What I find much more hard to believe is that somehow SW managed to transcribe verbatim many of the conversations and thoughts that she had at various stages during the walk as she wrote TSP some 2-3 years after the walk was completed. I suspect a hell of a lot of 'reimagining' has gone on and that a huge number of the incidents described in the book have been massively embellished.

So when you add this to the deliberate distortion of the origins of the house repossession and the CBD diagnosis in 2013, then in my book, TSP is, as the Observer claims, based on a web of fabrication,deceit, falsehoods and downright lies.

@Iwrotesomething thank you! ‘Mistaken for Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath’…lol.

I imagine that it will be an updated version with a massive afterword about how weally howwible people have been. To cash in on the scandal.

Actually I would watch that. Possibly with sunglasses for all the brass necks that would be on display.

It really does.
It absolutely fascinates me where this line of thought that if we believe we remember it so therefore it must be true ends (if that makes sense).

I remember that I've definitely read Pride & Prejudice, David Copperfield and Harry Potter but sadly not TSP but if my memory also tells me that I wrote them then do I just expect people to take that as a fact.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.....

Siblings can have very different experiences of childhood. Christina Crawford, daughter of Joan, was criticised by 2 younger siblings who denied the abuse she wrote about in 'Mommie Dearest'. But they were quite a bit younger and weren't around for much of what Christina described and she was at boarding school when they were still young. Its quite possible the twins were treated reasonably.

My younger sister had a completely different experience of our parents: wasn't beaten up or sexually abused but me and my other 2 siblings were. But all 3 call me a liar about abuse. The 2 fellow victims can't deal with it and it's easier to blame me, which our parents encouraged. It's quite a common experience in families where there's abuse.

It does happen.

They were on the ER at Criccieth from 2012.

There was a couple with the same name elsewhere in Gwynedd from 2008 (NB same name doesn't always = same person, of course).

(And no, I haven't paid out any money to get this info, despite what someone on Reddit may type/believe!)