Thread 11: 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/amibeingunreasonable/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/amibeingunreasonable/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/amibeingunreasonable/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/amibeingunreasonable/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/amibeingunreasonable/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/amibeingunreasonable/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/amibeingunreasonable/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?
Thread 10 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/amibeingunreasonable/5378984-thread-10-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 - 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 ten 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.

No saltiness. Keep to the path.

Does stolen fudge taste better?

There was something about a scan or test for dopamine levels though. Depleted? Not sure if that is diagnostic or not.

Parkinsons is associated with depleted dopamine levels. It damages the part of the brain which makes dopamine, I believe. (Happy to be corrected by our Medical Correspondent.) There are diseases which share features of PD but aren’t PD. I’m guessing this may apply to TW, BUT (and this is where I would need @mauvishagain to correct me if I am spreading misinformation) I seem to remember that someone on an earlier thread said that the eye movements thing mentioned in that letter is also seen in ADHD; and I also believe that low dopamine is a feature of ADHD. Could those two results mentioned in the letter come from having ADHD? Then the other symptoms described in the books and the migraine type symptom mentioned in the letter would need an alternative explanation.

How common is it for someone to fake a neurological condition? How difficult are they normally to come up with a differential diagnosis? I agree with most of what @Fandango52 said.

But I can’t remember why I wrote 16 sept and not any of the other days it was on that week.

the website says 16-21 sept As you say

I take it to be neither. Rather, I read it as a "joke" aimed for who will be reading the review: professional medics and academics. To explain, scientific papers (studies) are usually cited as "The first author, et al"...so here it seems he's making a joke by putting (et al!) after RW's name.

The video was on the 18/09/2013

To all who have wondered why Jason Isaacs seemed so deeply emotionally attached to TW, and how he might be feeling now:
In this interview from 2 months ago he describes how TW told him that he had been suicidal at the beginning of the walk and considered jumping off the path on to the rocks below - something he had never told anyone before, not even his loving wife...
I suppose that sort of conversation does create an emotional bond. Maybe similar to the conversation TW had with Bill Cole?
It's shortly after minute 9.
www.listennotes.com/podcasts/popcorn-podcast/jason-isaacs-interview-the-LVS7mFlWORc/

Which ‘questions’ one wonders (?) Also they may have given Raymoth the chance to put their minds at rest in private as would be right & proper (?) Sounds like they didn’t and/or Raymoth couldn’t answer their questions. Did they have prior doubts?

Gosh that’s horrible. That must have been really upsetting for JI to hear.

Updated timeline coming later this evening...

Thanks for this. It’s a good interview - JO is so open and engaging to listen to.

@Hyenana Yes, thank you for the radio interview on here. How very upsetting for JI.

I didn't know that it was Timmoth, who made the notes in the guide book, and then Salray wrote it up.

Just WOW at all this. So, Raymoth had to leave their whole library of books behind which Moth loved. He was a ‘human wikipedia’ who recalled all he’d ever read. He had forgotten how to read until he read Beowulf to crowds & that was down to the restorative powers of walking. Beowulf had been only book he rescued from his library…

It does explain why JI was so vociferous on TV about the fact that they'd been 'conned' if he'd been spun a tale of despair turning to hope. V similar to the tale that Bill Cole was told about the 2 months to live.

I hope Chloe H is doing a deep dive of all the media interviews given by the Walker-Winns and by GA and JI to promote the books and film. I’ve no doubt she is 👍

What? I haven't listened to this yet but that's quite the story. How strange that their sorrow at leaving the books behind, and all this, doesn't get a mention in TSP. Instead we get told about repeated remarks that they're old and will have to pay for things etc.

In case it's helpful, I worked out a preliminary (but work-in-progress) timeline of the TSP walk dates based on what's in the book and it placed the 20th Sept as the date they saw the play...that's if the date references to other parts of the walk in the book are to be believed.

That would be very slow going - as they jumped the camp in the morning without paying the guy on a bike. All they then did is meet the American woman looking for David Cornwell - which is so completely unbelievable you couldn't make it up?!
It would be easy to remember the Tater-du lighthouse and the house above it. You can see the charming house from from the coast path....

John Le Carré's spectacular clifftop home in Cornwall has come on to the market | Country Life

Considering the long time TW has been around without showing obvious signs of deteriorating health, I would expect someone was starting to have doubts.
Does anyone know how much time there was between the 1st Observer article and the PSPA statement?
Might give a clue to how many conversations with the Walkers they could have had before making a decision.

It actually makes me really angry that Moth mentioned suicide. It’s such an emotive and upsetting topic, both because most people will either know of someone who took their own life or they themselves may have had suicidal thoughts. We’ll never know if he actually had suicidal thoughts, and if so, why he did - it could’ve been because of his condition, because of the (now proven) deception or because of something else entirely, or all of these things combined. It’s just so emotionally manipulative to mention suicidal ideation in detail to someone you’ve only just met.

His disabilities on TSP also sound far, far worse here than book. Difficult gait, no use of hands sometimes, numbness & Ray having to constantly massage him. JI believed Moth very debilitated indeed. Magic happened & a miracle through blind optimism.

Also picked up on their ‘disgrace’ as JI re-articulated what they’d said. An interesting word.

The Observer broke the story on 5th July and the PSPA released an undated statement shortly after. It was likely published on 6th or 7th July, as a post on 7th July mentions the statement - https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368685-thread-2-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?page=16.

Quite. Have a listen.

Strange that the TSP book describes how they spend the days after the court ruling frantically packing boxes, and the inspiration for the whole trip was a book lying on top of a box full of books, and they later describe how they store their stuff in a friend's barn.
But maybe they just put their whole library into boxes to leave them behind after all. They are not the most organised people.

Medical correspondent checking after a long day of toddler-wrangling.

Not a neurologist. No specialist knowledge. BUT yes, dopamine is reduced in parts of the brain in Parkinson's disease AND in CBD but my understanding (which is incomplete!) is that giving dopamine treament can help in Parkinson's, but not in CBD.

I've no idea re dopamine, ADHD etc. I think an experienced neurologist would be pretty unlikely to mistake ADHD for a rare but very well recognised terminal neurological disease!

Saccadic eye movement such as mentioned in the clinic letter can be normal to a small degree and in some circumstances. Abnormal patterns of them are linked to the possibility of various illnesses (etc). This can be very subtle and you'd really need to be an expert to pick up the variations (and I am not an expert!)

How often do people fake neurological signs? It certainly happens, I've seen it happen in my own consulting room. But also, functional neurological disease is not uncommon - and people are not then consciously faking symptoms, but symptoms are more likely to be a sign of subcoscious turmoil and often don't follow typical well-recognised patterns of disease.

But faking neuro symptoms - ie, making up a story and saying that you have numbness, or weakness, or some sort of sensory loss -- I'm sure that is far from uncommon. No-one can get inside you and know what you're really feeling so you can say what you like! Again, a neurologist's skill will be to marry the symptoms (ie what the patients says) with the signs (ie any abnormalities that can be found when the patient is examined).

There is no proof whatsoever (that I'm aware of, from the letters) that there was any suggestion of TW faking anything when he saw the neurologist.

Something else I want to say, but in a different vein, so I'll start a new posting.

Apologies if this has already been shared (I can't keep up!) - an update from The Bookseller. Paywalled for me, but perhaps someone else has access?

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/the-salt-path-further-revelations-to-come-about-people-and-places-visited-on-walk

The other comment I wanted to make refers to disappearing IG posts (a few pages ago now but one of the little ones that I've been looking after is OBSESSED with my phone and I can't even take it out of my bag for the hours that I'm with him, so apologies for being late to that party!)

I drew attention a while back to a video from April 2024 that showed TW walking easily along the Thames Path, twirling an umbrella. And I can't see that video on SW's IG any more.

(Hi Sal, if you're reading! 😁)