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?

I've actually wondered if the PSPA themselves was acting irresponsibly in taking on TW as an ambassador, thereby lending him public credibility, even though his whole health history was so dubious. Do they do any checking of diagnosis?
But maybe he had already contacted them as a patient in 2015 as suggested by the doctor in the published letter, so was already established there before his wife became a famous author, so they felt no need to check him again.

I think RW said the 2013 has (conveniently) gone missing. But Moth can request a copy…. If there is a 2013 letter which confirms a terminal diagnosis then it sorts out that issue, but of course there’s still the embezzlement to addess…

Yes I see what you mean. The ferry to Edgcumbe country park doesn't leave from Barbican and she implies that that's where they waited for the ferry.

However I still can't see how they could get to Edgcumbe country park on the bus. However I'm not local and am relying on Google for my information. Happy to be corrected.

Exactly. Unless a 2013 letter or evidence is revealed, I will never believe their word that it's true, no matter how much they say it. The onus is on them to prove it, however "grotesque" and intrusive that might seem.

Where did she say this? I never read that in her statement.

I once worked for someone who was as confusing as SW as far as facts/timelines etc were concerned. The confusion always served his purposes/made him look heroic/like a victim due to his own good nature. He was in a position of trust but he didn't act in a trustworthy manner, again, always manipulating facts and timelines to his advantage. He was part of (or mainly the whole cause of) several people's lives being ruined. He would blab about very personal and sensitive details of one person's life to other people, again to get him 'caring capital'! He was in charge of an institution and he would use people below him to spread gossip and untruths - again, always to his advantage. Nothing was EVER his fault. Fortunately (for him) the financial controller was found out as an embezzler. He was very quick to use this as a shield for his own and much greater, financial dodginess. I was torn between thinking whether he was just intellectually challenged, although very charming and 'went a long way', or damaged in some way which meant this was how he related to people. He had the sort of charm which meant people trusted him, thought highly of him and forgave his mistakes as 'just being him'. Eventually. I left my job, because I couldn't bear the deceit any longer.

I have no idea what processes the PSPA use to check the background of their ambassadors, but I doubt they have clear proof of his diagnosis given they have now publicly distanced themselves.

Jason Issac who is vegan was told this on the set. I was commenting on Jason being interviewed.

@crossedlines
I think this might be a misundestanding. A PP wrote about a hypothetical statement that SW might cook up to defend herself, and there was something like this in there.
I don't remember SW saying anything like that, or ever explaining why she provided that particular selection of doctor's letters to support her claims.

You can catch a bus and nearly 2 hours later you reach Cremyll, via the Torpoint ferry and several villages.

Plymouth has one of the most scenic bus routes in the UK - Plymouth Live

70 bus, route in blue, buses are shown on the ferry and going towards/away from Cremyll.
.

Between April and November they could have caught the Cawsand ferry from the Barbican, but obviously that's further along the coast, and also served by the 70 bus.

But TSP carefully doesn’t make any medical claims. The legal team will have been all over it, from the initial scene of the diagnosis where TW represents the consultant as saying it’s not a firm diagnosis because it can only be confirmed at autopsy to check it’s not making claims beyond ‘walking seems to have improved Moth’s condition, it’s not clear why’. (Just talking about TSP here, not what sounds like much larger scale claims about brain scans in LL.)

Again, many readers clearly think TSP did make medical claims, and again, I’m not minimising for a moment their experience, and particularly not the distress of readers suffering from disabling neurological conditions or their families, but the book holds back from making explicit claims and there’s a very clear disclaimer which says that (1) ‘the author has stated to the publisher that ‘the contents of this book are true’, except insofar as details have been changed to protect others’ privacy, (ie, we are not claiming the contents of this book are true, only that the author has signed a contract saying they are) and that (2) ‘any medical information in this book is based on the author’s person experience and should not be relied on as a substitute for professional advice.’

Finally, ‘the author and publishers disclaim, as far as the law allows, any liability arising directly or indirectly, from the use, or misuse, of any information contained in this book.’

Basically, the legal responsibility for whether this book is true is on the author, not her publisher, no one should think Moth’s improvement is a claim that other people would benefit from long-distance walking, and if you have a degenerative condition, try to walk a LD trail and deteriorate or die, the author and publisher disclaim any responsibility in law.’

Do we have any information on the Dal y Dir story? The only thing I can find is this

https://americymru.net/ceri-shaw/group_discuss/57/how-not-to-dal-dy-dir-by-izzy-wyn-thomas-archived-material#:~:text=This%20is%20a%20stunningly%20powerful,poverty%20and%20wealth%20in%20Britain.

I keep thinking about the nephews' statement and the brothers' novel...

Gangani was set up at the same time as Martyn Walker's novel was published. Presumably they knew about his novel, and I guess Dal y Dir might have been written around the same time.

What intrigues me is that Stopcock is about a man happily living a new life in the (french) countryside, who then must go back to face some kind of 'web of deceit' he left behind in the Midlands. Who is he writing about here?

And Gangani states there is a follow up to Dal y Dir coming, which is something about a long walk. So this idea had been already planned in 2012 or earlier.

'They're pathological liars who've left a trail of destruction behind them'.

I dimly remember some synopsis of Dal Di Dyr mentioning the protagonists arriving in Wales with 'a van full of children'. Assuming they are to represent the Walkers this is weird because they only have two. It's the Stopcock brother who I think has 6.
No idea what that would mean though, if true at all.

Just came across this podcast about TSP - . Not listened to it yet, but may be worth a listen.

A propos of disclaimers generally (and -genuinely- not suggesting that it's relevant to TSP), a Google search suggests that a disclaimer is ineffective if it purports to exclude liability for neglgigence causing personal injury or death.

This is very interesting. I recalled that Moth had been claimed to have been given a definitive terminal diagnosis which formed one half of the emotional hook for TSP. Was there never a claim of definitive terminal diagnosis?

@Hyenana may mean nothing at all, but they feel like loose ends. I think there's a lot more going on within the wider family, but we may never know what. I'd love a sit down with the nephew!

I imagine that is more referring to those ‘Patrons rude at their own risk’ type signs on amusement parks, but said park still obviously being liable if you fall out of their rollercoaster?

On an entirely separate issue — we’ve talked a lot about fudge, but I have always wondered what kind of noodles they were. Can’t be Pot Noodles because they’d be too awkward to carry (and not cheap), but what kind of instant noodles are very cheap, light to carry, and available even in quite small village shops? TW says they left Bude with ‘enough 20p packs of noodles to last a week’, but Bude has supermarkets. I would have thought the very cheapest instant noodles would be own brand in supermarkets or bulk buy shops, or maybe Asian groceries, not necessarily in small village shops where they must have done much of their food shopping?

I’m not in the UK these days. Are 20p noodles readily available?

The extract from the Izzy book sounds remarkably like a bit of TSP where she's coming to terms with losing their home etc.etc. In some ways, fair enough, is she wrote them both, but in other wasys, it's a bit -'meh' if she's uspposed to be describing how she felt at the time but just lifts a description from a previous piece of writing. As far as medical claims go, maybe they didn't make any actual medical claims, but they imply a lot and haven't been straightforward about the when/where/how of Moth's diagnosis. They are actual quite skilled smokescreen weavers. There were parts of the book which I was sceptical about when I read it: walking with tortoises - it's a well know literary technique to put something in which 'joins' the beginning and end of a book, and the wine merchant chap they met. As I said in a previous post, in real life I know people who spin their stories like this!

There’s no claim of a terminal diagnosis in TSP.

In TSP, the doctor says he believes Moth has CBD, but it seems to be very slow progressing, and they can’t be absolutely sure and will only know at post-mortem. Lots of bet-hedging there!

RW then gets very dramatic and says this:
‘The doctor … carried on trying to explain a degenerative brain disease that would take the beautiful man I’d loved since I was a teenager and destroy his body and then his mind as he fell into confusion and dementia, and end with him unable to swallow and probably choking to death on his own saliva. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing they could do about it.’

Moth and RW then double down on Moth’s diagnosis when Moth tells ‘Bill’ - the cider farm owner - that he’s not likely to survive beyond that Christmas (https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/moth-told-me-he-was-dying-when-a-doctor-had-said-his-brain-scan-was-normal), as detailed below:

But in October 2021, Bill says, Moth surprised him with an announcement. “He put his head in his hands and he said : ‘We went to the hospital this week and I’ve been told not to plan beyond Christmas.’

Any evidence for that?!

This is a podcast interview with SW from June that might be interesting for the timeline @FurryHappyKittens regarding her job history.
She describes how she started doing odd jobs as a teenager (no mention of farm work) and then had a job in the fines department of a local magistrates court, taking in fines from people for parking tickets "and some other nonsense" (strangely dismissive wording I thought). Apparently she had no formal training for that job, or as a law clerk, or as a bookkeeper. Also, working in the fines department is an interesting career choice for someone prone to embezzlement...
At the same time she is pregnant with her first child (so around 1988/9) she starts a parallel online course to train for a law degree of all things, which she later has to drop out of when her second child is born and it all becomes too much.
I'm not sure if 'law degree' refers to a university degree or maybe an online course as a law clerk? Anyway, she did not finish it.
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/career-interrupted/e283no-home-no-money-no-plan-URg9c06YKIW/?t=58

Just listening to this, and it is worth a listen.