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
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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
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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 was just on FB going through the comments to that Bookseller article.
There seems to be a backlash brewing - lots of people calling it a witch hunt, some apparently under the assumption it's all about whether they did the walk completely or not, which you might get from the title.
Fans of SW being enraged how unkind the Observer and Chloe H are.
Others defending the original investigation.
In between relatives of people with CBD describing the pain those lies have caused 😢

https://www.facebook.com/100063613721005/posts/pfbid03PDCJsxT7A2MuCPvDBon7X3Fska1eCqwW9RCDYSDZp7DNitdH8CLE8kAwkuePP1Tl/?app=fbl

Re wording of medical letters:

"Under review" is the normal parlance when you have a patient who has regular follow-up appointments for the same condition to check on progression, treatment etc etc. The doctor is reviewing the patient; the patient is under review.

Patronising language - well, "charming gentleman" etc is a bit, isn't it! I think that nowadays doctors tend to be a little less flowery in their letters to each other. Also, of course, everyone has different styles of writing. I personally wouldn't even clock this, never mind read anything into it.

"Despite" (etc) - I think this is probably just clumsy. Again, I wouldn't read anything into this - I can't say if others would.

Semi-secret codes that doctors use between each other? How very dare you 🤐😂 Many years ago, there was no right for a patient to read their records and you should see some of the plain speaking used in old hospital letters! Now that copies of letters are cc'd to the patient, everyone is very much more circumspect. There are always ways to phrase things when you want to imply something without spelling it out, of course.

That 2019 letter reads to me as though it's been written by someone who is so used to medical jargon and parlance that they've forgotten how to parse a simple sentence. As I said, it's clumsy and clunky. My understanding however of the second half of the first para is that the consultant is rethinking the diagnosis, but in the absence of any confirmatory tests (maybe none is available), hasn't got a firm alternative diagnosis to offer.

But TW was clearly not terminally ill at that point!

Thank you for sharing this. Ray looks very tense at end re: pressure from publishers, hands in hair & binning most of her writing so really up against deadline

Also struck me how the sick & terminal had all written to her finding love & space in hearts for Raymoth despite own situation. Also that the clouds can be curative for us just as they are for plants.

Why clearly not terminally ill? Written differently?

I wonder if SW suffers from 'imposter syndrome'?

@User14March If someone was terminally ill you would expect some sort of recognition of that reasonably early in the letter. I'd imagine something along the lines of, "sadly, symptoms are progressing and I have warned Mr W and his family of the likely next stages. I have referred them to the palliative care team for further input". (Clearly this is just something off the top of my head but it makes it clear what's happening).

@mauvishagain
Thank you for the explanation!
Just one other observation: both the 2015 and 2019 letters mention something about genetic testing/a possible monogenetic condition, but somehow that seems never to have been followed up until 2025.
If I was walking around with unexplained symptoms and an unclear diagnosis for years, I would jump at any opportunity that might solve that mystery. Just saying...

I think I would too, not least because it might help my children to know if they were at risk of having inherited something.

But not everyone chooses to have genetic testing, especially when you're talking about incurable diseases, and of course everyone has the right to make that decision for themselves.

That's interesting, @TheBookShelf -- I was looking at the bit in TWS where she walks from her mother's garden onto what she represents as their own former farmland. She does first describe the cottages where the estate workers had lived (the carpenter, the plumber, the gardener, the gamekeeper etc), and then looks down at the house she says she grew up in, which she says is the original estate house before a new hall was built in the 18thc, leaving the old one to become 'just a large faded farmhouse.' (Which isn't what the rather flash Dunstall Estate website says, but anyway...)

She describes the house as a 'perfectly proportioned face of five windows and a Georgian entrance with polished steps', which fits a photo of one of the tenanted properties the estate rents out, but which would, even if it's clearly been gussied up in more recent years, looks like quite a substantial property for a herdsman to have been living in?

@AldoGordo AldoGordo · 29/07/2025 12:40
Could anyone with access or memory of Landlines please let me know if Raymoth climbed Suilven or merely skirted it? Also, I'd like to know what is said, if anything, about Moth's health or physical ability at this stage of their trip. I'm looking into something...

At 7.21 she describes how they didn't climb it.
They had an epic exploration of the land - and not just a walk across it. (of course, silly me).

Bing Videos

@mauvishagain , please could you explain what this means:

Today’s eye examination is very strongly suggestive of a cerebral disorder rather than myelopathy, radiculopathy, or neuropathy.

thank you!

Oof, you're pushing a non-neurologist here --

Cerebral disorder -- something wrong within the main part of the brain, the cerebral hemispheres

Myelopathy, radiculopathy, neuropathy - problems with the nerves themselves or with their protective coating (myelin)

Different neurological problems can affect the neurological system at different levels - in the brain, in the nerves that exit the brain directly, in nerves further away (eg in the limbs). It's important to try to localise the source of the problem so that you can then start to produce a list of possible causes. So here the neurologist is saying that this problem, whatever it is, is arising within the brain rather than along the nerves that lead to the brain.

Agree. I've found a picture of the farmhouse/old hall too and it's substantial. Don't know, perhaps it was very run down then and they were happy for any employee to occupy just to keep it heated and in use.

I do think though that this is potentially another seam of exaggeration and self aggrandisement. Herdsman does not = tenant farmer.

In TWS she describes the slamming down of his letter refusing the continuation of the tenancy as quite a pivotal moment for both her parents, and for the relationship that she had with them. It may be th frustrated novelist within her wishing she’d been the child of that man, it’s quite a romantic figure, isn’t it? I’m almost reminded of Flora Poste (anyone else love Cold Comfort Farm??).

( @mauvishagain thank you!)

Maybe. The estate is certainly a glossily run enterprise now, with a stud, different herds and sheep, cattle and goats, including pedigrees, haulage, various businesses, a shoot, and a fairly extensive property portfolio, including some let out for filming or event hire. I can easily believe it may not have been so under previous owners, though.

It does make the sadness about her father not being able to pass on the tenancy more mysterious though, if he wasn't in fact a tenant farmer at all. Could it have been her childhood misunderstanding -- did she think her father did own the land, and was shocked to find he didn't? Surely not. It seems like an odd thing to invent and to present as a key moment of sadness in her childhood, to the point where she finds the letter again in her dying mother's house. And makes her parents' main complaint about Moth, that he had no land, even odder.

Especially as this is the sequel to the bestseller. She knows by the time she writes this that she has a big readership.

I definitely feel TWS would be improved by the inclusion of cows called Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless.

I've just found a very interesting piece of info that casts doubt on when they did the walk and/or the continuity of it. I'm not ready to divulge I'm afraid but I will follow it up and report back when it's clearer. I may also contact CH.

Nice work: sounds intriguing

I ant to re read Cold Comfort Farm now

I'd say definitely contact CH..

It could also be another example of feeling like the poor relation, if her mum's uncle was the farm owner.

But I don't follow why she stopped writing because the tenancy wasn't being passed on? Surely more reason to find a new career?Also, she was 12 when she found the letter, her sister would have been 17, so wouldn't the tenancy have gone to her sister?

Sure, but when somebody might benefit from having a specific diagnosis, they might not be super-motivated to seek out evidence to the contrary.
As might be true in this case.

I wrote to her this week with what I considered possibly important evidence and she answered really quickly, so she is approachable via mail.

Bit of an existential question.

If PRH say/do nothing in relation to the current TSP controversy and if SW also adds nothing to her rebuttal statement, what are the chances that TSP retains its legendary status and continues to generate decent sales as it morphs from an unflinchingly honest tale of redemption to a work of fiction based on the genre of Rachel Joyce's 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry"?

The current controversy acts as an effective 'health warning' and readers can draw their own conclusions about its veracity and messages.

Where this leaves SW is anybody's guess. She appears to be running out of long distance UK walks which begs the question, what next? Every author has a shelf life. Who now remembers travel writers like Tim Severin (The Brendan Voyage etc)?

If I understand correctly, @RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays said that the tenant farmer was Sally Walker's great-uncle on her mother's side. Perhaps she spent a lot of time in his house growing up (Sunday lunch, family birthdays, Christmas and Easter, etc). And then, when she came to writing, literarily appropriated it to make it her childhood home, replacing what was probably a less grand herdsman's cottage.

Which in turn also gets me to wondering if she appropriate bits her mother's history, or perhaps a cousin? Perhaps it was the uncle who objected to his niece, SW's mother, marrying a herdsman. And perhaps it was a cousin (or even SW's mother, if there were no children) who expected to inherit the tenancy only to be denied.