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?
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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?
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husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
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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?
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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 certainly hope that CH is going over those letters with the neurologists she consulted before writing her first article.
And hopefully also about those passages in the books that describe the diagnostic process, symptoms etc because there are things in there that look odd to me.

Another poster has worked out that the actual tenant farmer was probably an uncle of RW's mother. Which would make sense of the Winns living in the farmhouse alongside the tenant (which electoral roll info suggests was the case). But either way, RW seems to have misrepresented the truth by implying that her parents had the tenancy - which doesn't seem to have been the case. I guess the difference between 'the farmland I grew up on, where my great uncle was the tenant' and 'my parents' farmland' is a fine one, but it's still a misrepresentation to my mind.

Let us know if any of us can help, in any way .....?

It would depend on the type of tenancy agreement and the Agricultural Holdings Act was reviewed in 1986 which was supposed to see greater security of tenure.
The tenancy could have passed to a daughter although it was fairly unusual.
I wonder if her parents saw Tim as ‘a fly by night’, an old fashioned term for an untrustworthy fellow. Moth by name, moth by nature.

English tenant farming laws are primarily governed by two key acts: the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 and the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995. The 1986 Act mainly applies to tenancies created before September 1, 1995, while the 1995 Act, which introduced Farm Business Tenancies (FBTs), applies to those created after that date. These laws aim to balance the rights and responsibilities of both landlords and tenant farmers, particularly concerning rent, improvements, and succession.

Just going back to the ferry conversation upthread.

I know these boats and their pick up / drop off points and I just do not understand how the ‘stuck in the mud’ thing could have happened.

If it was summer, she could be referring to ‘The Pig’ which runs from Barbican to Cawsand, or the Cremyll ferry that does Barbican to Royal William Yard to Cremyll (Mount Edgcumbe).

(Outside the summer season the Cremyll ferry only runs between RWY and Cremyll and I don’t think SW and TW can have been at RWY because that’s the other side of the city from the main shopping area and the university.)

Anyway, at none of these moorings would there be a chance of the boat getting stuck in mud. Barbican and RYW have deep water harbours with stone walls. Cawsand is a small sandy cove. Cremyll has a slipway. It makes no sense and as a local I have never ever heard of these boats getting stuck anywhere like SW describes.

The Cremyll ferry runs from Admiral's Hard in Stonehouse again now they've fixed the slipway.

Yes, right by RWY. I catch it to work quite often from Cremyll.

Re our timeline: 1994/95 - Sally and Tim Walker sell house in Staffordshire, leave jobs, move to rented house in Criccieth (BBC)
I've looked into this.

Moth's grandfather was a contract plasterer who lived in a modest terraced house in Burton. He had a son and daughter. The son (Moth's dad) followed his father into the plastering business. He seems to have taken over the business when his dad died in 1973 (his funeral was very well attended, and he seems to have been well-respected).

Moth's parents lived in a 5-bed detached house - I don't know whether or not they owned it. Perhaps Moth worked for the business as a plasterer, although I have no evidence that this was the case.

Anyway, in 1994 the Inland Revenue presented a petition to wind up the company, presumably because it was unable to meet its tax bill. By this stage, Moth's dad would have been almost 60. A tax demand is perhaps a common reason for companies to go bust? The company seems to have continued to trade at least until 1997, as there was a further winding up order in that year.

That might explain why Moth found himself jobless in 1994/5, as the company could no longer afford to employ him (assuming he did indeed work for his dad.)
(Companies go bust all the time, and there's no suggestion at all that Sally was the bookkeeper, before anyone adds two and two to make five 😁)

Both Admiral’s Hard (where the Cremyll ferry lands for RWY) and the Marina / Basin (where the Barbican ferry lands for RWY) are deep water inlets. Point being - no mud!

Interesting!

So maybe he was suddenly jobless, she didn't have a job anyway according to her account, and they quickly sold their house (which they had been renovating), and left for Wales.

Is this the part from ch20, p253 in my copy? They're waiting to catch the last ferry from the Barbican to Mount Edgecumbe. The incoming ferry skipper says there won't be another tonight, and of the expected ferry:

'Stuck on a sandbank. Misjudged the tide, d'in'e. He's going nowhere tonight'

Or is mud mentioned somewhere else?

It makes more sense than "we fled because a child got out of the house and it didn't feel safe". Escapee kids are an occurance so common that half the country would be on the move if everyone upped sticks whenever it happened.

Must be, yes. Another poster upthread mentioned mud but must mean sand bank.

Either way there are no sand banks at Barbican or Mount Edgcumbe. Or anywhere within Plymouth Sound / River Tamar where those boats pass.

Also - if it’s the Barbican > RWY > Cremyll link ferry - there’s only one boat, which makes a nonsense of her claim that the incoming skipper was reporting the next ferry being stuck.

The direct Barbican > Cremyll ferry didn’t start operating until 2017 as far as I know.

Thanks for this. I thought that apart from a few diehard fans, most people have pretty much accepted the Observer story as factual and don't believe SW at all. I noticed an interesting exchange in the comments involving the poster called Boots who reports they met Raymoth in Polruan, after TSP was published. Apparently, they all had a nice chat, and TW said that he was lecturing at the university. This was the time when he would have been a student - more embellishment? And Boots reports that SW was indeed 'guarded'. It was TW who was the chatty one.

So it’s he who’s the pathological (?) liar and she who has to keep on covering up/explaining away his lies!? Maybe this explains EVERYTHING.

Any chance you could post a screenshot of that comment, please? I'm not on Facebook so I can't access that page - it always demands you log in.

It's an interesting thought, isn't it? He's the one who seems to have blagged his way into the paid gardening position at PyR, and has given the earlier journalist the impression of having a Botany degree. And it was TW who told Bill that he only had 2 months to live. And told JI the story about feeling suicidal, amongst other things. And told Ros H about how his wife had lost her job as a bookkeeper in Abersoch.

None of that explains SW stealing, of course, but it looks as though he's quite the storyteller himself when he wants to be.

Can every discrepancy be traced back to a comment or action made by Moth?

• Bill Cole comment
• JI suicidal comment
• child escaping onto road
• Sally from Gwynedd originally
• botany degree
• french property
• Investment in childhood friend’s property business
• Gangani- TW is director
• symptoms
• lecturer!?

Is SW run ragged in the ‘00s trying to keep up with TW’s lies to friends and family, so she ends up stealing thousands from her employer so he doesn’t get found out as a braggart/liar? Grandiose??

Does this work?

He certainly seems to be the one who blags his way into things. But stealing from her employer ….its such a massive thing, would she have gone that far just to cover for him?

They're both pathological liars.

Well suited to each other.

Yes, thank you! I do try not to ask for too much copying over, but I did want to see that. Very interesting idea that his habit of embellishing the truth could be a bigger part of the problem than we realised.

Pt 2 of Boots' comments

Family business established in Burton-upon-Trent, UK, for over 65 years. Now based in south west France and operating in the UK and France, E M Walker offers expert advice on restoration and undertakes all aspects of traditional and modern plastering from period houses to new builds

Plastering
E M Walker, Building & Restoration
2012 - Present 13 years
xxxx , France

Plastering
M A Walker Plastering
1995 - Present 30 years
UK / France

With thanks to @mycatismyworld - who described some lovely work on a pigeonnier, all very specialised stuff - for the above LinkedIn information from a family member of TW. I won't post the link, first names or location.