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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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?

Sounds v intriguing. Look forward to the update with interest.

I've always found TSP very unbalanced. For me the section from Minehead to Polruan (380 miles) in Aug-Oct 2013 is the essence of the book (p1-p202). The walk from Poole (p221-p270) back to Polruan (250 miles) seems almost like a postscript with nowhere near as much incident or description and 15 pages in the company of Dave and Julie. I wonder if that section took place much later and not from July-Sept 2014.

Clearly if the first section (Minehead to Polruan) didn't take place in one continuous period of time, yes that would imo torpedo even more of it's 'integrity' and leave an insubstantial shell of a book.

I get the sense that the eldest of the Walker boys (Moth) was always a bit of drifter and a dreamer whereas the younger brother is the one who has knuckled down and take up the mantle of the family's plastering business and his children (inc the naval architect) seem to have flourished.

Until the breakthrough moment of TSP being published to critical acclaim in 2018, RayMoth may have lived in the shadow of the elder brother and his family but since then the roles may have reversed until the Observer revelations a month ago.

The French chateau owning brother seems to be unwilling to wash the dirty family linen in public (no comment to the DM) and the naval architect nephew has gone quiet.

😂😂😂😂👌👌

I think you’re on the money here. Moth’s careful to keep dramatic claims off the record it seems & Ray is coming in for all the criticism. NB: the audio interview someone posted re: JI. Moth had lost the ability to read, until he read to the crowds with Beowulf. Allegedly. All down to power of the walk. He was often in terrible pain & Ray had to massage him all the time etc. JI quite detailed here. It all feels almost planned with Ray as spokesperson sticking to a script.

A PP posted link to comments from bookseller article. Apparently locals who knew Martin Hemmings all thought this might eventually come out. Despite NDAs it seems people knew. Also partners & carers of those with this disease felt maybe there should have forced those afflicted to walk.

With an emphasis on the flora of marshes perhaps.

My late DH could read Anglo Saxon/Old English (not perfectly but not bad) He said it's a great language but at its best if you want to describe slaughtering 200 people in a mead hall. Not so much about nature writing!

The Beowulf translation TimMoth had and read from publically is a strange addition to all this, feels like a forced coincidence. I'm pretty certain it is the Seamus Heaney, who coincidentally died while they and Simon A were on the SWCP. Simon knew Seamus very well, was extremely upset and his wife actually came down to be with him for a night because of it.

There are very interesting views above about TimMoth and I am very inclined to believe that some of the madcap and grandiose behaviour was much driven by him with SalRay enabling it. Not a folie a deux (which is a rare psychiatric condition of course) but something a bit like it, somehow.

@Uricon2 that’s v impressive re: your late DH,

I think you’re right. Moth was ‘madcap’ from get go with dipped mars bar in tea. :)

Those like Moth often have the smitten in their wake, yet he seems never to have had another relationship as far as we know (?)

I think such people need someone to hero worship them and Salray clearly fell for him very hard when very young. I think that a more mature and confident person might have valued their own survival and put the brakes on unwise behaviour, certainly not colluded with it. Him being ill would have meant she was really "needed" by him and I wonder what she got from that, if she had felt in his charming shadow for decades.

From the little we've seen he certainly comes across (IMO) as the most personable but that doesn't mean very much.

While having no little sympathy for the duo, I have to wonder whether they're reading this stuff while holed up. There can be precious little else to do. Unless of course SW is banging out another book.

As the threads ending soon and it won't clutter a new one, I've been musing on the whole weird SA/TimMoth "mistaken identity" thing.

SA is very much of my generation, couple of weeks younger than me in fact and I've known a lot of guys a bit like he seems to be. Blokey in a benign way, fond of a pint of real ale and some sports (and walking) but also thoughtful, open minded and able to take the piss out of themselves. SA has a geography degree and worked as a probation officer, very, very "ordinary" background. He's also (IMO because it is very subjective) a poet of huge ability. Some of his work has moved me to tears (Out of the Blue about 9/11; On Miles Platting Station; The Patriarchs-An Elegy, which was written for the death of Prince Philip but is really a tribute to a generation, as a very few examples) There were a few sneers when he became PL because he really wanted the job, but is that a bad thing? It needs to be someone who actually does want it and is able to do it, with a solid body of work behind them and he fitted the bill.

I wonder if TimMoth , who is very much the same age, with his dandy tastes and intellectual aspirations but in reality so many gaps and inconsistencies, actually would like to be someone like SA but doesn't have the drive, stickability and talent. There is nothing wrong with being a master plasterer (great skill) or liking tweed waistcoats, or being into botany but these things don't make him stand out special. I sense someone who feels life owed him more than it has delivered into his lap (until recently) and it just doesn't work like that.

Please ignore if utterly off piste!

I hadn’t understood from book, does film make more of this (?), that Moth was in so much physical pain he couldn’t lift his rucksack at times & required hours of massage to ease. ‘He was in physical & emotional agony’. JI interview. Also his memory loss so Ray, ‘her memory is pretty fabulous’, has to tell JI about some physical disabilities etc. He couldn’t use his fingers & leg dragging intermittently. Maybe worse then?

He was able to share a huge amount of how he felt. He did share in front of Ray for first time suicidal ideation about ‘dashing himself on rocks’ & jumping off cliffs’. Film ‘was documenting a time when they could not talk to each other & the disgrace they felt’.

JI interview again: ‘Tell me one thing from all your possessions we can fit in car as we can only fit one thing in’ apparently said to adult kids. ‘They hid their shame at losing their children’s future’. ‘He was sitting in the library when he called his daughter and said I don’t know what to do. I can’t take the books. She said ‘stand up & walk out Dad. Have you got a book in your hand? ‘Yes, I’ve got Beowulf.’ Take Beowulf, turn around & walk
out. Just walk out’.

His memory went but not only that his ability to read...and focus on words on page. The moment where he reads in public was huge to them as he couldn’t read up until that point. Until he stood up & read in public he’d not been able to read. Who knows where the mystery & magic came from to reverse his condition’.

She never mentions in TSP that Moth had lost the ability to read, does she?

I mentioned main character syndrome earlier. It’s not a clinical diagnosis but it’s generally understood now to be the type of character you describe. It fits with the exceptionalism: both Moth and RW seem to view everyone else as some sort of supporting cast whose role is simply to reflect how ‘special’ they themselves are. Rather than telling an honest account, they’ve developed a fictional narrative to present themselves as they’d like others to see them.

@Uricon2 I think you might well be right. Whilst I do think Moth is unwell it has crossed my mind they planned TSP very carefully to make money. Clearly they have skeletons in cupboards so they needed to get stories straight ahead of time & who said what etc. When film in offing even more so. In the spirit of capitalist 80s ‘I’ve got the brains you’ve got the looks let’s make lots of money…You can see I’m single-minded, I know what I can be, how’d you feel about it? Come on take a walk with me’. :) Pet Shop Boys.

Moth very well read & erudite, Ray a decent enough writer, especially on nature. The first book seeded the idea etc. It worked, if so. It does’t make sense TSP was originally intended for Moth’s eyes only.

Now going to invest in Simon’s poems. Thank you for outlining - sound very good.

She goes into very little detail, sometimes mentioning helping him on with his rucksack. On this train of thought I’m riding, that would make sense- leave it to him to tell people what he suffers, because either she’s respecting his privacy, or he has to invent his own script and can’t stick to a story she makes up for him.

All along these threads I’ve had the feeling that there’s a lot more to him and to the relationship than is shown in the books. I see him as a master manipulator, possibly grandiose narcissist, and she does everything she possibly can to keep him and keep him happy.

A question for anyone who has seen the film - did it include anyone who is talked about in the book, such as Dave and Julie, the tortoise prophesy man, or the Australians who eat big cooked breakfasts?

I don’t think so, JI flags in interview hard to document these subtleties.

An article in the Guardian today about the future direction of nature writing.

The end of the road? What The Salt Path scandal means for the nature memoir | Publishing | The Guardian https://share.google/Ix1wzv9THQAVOUPtP

Well, there’s certainly a basis for that in the text. The first time Moth mentions studying, at Polly’s, it’s in the context of not being able to do a physical job any more, but that he’s got ‘so many skills’ to pass on. The immediate context (renovating the meat packing shed) would have suggested teaching construction, but that’s the conversation that leads to the idea of doing the Eden Project/Plymouth degree and then doing a postgrad teaching qualification. Which suggests he was thinking of his horticultural skills.

Which all seems pretty illogical to me in a man who isn’t expecting to live long enough to qualify, far less teach, but I suppose this is in the context of a book where the natural response to a terminal diagnosis and having your house repossessed is to embark on a 600- mile walk when one of you can barely move.

Interesting article in the Guardian today

.. edited because I have just seen same link posted above

What makes you wonder that final section was done much later?

I was sceptical that the Plymouth onwards section had been done at all. The evidence from yesterday re: the ferry. They then camp for a week at Freathy without needing more supplies (there is a Co-Op down the country road in Millbrook),

It's not online yet but the new Tom Gauld cartoon ' Doubts Cast on Another Beloved Inspirational Tale ' (Jack and Jill) in the Culture section of today's Guardian is very funny and most definitely references TSP ..

My feeling on reading was that that part of the journey was an appendix to the main book. There was none of the tension and sense of not having a home that the first part had, and it did feel extra to the main narrative arc. Of course that fits with the official story, because they had a plan at that point and the prospect of the student loan, so it makes sense. But if we consider it in light of the alternative scenario that’s come out, it looks and feels to the reader a bit more like a holiday or a ‘filling in the gaps’ walk that could have been anywhere. As pp mentioned, there’s very little description and it feels a bit rushed to get them to Polruan and the meeting with Anna so they can get the flat.

I’ve felt the same. Moth would appear to be almost carefully ‘offline’ & off the record (?) for the most extreme comments. Eg. Not making Christmas/suicidal ideation/not being able to read until epiphany with Beowulf etc. Going to shops when Paxman alike journo knocks. Maybe cynical & possibly he didn’t want to reveal for privacy reasons the extreme issues faced (?) Memory loss & forgetting where you are in sentence understandably difficult. Ray very much the fall guy for all this fall out & their fallen status. I believe Moth to be genuinely ill this said. The light falling on the walking book, Beowulf magnetising to his hand in the library & becoming talismanic in its ability to help Moth read again.

In light of what you said Ray’s rebuttal might be interesting. (?).The part where she says Moth is devastated that all think he manufactured his illness…She’s failed here then, if that’s what everyone thought & any ‘manipulation’ going on. I might have said in her position ‘I can see why others might question…it’s an unusual presentation & our hearts go out to all afflicted by this terrible disease’. Or something like that.