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Thread 11: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

1000 replies

DisappointedReader · 29/07/2025 15:01

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?

The real Salt Path | The Observer

The real Salt Path | The Observer

<p>The truth behind the blockbuster book and film</p>

https://observer.co.uk/collections/the-real-salt-path

OP posts:
Thread gallery
62
PullTheBricksDown · 02/08/2025 12:19

FurryHappyKittens · 02/08/2025 12:06

I imagine it was really a standard suit from Burtons if it was anything remotely special.

A hand made suit???? Yeah, right!

So he gets a hand made suit, which would cost plenty, but she has a dress bought in the sale? OK 🤔

NoCowardSoul · 02/08/2025 12:19

crossedlines · 02/08/2025 12:01

So Moth ‘glowed in a bright cream suit he’d had made by a local tailor’ at their wedding.

Like a divine radiance? Raynor really seems to think Moth is the Second Coming

Yes, and walked across the water of lochs.😀

User14March · 02/08/2025 12:24

FurryHappyKittens · 02/08/2025 12:14

I can imagine him saying it was a hand made suit...

I'd question the affordability of one at the time.

(Mind you, affordability didn't hold them back later in life!!)

Edited

Quite. The wool waistcoats etc & his look not a cheap one whereas Ray seems to always ‘make do & mend’. Ray might have had him measured up & paid for one going for a last minute cheapo for herself.

I wonder if in prior years she waited on him hand & foot? Although there are flashes of feistiness in her, theirs reminds me of unequal power dynamic relationships I’ve known. One in particular where a man who all thought super handsome would bark at seemingly mousy wife for tea etc. What struck me as odd was she was no pushover, except when it came to him.

User14March · 02/08/2025 12:26

PullTheBricksDown · 02/08/2025 12:19

So he gets a hand made suit, which would cost plenty, but she has a dress bought in the sale? OK 🤔

I can well believe that actually. She’d go without for him to have designer togs IMO.

TheBrandyPath · 02/08/2025 12:28

NoCowardSoul · 02/08/2025 12:18

No, or they’d have been knocking around, and someone would have written about the contents. Which means that PRH had enough advance notice before CH broke the story to not send out any advance copies or even uncorrected proofs for early buzz.

Has CH given a date for when she first contacted RW and PRH? Because it must have been early enough to halt all advance proofs/ early review copies etc. They would normally have been out there by the time the story appeared in The Observer.

In the Observer podcast, she gives the sequence of events - as agreed with her editor - but don't know about dates.

Uricon2 · 02/08/2025 12:29

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.

That's an earworm I don't mind having @User14March 😂

So apposite, it could be the official theme for our pair of blaggers (I'm increasingly convinced that is what they are)

DisappointedReader · 02/08/2025 12:32

Keep calm and eat fudge, Thread 12 is coming. The Timeline is just being added in the first posts then I'll add the link.

Just wondering if @AldoGordo is around to add the Inconsistences at the start too?

OP posts:
User14March · 02/08/2025 12:33

Uricon2 · 02/08/2025 12:29

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.

That's an earworm I don't mind having @User14March 😂

So apposite, it could be the official theme for our pair of blaggers (I'm increasingly convinced that is what they are)

Me too :) They’d have got away with it if it wasn’t for the damn film & tortoise pesky prophecy, journalists etc…maybe.

NoCowardSoul · 02/08/2025 12:35

User14March · 02/08/2025 12:15

Is it same story for later books?

No reference to crappy phones in TWS — one ‘we are charmingly old-fashioned and can’t do modern tech’ reference when Moth says his phone is ‘only for texts and calls’ (so not a smartphone?) when Raynor’s is unable to understand how Twitter works, and has to ask their son, who advises how to follow people. The very first is apparently Bill Cole asking them for a ‘chat’ about this coder farm.

Oh, there is a reference to a ‘photographer’s dream view’ on the Iceland walk, and knowing that she ‘couldn’t possibly capture the scene through the broken lens of an old mobile phone’.

If you were being cynical, you could conclude that her phone appears perfectly efficient until it has to take a walk photo.

In Landlines, someone in the village has downloaded the OP map app onto Moth’s phone, but RW is skeptical, musing about no battery or reception. Lots of references to no reception, but the phone must be functional as they use it multiple times to arrange their van’s pick up, order stoves online, check hotel vacancies etc and on several occasions RW reads the news on hers. And Moth actually uses the OS app.

No idea how that correlates to contemporary photos on RW’s Instagram, though.

AgitatedGoose · 02/08/2025 12:36

User14March · 02/08/2025 12:13

I can believe it of him, he’d quite the dandy & takes great care & clothes ££.

I agree. There’s nothing wrong with liking nice clothes but it doesn’t go with the image of the climbing/wild camping outdoor type. There’s no doubt he’s a good looking bloke but the clothes and hair gel just wouldn’t cut it for me.

AldoGordo · 02/08/2025 12:38

DisappointedReader · 02/08/2025 12:32

Keep calm and eat fudge, Thread 12 is coming. The Timeline is just being added in the first posts then I'll add the link.

Just wondering if @AldoGordo is around to add the Inconsistences at the start too?

Sorry been too busy.

FurryHappyKittens · 02/08/2025 12:43

The Timeline is three posts - please please please don't quote them.

Now they're right at the start of the next thread, they are easy to quickly scoot back to whenever anyone wants a refresh. 😀

PullTheBricksDown · 02/08/2025 12:47

FurryHappyKittens · 02/08/2025 12:43

The Timeline is three posts - please please please don't quote them.

Now they're right at the start of the next thread, they are easy to quickly scoot back to whenever anyone wants a refresh. 😀

Edited

Would it be possible to take photos of the three parts of the timeline (I want to capitalise Timeline, like it's the Sacred Timeline in Loki the series) and add those as images? That way they'd be in the Thread Gallery for easy reference, but it would stop people quoting them as a long space-consuming post.

Fandango52 · 02/08/2025 12:52

User14March · 02/08/2025 09:10

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’.

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’.

I was very suspicious of that when I heard it in JI’s interview.

FurryHappyKittens · 02/08/2025 12:54

PullTheBricksDown · 02/08/2025 12:47

Would it be possible to take photos of the three parts of the timeline (I want to capitalise Timeline, like it's the Sacred Timeline in Loki the series) and add those as images? That way they'd be in the Thread Gallery for easy reference, but it would stop people quoting them as a long space-consuming post.

How many photos can you have in one post - there'd be about 9 going by what I can screenshot?

DisappointedReader · 02/08/2025 13:01

Here, after my initial Attack of One of the Minor Disappointments in Life, and approaching 11,000 posts later, is Thread 12:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Please fill up the current thread before boarding the charabanc transfer to the next.

As usual, I'm presuming that someone will walk on by to add the link again near the very end of this thread, pick up Simon Armitage and his head, clear up any empty fudge wrappers and cider bottles and turn off the lights.

Thread 12: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

The Observer [[https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-real-salt-path-how-the-couple-behind-a-bestseller-left-a-trail-of-debt-and-deceit The...

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film

OP posts:
Fandango52 · 02/08/2025 13:03

Laska2Meryls · 02/08/2025 09:47

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 ..

Edited

😆😆 are you able to take a photo and post it here please? I’d love to see it, but haven’t spotted it on the Guardian website yet.

User14March · 02/08/2025 13:07

Fandango52 · 02/08/2025 12:52

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’.

I was very suspicious of that when I heard it in JI’s interview.

I am also sceptical about the £25 raised so fast (?) by recitation etc & wonder at SA parallels in his book (?) Beowulf is so talismanic as only book saved from vast library and enables Moth to read again, the bible meets Fahrenheit 451 with Moth as book loving outcast busker.

Thinking a cynic might say you, could write TSP with a hopeful film deal in mind, the symbolic peregrine & tortoise, biblical themes… & so on.

MyGodMyThighs · 02/08/2025 13:09

TheBrandyPath · 02/08/2025 09:47

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),

Same. I live on the SWCP on this stretch of coastline between Plymouth and Polruan.

Very little of this section of TSP rings true. For a start, where they would have got water while camping at Freathy for a week. Without knocking on someone’s door.

What she says of the chalets at Whitsand being plots of land given to people between wars / WW2 is absolute bollocks! The first chalets were built by local fishermen. Then as holiday chalets. Some people from Plymouth bought them to escape the bombing during WW2. Nothing was given as she says in the book.

And the weird conversation with the cafe worker(s) in Looe. The community here is small. People know each other. And two young red-haired Polish women would be known and remarkable - not in a negative way - but, it’s not a multicultural town at all…

Then there’s the ‘squeezing between the cafe and the holiday park at Talland. There isn’t a holiday park there. It’s up the hill towards the top end of Polperro.

User14March · 02/08/2025 13:14

MyGodMyThighs · 02/08/2025 13:09

Same. I live on the SWCP on this stretch of coastline between Plymouth and Polruan.

Very little of this section of TSP rings true. For a start, where they would have got water while camping at Freathy for a week. Without knocking on someone’s door.

What she says of the chalets at Whitsand being plots of land given to people between wars / WW2 is absolute bollocks! The first chalets were built by local fishermen. Then as holiday chalets. Some people from Plymouth bought them to escape the bombing during WW2. Nothing was given as she says in the book.

And the weird conversation with the cafe worker(s) in Looe. The community here is small. People know each other. And two young red-haired Polish women would be known and remarkable - not in a negative way - but, it’s not a multicultural town at all…

Then there’s the ‘squeezing between the cafe and the holiday park at Talland. There isn’t a holiday park there. It’s up the hill towards the top end of Polperro.

They got water from streams at times…so ;) Did they carry it?

Good to have local perspective. Some of the encounters remind me of people Harold Fry meets in garages etc in novel.

FurryHappyKittens · 02/08/2025 13:16

The maximum number of photos in a post is 5!

So there are three posts with photos of the timeline

  1. Photos 1 - 5 (Timeline)
  2. Photos 6 - 9 (Timeline)
  3. Photos 10 - 11 (Reference Links)

These are now all in Thread 12 Gallery.

Fandango52 · 02/08/2025 13:21

AldoGordo · 02/08/2025 09:33

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?

No, I don’t think it includes any of those things, from memory (bearing in mind I saw the film before reading the book, so couldn’t directly compare the two).

It does, however, include a scene that is totally made-up for the film where Raymoth spot a teenage girl who is being mistreated by a man and they invite her to walk with them.

I was actually quite annoyed when I found out the scene had been created just for the purposes of the film, as its only purpose - as far as I can tell - is to ensure Raymoth are likeable characters who the audience roots for. I thought it was unnecessary to put the scene in, to be honest, because they generally came across as quite likeable to me anyway.

MyGodMyThighs · 02/08/2025 13:26

User14March · 02/08/2025 13:14

They got water from streams at times…so ;) Did they carry it?

Good to have local perspective. Some of the encounters remind me of people Harold Fry meets in garages etc in novel.

I can’t think of any streams convenient to Freathy. It’s high cliffs on a narrow peninsula.

FurryHappyKittens · 02/08/2025 13:29

Just a reminder for the next thread:

Please Do Not Quote either The Timeline posts or the posts with the Thread Gallery photos in them!

@DisappointedReader has issued a fudge withdrawal and ostracism threat for anyone doing so!

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