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?
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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?

She’s good at identifying gorse….

This is a really good point. My late stepfather was a Professor of Botany, so my teenage years were full of walks in sunny meadows and soggy forests, searching for orchids and collecting wild mushrooms and learning all manner of mossy and fluttering things; and at home, winding my Mum up by discovering which household food moulds are safe to eat :)

I'd expect a variety of informed naturalist content as well as adept foraging and wild cooking skills if the Winn/Walkers truly were the farming/botanist/life on the land folks they claim to be.

So were the Famous Five :)

😀I think you can make gorse flower tea. Did they try that?

Personally, I'd have been looking for edible plants like samphire which I love. It cooks in minutes.

There's quite a bit online about foraging for food on the south west coast - there seems to be a good variety of things available which might have helped the WalkerWinns reach their five-a-day for free. Their lack of foraging when they were supposedly strapped for cash would make me doubt TiMoth's botany degree more. I supposed they did find some blackberries, the salted sort.

Right, I've now gone and found (possibly, my geography is patchy) the Lizard section to see what level of comment suddenly appears. In chapter 16, p172 in my copy we have

As we reached Porthgwarra the landscape had already changed. On the north coast, we had come to know a vegetation of low, tough shrubs, grass and thrift, with any trees stooped and gnarled. By comparison Porthgwarra dripped with lush vegetation, trees still stunted but upright and gardens of exotic flowers. We had turned the corner into another country.

Ah! Here we go. Later in same chapter, p182

The Lizard National Nature Reserve was created in the 1970s and protects a large part of the peninsula. We walked along the level cliff top, through tracts of rare Cornish heath, full of plants that had Moth in ecstasy. Other walkers of the SWCP talk about miles done in a day, records set, targets met. Our path was getting slower and slower. It could have been the hour we spent examining the rare Autumn Lady's-tresses orchid, or the afternoon trying to photograph one butterfly...

then it goes into more musing on the scene but there's no more specific plant discussion and no other plants or flower are named. The chapter ends with the section about being part of the whole and how they don't have to own land to be part of the land etc.

Ahh yes samphire is delicious! Anyone up for a foraging research trip in Cornwall?

@Fandango52 That would be lovely. 😀🌵🌱🌴(Struggling to find a good picture of a samphire plant)

I've eaten the tenderest wild samphire shoots raw, no need to cook.

Gorse wine is ambrosial, like drinking golden honeyed sunshine.

Don't know anything south-west specific, although I could probably still gather some nice hazel poles for a geodesic bender frame.

Very late checking in but the Fudge Correspondent and the team mascot are both here. Thanks for yet another thread @DisappointedReader .

Tim’s grandfather was also a master plasterer according to his brother.

AND then decide to suddenly give up your job, move your family to Wales, buy a dilapidated farmhouse to restore and find time to volunteer at a National Trust property before getting the position of head gardener.

None because TW gets zero voice other than banal statements about fudge, pain and Simon Armitage.

Great work @FurryHappyKittens and good idea FanDang to post in OP, if the venerable @DisappointedReader sees fit. Ta for the new thread while I'm at it.

Something I've been meaning to post for a bit. The tortoise prophecy is maybe not as much of a coincidence as may first have been thought. Turtles represent wisdom and longevity in some cultures as well as very obviously carrying their homes on their back. I believe SW made that bit up as a metaphor describing them.

Wisdom, longevity and ready to go-ness would also suit a journalism brand.

I think they are also connected with journeys and quests.... there was a companion one in Finding Nemo!

I guess the "there'll be a tortoise following you" is still pretty on the nose and spooky!

Sorry, this is actually about turtles!!!!!! But they are often misnamed for each other.

https://www.greenmatters.com/living/turtle-spiritual-meaning

I read the ‘50 sheets of plasterboard’ bit as ‘50 shades of plasterboard’, and thought you’d posted a screenshot of a ‘sexy’ parody of TSP 😬 I think I’m going a bit crazy!

I meant to add, perhaps we can then – somehow collectively – list all the inconsistencies under the timeline headings? I think we proposed that in Thread 2 or so.

I too am curious about the pre-Wales Walkers, there seems to be a gap in the narrative from their side from late teens to fully formed family moving to Wales?

As others have said, unusual to spring directly into 65k theft (which I think someone worked out is over 100k in today's money).

Entitlement does seem to push some people later in life, though. I've remembered I worked early on in my career for an antiques dealer who already could afford nice hotels – he commuted into town for the work week – and who thought the train would wait for him if he was late but had a reserved seat. Decades later, I found out he had been jailed for a massive swindle, selling people's very valuable pieces but not passing on the funds! Long after I'd left, I hasten to add.

Sounds good - thanks. Shall we continue to flag potential inconsistencies as and when we come across them? @AldoGordo kindly put together a list of inconsistencies - I wonder if we should combine that (and any inconsistency updates that emerge in this thread) with the updated timeline that @FurryHappyKittens suggested placing around page 20 of this thread?

It would be great to aim to merge them into the page 20 timeline re-post! @AldoGordo's list was great, but there were many additional inconsistencies flagged and contested since then. I'm not going to have time myself tomorrow, but if someone's able to review the threads since the AG inconsistency list, amalgamate and share in a new post, we can work those into FHK's timeline? Or, divide and conquer: various correspondents could take a section of the timeline and root out all the relevant inconsistencies for the period. Baggsy teens to moving to Wales! 😉

A Google docs spreadsheet could help us here, but I'm not sure how to share one without giving away my identity!

Just chiming in re the botany degree. My mother has one and it is indeed rare. It just doesn’t fit with him being a master plasterer, he may have been an eco activist but you wouldn’t do a botany degree to enhance your eco creds.

i work as a gardener (formerly a lawyer!) and can say that being a head gardener at a National Trust property isn’t a particularly highly esteemed job. It’s not well paid and you certainly don’t need a degree although some HGs will have horticultural degrees. Experience is more important. It’s more likely he secured the job because he was personable, male (sexism in securing head gardener roles is a thing) and a known entity due to his volunteering. Most gardeners would get RHS qualifications and combine it with work experience - you just wouldn’t bother with a botany degree, it’s too specialised.

i think the more interesting missing piece of the puzzle is the real reason for the sudden move to a remote corner of Wales. I don’t buy the whole “my child ran out into the street” therefore I must move NOW.

Could this be due to SW's claim that TSP was originally just for Moth to help him remember the walk as CBD took its toll on his memory? Could this explain TSP's focus on the walk and the incidents that occurred rather than giving a 3rd party reader more insights about the inner Moth other than random comments such as his love of Beowulf?

I thought the tortoise story was going to be a reference to the Tortoise and the Hare story. Ray being the Hare and Moth the Tortoise, slow and steady but by the end he's up front, eager to get on, now even doing better than Ray, winning the race so to speak. I was so confused about the tortoise in a lead 😂

Oped piece by a chap called Francis Gilbert which I thought summed up the key issues raised by TSP pretty well

Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Salt Path After the Truth Came Out - Francis Gilbert

You may be on to something. The company is the Four Hares - which is an ancient symbol. It is usually depicted as three - going in a circle and sharing an ear. It is fascinating as it is depicted from the Dunhuang Caves (along the Silk Road) to - Cornwall. There are four of them - and sometimes the symbol is four.

As a fellow gardener, I concur with the middle paragraph here.

I’ve missed an entire thread! Thanks for the timeline.

My ex had a Botany degree from a Scottish uni. After many hikes together I learnt to identify quite a few plants with him. Bog myrtle was his favourite

And I hope @Unicorn2 is feeling better