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?

Although you're not allowed to do your job well if you look like a hippy but charge them?

Interesting that on p105 of TSP, the multimillionaire wine merchant Grant ribs Moth "And will you be at the Minack? ... Ah, Simon you're so funny. Go on, give us a poem before we go to bed".

An article in the Guardian published in March 2013 quotes Simon Armitage as saying he might give a poetry reading at the Minack after he completes his walk from Minehead to Lands End.

Simon Armitage: a poetic pilgrimage around Devon and Cornwall | Poetry | The Guardian

TSP ordered.

She has put photos on her IG over the years which she says are from various points on the SWCP (and I have assumed from their 2013 & 2014 walks). I have always wondered why these photos weren't included in the middle of TSP in a nice chronological order. And I guess same with Landlines (IG photos exist)

Not a brand new copy, we hope?

I could’ve given you mine for free! With some fudge thrown in for good measure.

Because they'd be recognised .

Have any of the WalkerWinns' friends come out and said anything publicly? Polly especially. What about the various people they encountered on the walk? They must have recognised themselves in all the publicity about the books and the film if they are real people.

I don't remember anything about applause?

I know which bit you're referring to. Guy on bike cycling round the campsite early morning checking payment slips on the tents. I think this was Treen (they got taken there by some of the cast from the performance at the Minack).

I don’t think they have. I’ve only come across things from people they’ve embezzled from (the Hemmings). Also, there’s a chance that ‘Polly’ might not exist.

One of the best questions asked at the Observer live event on Monday with Chloe Hadjimatheou and Basia Cummings was whether new leads had emerged since her story appeared, whether people the Walkers knew, or who had met them on the path, had approached her. CH seemed to suggest that these would feature in the next story she would publish.

ETA Though you’d be reluctant to come out with a public statement in support of them, wouldn’t you? You’d have a lot of people wanting chapter and verse on Tim Walker’s state of health on X date, evidence of destitution, what you knew about their finances etc etc.

Though I do find myself wondering about Dave and Julie.

I would love to know more about Polly. Someone previously suggested she could be based on Raynors sister.

Think Alpaca just put that in for some poetic licence 😂

Oh I see! Sorry I can take things a bit literally!

They were able to identify a rare plant on the lizard:
"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, or the evening hanging over Kynance Cliffs watching seals in the cove below, but as it got dark we realized we’d probably only covered three miles, so put the tent up around the corner from where we’d taken it down.

I live quite nearby and know one of the Natural England ranger people on the Lizard. Lots of the Lizard is nature reserve and there are loads of info boards along the path to educate walkers about the flora and fauna and geology. I must find the time to check whether the orchid is featured on such a board. I bet it is!

Thanks for that.

Did Chloe H. say if investigative reporters often receive anonymous tips that lead them to a good story?

Well, some of us need you to keep us grounded and on the right ..... path

In some of the reviews, e.g. Goodreads, before the Observer's investigation, Polly comes in for criticism on the basis that she was exploiting the WalkerWinns.

I thought that would be so, too. They were also reciting the names of the serpentine, and other minierals, which would also be explained on info boards. For instance, at the SWCP half way village, it tells you about gabbro and schist, etc.....

The pp who wondered whether Polly might be Raynor’s sister was on to something, I reckon.

I notice that even in this extremity of need, with Moth working himself into a bad physical state again to meet Holly's requirements, it's Polly who comes up with the possible job for Raynor with the sheep shearers. Till then she was all concern about what the work would do to Moth, but didn't seem to be looking for any work or means of earning money herself. (Very Rosamund Vincy saying 'What can I do, Tertius?' for any Middlemarch fans on the thread.. )

I can see why if the story is true. She says they can stay in what used to be a meat cutting shed for free but Moth needs to plaster and finish the place for renting out ( a lot if work and essentially free labour ) and pay for heating, then when it's all finished she asks them to leave so she can rent it out. But....
Is it true? 🤔
What if it was more like they owed her money and they made a deal they would stay there over winter and finish the renovations to pay her back?
I'm of course surmising but it makes much more sense.

That was me under a different name. (I change frequently. To cover up my criminal past. 😀)

It was based on nothing more than the fact that Sally mentions in an interview (but only once that I could see, and nowhere in the books) having a sister who’d done what was expected of her and married a farmer, and ‘Polly’ lives on a sheep farm in the midlands, and is presented as having known Sally in her childhood and teens, having been in contact since they lost their home, apparently knowing about the eviction and Moth’s illness, having their phone number and knowing they were on the path.

So nothing conclusive. But the sense of rivalry RW feels with Polly does slightly suggest possible sibling competition to me. If their parents always criticised Moth for being a ‘lazy’ ‘townie’ with no land, and the sister married a farmer and clearly has a stable life, it wouldn’t be surprising if Sally felt the entire family were saying ‘Told you so!’ now she finds herself living in her sister’s outbuilding.

Also, significant that she doesn’t go to her own family for financial help after she was arrested, but Tim’s? Could just be that the Walkers are richer, or suggest estrangement from hers, and explain the negative portrayal of Polly, even as she gives them somewhere to stay from October through to the following August.

OMG I've found a photo of Sally Winn age 9 years old!

For those of you who have access to newspapers online, the date is Thurs 10 Aug 1972, it's on p11 of the "Guardian Journal" ( a local Nottinghamshire paper I think), and captioned "Nine year old Sally Winn of Dunstall gromming her father's Hereford bull calf". Facially she is still recognisable!

There's another one of her brushing a calf at Alrewas show in 1973.

So I think it's a fair assumption that yes, as a child, she was immersed in the farming world (I can't see many city kids brushing down cows at agricultural shows!)

School-wise, she went to the John Taylor High School in Barton-under-Needwood; there's a report that she won a prize for art in 1979. I suspect that may have been her school-leaving year.

Nothing like that, but her previous work that I’m most aware of was stuff on Israel and Iran.

This was her BBC profile before she joined the Observer, when she was nominated for the Orwell Prize.

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/journalist/chloe-hadjimatheou/