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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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?

Yes, unforgivable to be charged by a campsite or that any small business should dare to try and eek out a living!

‘What can I do, Tertius?’ gets said in our house in a spirit of mimsy unhelpfulness in a power cut when no one can find matches, or when part of the ceiling falls in, or when some key thing has been lost when running late and the teenager is screaming.😀

This is a really interesting theory.

This bit from your post (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) makes me wonder whether Polly really is Sally’s sister though.

I just question it because we know Sally cares deeply about what others think of her - or even what she thinks others might be thinking of her - because of the way she reacts to potentially living in a council house when they lose their home.

Also, given Sally and TimMoth went to great lengths to stay away from people they knew after their house was repossessed, I don’t understand why they would accept a family member’s invitation (Polly’s invitation - if Polly is in fact her sister) to stay?

Polly’s treatment of them also seems a bit off if she is, in fact, Sally’s sister. If she’d invited Sally and TimMoth to stay and had known TimMoth was very unwell, why put them up in a freezing rundown cattle shed rather than an actual bedroom in the house? I know it’s possible of course that she may not have had a spare room available for them, but why invite them to stay if you don’t have room for them? A cattle shed definitely doesn’t count as a proper room!

This is making me want to read Middlemarch even more! I’m ashamed to say I have it on my bookshelf, but it’s languishing there while my phone gets the better of my attention 😳

Or an exasperated sister saying ‘Look, I won’t see you rough-sleeping over the winter, so you can stay in my half-converted meatpacking shed as long as your useless construction worker husband whom we all told you not to marry does the rest of the conversion work instead of me paying someone’?

You might think a sister should have given them a bedroom in the main house, but in fairness, it wasn’t obvious how long the Walkers would have to say. And they’re there for the guts of a year in the end. Having two extra, penniless adults living with you indefinitely is a tall order for the most loving sibling.

I was amused that Polly was portrayed as awful in the film, but that they left out the bit that she’d secretly shown one of the shelters around the converted shed and was clearly angling for the Walkers to leave.

My favourite FAFO moment of theirs is when they, typically, get shirty about the cost of the ferry in Falmouth, which presumably should just take saintly backpackers like them for free: (pp191-2 in my copy)

'Six pounds each? But we're just foot passengers'
'Well, that's what it costs so take it or leave it'
We walked away from the ferry and hung around the harbour trying to find a private boat going over to St Mawes, but there wasn't one to be found, so we went back into town and bought four days' worth of noodles, cutting the food ration so that we could afford the ferry. Shouldn't have gone to the Fat Apples'

(Well, probably not, but you also shouldn't have assumed that some jolly rustic local who owned their own boat and had nothing better to do would cheerfully offer to take you across for free, when everyone else is paying to get on the ferry.. 😃)

I think for me, it feels like one of those AIBU threads that from the title feels obviously unreasonable, until you read about the extensive back story where someone has taken the piss repeatedly and the OP has now decided that they'll help but only with some boundaries in place. All just a hunch and I could be wrong.

Wonder how they would have felt if they had set up a campsite on their property in Wales and caught people sneaking in to use their facilities

All fair points.

Obviously there may be huge chunks of invention/omission/ embellishment in that whole section, too. It suits the narrative for ‘Polly’ to be grudging and exploitative, and for the work to be hard and the accommodation basic.

If RW had depicted them as spending nine or ten cosy months in a family member’s spare room, I think the reader might wonder why someone prepared to offer that in October hadn’t done so in August, and for it to cross their mind that perhaps Polly’s offer had been there all along, making the walk a cheap holiday rather than an act of courageous desperation.

Of course Polly and her farm may be entirely fictional. Maybe they were in council accommodation. Maybe they were in a family member’s spare room. Maybe they were in France at Tim’s brother’s chateau!

Well, sisters don't have to get along.

And we don't know what's happened in this family, or how many other people the Walkers may have sponged off/borrowed from/embezzled from over the years.

They've got 4, or is it 5, siblings between them. They have adult children, nieces, nephews. It seems that they don't have much in the way of friends - not even a friend who will let them camp temporarily in the garden when they leave the cottage at the start of TSP.

It may be that they had previously drained the well of human kindness, burped and demanded more, from too many people. Purely conjecture of course!

‘AIBU to be aggrieved that my rich sister made us stay in an outbuilding we had to convert ourselves rather than in her huge house for an entire winter when (1) we were homeless and (2) my saintly DH was seriously ill?’

’AIBU to be furious that when my freeloader sister and her lazy hippy DH screwed up and got evicted, they not only weren’t happy with me giving them a free place to stay for nearly a year, but they then wrote a bestseller in which they made me look like a slave driver and pretended I made them leave so I could rent out the building?’

It is another scene that doesn't ring true. Everyone is a foot passenger there. The car ferry is much further up the river.

Customer Review
Sue 1.0 out of 5 stars
An insult to those who live, work and holiday in the South West
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 September 2021
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Former capitalists, Ray and Moth Winn, refuse to pay up when an investment goes wrong, preferring to embark on a lengthy legal battle which eventually leads to the loss of their farm. Moth is diagnosed with a degenerative, muscle wasting illness, prescribed medication and advised to take of things easy. Undeterred by the diagnosis and horrified at the thought that they could end up living in a council house, the Winns embark on a grueling 630 mile hike, wild camping along the South West Coast Path, leaving the medication behind.
They are woefully unprepared for the journey with lightweight sleeping bags, no sun cream or anything with which to bury their path side poos. They have no plans for where to buy food and subsist on a diet of noodles, rice, chips and fudge bars, often bought (and on one occasion stolen) from expensive tourist shops. They contribute nothing to the regions they pass through but feel they are entitled to take whatever they need. They use campsites and their facilities without paying, spend time in cafes dipping their own tea bags into free boiled water whilst drying their socks. Ray is outraged when someone who sells bottled water refuses to fill their water bottles for free. The mostly silent and sainted Moth will happily give half of his last Mars bar to a drunken tramp but sees nothing wrong in busking without a licence and depriving legitimate street artists of their meagre income.
In the middle of their walk they are invited by a “friend”, Polly to stay rent free in her shed providing they work for her without payment. This is similar to a recent story on The Archers where three homeless men are given food and accommodation in return for unpaid work on building sites. It also mirrors many real life cases. Philip, the gangmaster in The Archers, is now serving a lengthy prison sentence under The Modern Slavery Act. Why is Polly still at large?
Ray rarely has anything good to say about the people they meet along the way most of whom are trying to make a living or enjoy a holiday. She is dismissive of dog walkers (at least they pick their poo up!) and holiday camps (which are likened to prison camps). People who pay for food in cafes are often depicted as greedy as are the minimum wage workers who dare to ask them to pay their way. She worries that their son’s desire to be a tax paying householder is an adverse effect of their lifestyle.
There are many other exasperating aspects to this book, most of which have been detailed elsewhere. Overall I found it an interesting read and the one star review reflects more on the characters than the content.
I believe there are other walks planned and let’s hope that it is third time lucky for remembering to pack the sun cream. However, the areas they walk through would probably be better served if she leaves the notebook at home and packs a trowel.
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Ha! Brilliant review

Damn it. Rumbled! Yes I did. Mistakes were made and all that...
I'm prepared to buy your silence on the matter with a couple of paninis, some Fudge or a lifesize Simon Armitage though.

@TheBrandyPath lol. Remembering the meds as well as the suncream next time too. I’d also have Moth on various supplements. Anyone would think she was trying to poison him re: unfiltered water from stream. Not that I am suggesting that. Seriously though I do wonder at the nutrition, fudge, chips, noodles etc. Was it possible to do better on their budget?

The Archer parallel/s interesting - I wonder when the story aired? They had a radio. Sally is a very wide reader of lesser known books too NB: one flagged as currently reading in an interview about a prisoner on the run.

The Archer parallel/s interesting - I wonder when the story aired? They had a radio. Sally is a very wide reader of lesser known books too NB: one flagged as currently reading in an interview about a prisoner on the run.

Possibly taking inspiration for future reference!

The modern day slavery storyline in the Archers postdates TSP. As I recall it began a few months before the Covid lockdowns began, and it then took a while for it to become clear what was going on.

ETA: An explainer on the Archers' modern day slavery storyline for anyone interested: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2cl7QyQyMwHGfDZ8kJm4Zgb/far-closer-to-home-than-you-imagine-why-the-archers-took-on-modern-slavery

@TheBrandyPath that’s what I thought too. I’ve taken that pedestrian ferry from Falmouth to st mawes quite a few times. The car ferry I know of is the King Harry one which is on the outskirts of Truro

Exactly that. Local boats wouldn't take you for free when other locals are relying on it for their income. The yachts are paying to be there and access is behind a security code. It's all a load of waffle .......

Even these days the king harry car ferry is charging pedestrians only £1 https://www.falriver.co.uk/ferries/king-harry-ferry/prices-and-tickets so it can’t have been £6 back then. But if they were trying to take the on foot ferry from Falmouth, why complain about paying? Did they think ferry owners should run the service for free?

@TheBrandyPath I particularly liked the reference to them being ‘former capitalists’ 😄

Hmmm how about three slabs of the finest Cornish fudge (bought rather than stolen) and a bag of chips from Rick Stein’s restaurant and calling it a deal?

I was always a bit disbelieving about whether cafes on the SWCP would have been likely as a rule not to charge for hot water.

Surely the norm would be to be fine with giving an extra pot of hot water to someone who's already paid for a pot of tea (ie, you're providing a free refill at minimal expense), but not to provide free boiling water to non-customers, especially in a busy period where they're taking up a table paying customers could be using?

I was mildly tickled by an early scene in the film where they go to a tearoom, and order one cream tea and an extra pot of hot water (so far so normal), though the waitress looks weirdly puzzled by being asked for an extra pot of hot water, which is a quite normal thing in a tearoom, I'd have said. Certainly my thrifty aunts always would.

But then, promptly on having both teapots put down in front of them, GA or JI takes out one of their own teabags from their rucksack and puts it into the pot of hot water with a surreptitious air, when surely that's not what you'd do if you were really on your uppers and carrying all your food and drink with you. You'd wait a minute or two till the tea in the actual pot of tea was at the strength you like, then you would remove the teabag/s from that one and put them into the plain hot water pot, thereby not using any of your own tea, and you'd drink the original teapot while the second one brewed.

(I mean, OK, the implication might be that this tearoom only uses looseleaf, not bags, but it did make me wonder about the limitations of films about supposed homelessness being made by people who've always been prosperous.)

Also, that was a gigantic cream tea for one that GA tucks into while JI tells the people at the neighbouring table that they're homeless, and they go from friendly to icy in a nanosecond! Maybe it's just that GA is a small, thin woman with a narrow face and hands, but that scone looked enormous!

@Cakeandcheeseforever in a world where strangers are forever thrusting paninis, lasagne, pasties, massages, theatre tickets and more at them for free, they probably expected the ferry staffer to offer to let them live on the boat and throw in a cream tea while he was at it.