Thread 12: 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
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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 eleven 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.
Will our life-size cardboard cut-out Simon Armitage keep his head?
NB Timeline coming in the first posts of this thread for reference.

I imagine the establishments would need to be able to prove a loss of earnings, and link that to the publication of TSP, and I doubt they’d have a case. If the Mullion Cove café says ‘Well, that can’t have happened as we have a carpeted floor, no letter box and have never served panini, and the owner is female’, the RW response is presumably ‘We compressed our experiences of different establishments together.’

Exactly - the manuscript would have had a look-over for anything libelous by the publishers legal team.

But no due diligence, evidently!

Just one phone call would have raised doubts and warranted further questions.

If there's more, it could already be in the print version. Usually stories in print version are drip fed online over says, especially for weekly publications.

A legal read is standard, though. It doesn’t imply PRH were suspicious about the truth of TSP.

Quite - they either 1) believed every word 2) didn't care what was true beyond legal remits or 3) were complicit in altering timelines and shifting the narrative

If #3, then I find it interesting PRH have said they're supporting SW - perhaps they have no choice, as they could have been instrumental in how the story was presented via edits.

If they went against SW, she could potentially 'out' them (by providing original drafts, editor emails etc).

Speculation.

But I’m not sure if she [Winn] has a conscience, this one.

Tadge (campsite owner) you said a mouthful there.

The "plucky underdogs v The Cruel System" schtick falls apart even further when small businesses are maligned to promote their perpetual victim narrative. Really just awful, these places are so identifiable.

I always doubted the pub quiz! Nowhere does a random quiz with just a handful of customers and it seemed more like a "quiz afternoon" by the description of it. I also recall she was rather overly negative about Westward Ho! generally, which, if I lived there, I'd be a bit sad about.

“She never named the cafe but she might as well have because there is only one cafe in this cove.” (Observer)
I think if the description makes the institution clearly identifiable even without naming them, that is enough.

Interesting that Tadge remembers seeing them, and that they were lying on benches with their things scattered about. So they were there... And didn't seem to have the money to pay for a pitch. I was beginning to question whether they actually went to all the places mentioned and whether they were really living on fifty odd quid a week

Without naming it specifically, she'd just say it was a narrative device, elements from several cafes pulled together, 'mistakes were made'.

I'm not saying that's right or fair, mind. Just short of libelous. Unfortunately.

Morning all and thanks for keeping me on the path… it was a very late one for me by my standards and I was not alert at all 😬

@AldoGordo is the new article what you were on the trail of in the week?

They do have quiz nights at The Waterfront Inn (7.30pm on Thursdays) across the road from the Fairway Buoy and one pub quiz was switched to the Fairway Buoy Pub on 7th Nov 2024 according to a FB post.

So The Observer spread says CH has got a pre publication copy of TSP manuscript and is comparing it to what actually got published. There is concrete evidence there that SW is playing fast and loose with timelines as she initially had her mother’s death in the book which is set in 2013 despite her not dying till 2015. Presumably Penguin made her remove it? But let so many other inaccuracies through.

Well, her editor (I think Fiona Crosby, no longer at Penguin) will definitely have worked on edits with her, including structural ones. Her agent is also likely to have done a round, perhaps more than one, of edits, with RW, before sending the MS out to editors. We can’t know what the edits changed unless we see drafts.

I can’t actually find the actual text of the statement made by PRH (does anyone have a link?), but from what I remember it was much what you’d expect, saying they’d bought it because of its ‘story of hope’, and found it ‘moving and inspiring’, like many readers, that the author had signed a contract testifying to its factual accuracy, that they’d done their due diligence and it had had a legal read, that no one had raised any issues before The Observer approached them. And that as it was their priority to support their author, they’d decided to postpone the publication of OWH in conjunction with RW, because of her distress at the allegations.

I think that’s a fairly standard ass-covering statement, tbh. It doesn’t say the allegations are untrue (how could it?), and acknowledges the impossibility of RW putting a new book out there when there are significant problems with her credibility. However, she’s still their author. For now, anyway.

I haven't read the Landlines book so never knew this latter bit you wrote - very interesting because if one were seriously going to do the CWT in reverse one would go to Durness in the far north coast first, not Kinlochbervie, and take a ferry then a minibus on a dirt track all the way to the CW lighthouse. This raises the question, why did they go to Kinlochbervie which is south of CW? This was a place they would pass through if starting from the lighthouse. So if they were planning on starting in KLB they would simply have to do a "there and back" walk over two days. Another inconsistency in my book. Also, my understanding is only the area north of Sandwood bay is ever closed for military operations, so it's not clear why a local would tell them to start at Shiegra when they could have started from Sandwood bay (north of KLB) which is part of the trail and a spectacular beach that has drawn many a nature writer.

Is that in the paper copy, @Choux, or am I missing something online?

My (personal) thinking is that they did some walking, and a few overnights.

But nothing like they've claimed.

Descriptions don't match up, timelines are impossible, incredibly hard terrain magically conquered, all living off megre calories and not even well equipped.

Also - this one is hard to describe - but I've completed quite a few challenge-type hikes for charity across the UK (100km+) and it's tough. Blisters are the least of your worries but SW never touches of any experiences I've had while walking very long distances.

And I've never met one unkind person during my walks. Never been judged or had any nasty comments or turned away from anywhere. Not once.

Never been told I've been salted by some sage woman, either.

Great camping in the dunes at Sandwood Bay and by starting at Sheigra they also seem to have missed the wonderful beach at Oldshoremore.

Have you all got access to all three articles in today’s Observer? I can only see one linked here but in the print version there are three including interviews with John Todd and his neurologist. And a lovely poem by John. He seems like a wonderful man in the interview clips I have seen of him and what i have read today.

Could there be another pub that fits bill nearby? Just outside Westward Ho etc (?)

I think all the ‘recoiling’ & hostility was to reinforce a potentially profitable homelessness theme latterly. They looked like well put together walkers not Raggle Taggle down & outs. Also all the ageism faced, at time of TSP Ray was only 50 & looked fit & well.

Should be "days" not "says"

Agree 100%. I've done loads of long distance walks in the UK and I can't remember ever meeting nasty and rude people who treat strangers in the way described by Raymoth in TSP. It just doesn't ring true.

Well, she says their van was supposed to be collected from Durness originally, I think, but they have to rearrange it when they discover en route (from a homeless man sleeping in his car and the café staff in Kinlochbervie while they’re still on their way) that they can’t get onto CW because the army are using it. So they start walking from Sheigra instead, but then have to loop back to Sheigra again to pick up their van, because the collection service will only pick it up from Lochinver. I don’t know the locality at all, but that’s how it’s presented.

No.

Unless something in their interactions got others backs up. With provocation (?)