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 think maybe the date of RW’s mother’s death, judging by posts on here from earlier today, although I’m not completely sure I understood that theory correctly.

RW writing in the original MS that her mother died 6 months before TW's diagnosis (the only possibilities for her to write this are that she made up her mother died in 2013 or she made up that TW was diagnosed in 2013...the latter seems far more likely).

According to this NHS web page:
”if you have CBD, your clinical team will pass information about you on to the National Congenital Anomaly and Rare Diseases Registration Service (NCARDRS).
This helps scientists look for better ways to prevent and treat this condition. You can opt out of the register at any time.”

So IF Moth has a CBD diagnosis he will have been added to this register. Unless he request to opt out but given he was doing a lot for charity related to his illness why would he opt out?

So if he’s on the register with a diagnosis date of 12 years plus ago and still pretty fully functioning why are no scientists studying him? And if they are why did Sally not get a statement from them instead of publishing 10 year old letters? And if he has it why did the charity terminate their relationship with him the day after the Observers first article?

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/corticobasal-degeneration/

Thank you. Anything else?

If the quote from today’s observer is correct, as in if it was actually written by RW, as we are just taking CH word for it. She says RW wrote in a previous draft of TSP that Moth’s diagnosis came sixth months after watching her mother die, and that was removed from the published version. That would support the two factual bits of evidence (Jan 2015 death as per pp) and then the June 2015 letter released on RW website. Ergo the diagnosis came first in 2015 not 2013 when it is claimed in TSP.

Ahh that all makes sense. Thanks!

I agree. it's the total utter distain they show for anyone else, and their livelihoods that is so evident .. as well as their narcissistic victimhood that's so repellent.
Even if the Mullion cafe owner bit was true - and we now know it can't be - they are actually saying that the employee stole from the owner by giving them free panini's. If that fictional lad was real , he'd most likely either be local or maybe a student working on summer job and would be at least definitely identifiable to local residents and the cafe owner. That casual mention of him could be likely to actually harm his chances of future employment..
And then if SW and the editor knew it was just a made up part with names and places changed to protect , how on earth did an actual named a village with only one cafe get published ? ..

It's ironic though that they could still be actually locals ( if Moth really did do his study in Falmouth and if they still live in Cornwall) .. If so, They'd better not do that part of the SWCP again anytime soon !

About a week, I think. Dave brings food for 12 days, I think, in case they take longer, but that entire walk is set up in terms of having to hurry, because the season is about to end, the huts will close and the buses will stop running, so they have to get to the end.

This is really interesting - thanks for flagging this.

I hope Chloe H is able to check this register - or maybe she already has.

Also, RW’s account in TSP of Moth’s CBD consultation is vague enough that he is never actually definitely diagnosed with CBD. That may explain why he might not appear on the register, and my feeling is he isn’t actually on the register.

High stakes indeed!!

When I've finished TWS I'll try and pin down its timeline, as it is in the text. But I have reached p199 and the start of section 4, the Iceland walk, with Dave and Julie who definitely exist and get this:

Walking the SWCP, we hadn't come across many other backpackers who were also wild camping, and even fewer middle aged ones.

Why is RW fixated on the idea that they're the only middle aged (or to everyone they speak to, 'old') walkers around, when it seems very obviously not the case?

What was her date of death again, as far as we know?
The 2015 doctor's letter is from June so would fit with a date around January.

22nd January 2015 according to findmypast

Authors make about 50p per paperback copy & £1 for a hardback. Even assuming that the sales are all paperbacks the WinnWalkers only made £2,840 last week but will have received £27,560 or so over the last six weeks. Sales have been declining (14,145/12,280/9,245/7,535/6,235 to 5,680 last week) but the WinnWalkers must still be laughing all the way to the bank.

Disclaimer: I haven't read any of the books, but I am finding the discussion interesting.

On the brain scan showing signs reversed, I had a friend who did have a situation in this. She had secondary cancer in her brain, and a scan showed huge patches where it was just taking over. She had 6 weeks of treatment (and prayer, but don't please sidetrack debating this) and she had a follow-up scan on the Friday. First thing Monday morning she had the consultant on the phone gibbering at her that he'd never seen such an improvement and it was amazing. The cancer had gone from pretty much in every part of the brain down to a few tiny spots.
But it didn't last unfortunately and she did die a couple of years later.

Obviously this is a different illness, and the subsequent scan 3 months later showed that the cancer was growing again, but the medics didn't treat it as anything but an individual phenomena. Medicine, after all, is an inexact science and things do act differently in different bodies.

So I can believe that in the first instant the consultant would be "that's amazing, keep going." If subsequent scans showed further improvement though, then I would expect more to be looked into. But it does happen sometimes - look at Steven Hawkins, in 1963 he was given a life expectancy of 2 years.

The other thing that occurs to me is something I've noticed in people that they often attribute their own personal failings to other people. So people who lie, assume others are lying to them; people who manipulate, assume they're being manipulated; gossipers assume others are gossiping about them etc
And they often are incredibly judgemental (especially taking on a victim's role) and indignant about the fact that others may have done these things to them.

So her suspicion of others may well be down the fact she knows that she is untrustworthy herself so is projecting her attributes onto other people. She knows herself how untrustworthy other people can be while appearing "nice" people, so she's naturally distrusting.

I can't see them getting any comeuppance, except in not able to publish book #4 unfortunately though.

Indeed, especially as there appears to be no reason why they shouldn’t have set out a week earlier or a month earlier! It’s a pretty dull piece of writing, it must be said. I can see why an editor didn’t think it could be the mainstay of a book, although the book is still a weird hodgepodge of post SWCP angst, worry about Moth’s health, her mother’s death, the move to the cider farm, with the Iceland walk shoehorned in.

Though, if we think Tim was only diagnosed in 2015, it does to an extent explain some of the anguish about his health, which would have been really taking place after the SWCP, not before and during it, and, obviously, while she was writing TSP. It’s as though she’s taking the actual RL health concerns from the moment of writing and infusing them retrospectively into the walk. If he had some symptoms on the walk, she may not even feel she was lying, because he was ill, just not diagnosed.

The fact TW only gets involved on charity events, that we know of, no earlier than 2015. Not entirely sure when he started though.

It's just ridiculous. I know a fair few serious walkers, part of groups and not. Some have been doing it for years obviously but 50s/60s is normal, possibly usual.

It’s also still very healthy sales for a book that’s been out since 2018, and not forgetting sales of the two sequels, overseas rights for all the books, and the money made when the film rights were sold. And all the years of event fees, Gigspanner fees etc.

You’d expect a bump up in sales when the film came out, and that has probably been hit hard by the Observer story.

I don't think anyone is debating medical miracles/atypical presentations - it's the evidence and proof of TW's diagnosis that these threads have discussed.

I'm sure your friend could have easily provided concrete proof of her scans and diagnosis, whereas TW's letters bring up more questions than answers!

I'm so sorry your friend lost her life 😢

There are (or were) photos of people purporting to be Dave and Julie on RW’s Instagram. I remember one taken in an Oxford college cloister (New, maybe?) before they set out on a Thames Path walk, I think?

I wonder if they’re in hiding in Cumbria…

I am struck by Ray’s thoughts here if so:

”I needed to hide it from him [Mum’s death & decision of how effectively this might happen] the word ‘aspirate was too close, too real”

”I couldn’t let him witness it. I couldn’t keep the two separate in my own mind. I needed to hide him from it…hide him from the possible horrors to come”

’Aspirate’ “Choke on her own saliva? Those words again. It had taken months after Moth’s diagnosis for the nightmares about the meaning of these words to stop. But the words reared back into my consciousness with their roaring whisper.” “Without the stomach tube she’ll starve to death”.

Yes, and also photos of them during the Thames walk they did. I'm still of the belief the Iceland "walk" was simply part of their trip there in 2017 not 2019, which again is perhaps coincidentally a 2 year gap between fiction and fact.

Yes, it makes total sense of why she so strongly correlates her mother’s death with Tim’s diagnosis, if that diagnosis is only happening them.

She says RW wrote in a previous draft of TSP that Moth’s diagnosis came sixth months after watching her mother die, and that was removed from the published version.

Please do stop me if I’m speculating too much here, but if what RW had originally written was removed from the published version, surely that implicates the publisher and means they - as well as RW - are at fault?