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
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
Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 4 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/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
Thread 6 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5372494-thread-6-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-
husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 7 www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5373425-thread-7-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 8 www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/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?
Thread 9 www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5376712-thread-9-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 10 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/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?
Thread 11 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5382212-thread-11-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 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.

@MargaretThursday sorry about your friend.

I think you’re spot on about recognising weaknesses of others that we ourselves possess. For Ray, in some of the podcasts I’ve seen, trust is a huge issue. She thinks most people rip you off & are inherently untrustworthy.

I'm still of the belief the Iceland "walk" was simply part of their trip there in 2017 not 2019.

I’m curious about how they had the funds needed to go to Iceland in 2017, both because it’s a very expensive country and because presumably they didn’t have much money then, given this was before TSP was published.

I'll take projection for 500!

I'm fairly sure she's writing about the 2017 Iceland walk and that they didn't again.

She posts on Instagram two photos from Iceland in February 2017.

So might they have gone in late 2016, or are just retrofitting the season?

TSP p 102

Dinner with ´Grant'.

Sally's musings:

´When you tell a story the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe it's true, then everyone else will follow.´

That's a bit of a ´tell' isn't it.

Can people reading about the iceland walk now please jot down the places mentioned. I did the walk in 2015 and want to see how it tallies to my recollections and photos. I did the trail as far as Porsmork and it only took 3 days although they were long and strenuous. There is an extension beyond where we ended so they may have added that.

and the trail closes in late September. And opens in June.

https://www.instagram.com/tomgauld/p/DM3IhyNsoZj/?hl=en&imgindex=1
Here's a link to the fantastic Tom Gauld cartoon in yesterday's Guardian
"Doubts Cast on Another Beloved Inspirational Tale ,"
You need to scroll sideways.. Definite TSP reference

2013 - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_English_cricket_season

In 2014, England was playing Sri Lanka and India, not Australia - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Ashes_series

Dave and Julie would be very good advocates and witnesses for the veracity of the story told in TSP, the presence of the WWs at particular locations, Moth's state of health at the time etc. As such, I find it interesting that they remain invisible, except in selected photos, and have not come forward to defend their good friends.
Of course Dave and Julie might be pen names to protect their privacy. But I would imagine a journalist would accept comments from them verifying the WWs version of events, to publish on the basis of 'names have been withheld here to protect privacy but we have seen evidence from Dave and Julie that backs this up'.

A cynic might say she did little of walk & was unfavourably comparing herself to younger women at times - Grant’s blondes & at camp when Moth goes full on raconteur & teens about. She was only 50 on TSP. Could she recoil from older people herself? Ditto on Ealing Comedy Hyacinth Bucket moments ‘Eeeewwww you are nothing but TRAMPS!’. Moth hardly Onslow! I don’t see why anyone would imagine them homeless.

I think it implicates the agent more. I don't know we know if the publisher saw this version of the manuscript CH has seen.

It's curious to note the agent has a background in marketing and advertising.

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?

I think it's to show how special they are. Not just did they do it, but they're so like <giggle> teenage lovers really.

At pretty much 80yo my parents do like a long walk - far more than I do, having been put off by their long treks when I was young. And until recently any suggestion that they might be even approaching middle-aged was seen as a bit of an insult. But now I've noticed a very slight change in attitude. "They thought we were just retired because they didn't expect anyone of our age to be doing this walk". They are just beginning to enjoy the thought that they are special to be doing certain things "at their age".
I suspect it's similar - although 30 years younger.

Although I remember when they were in their 50s, they stood on a park bench to look over a wall so they could watch a cricket match they hadn't got tickets for. An older lady came up and whacked the backs of their legs with her stick and told them "young hooligans, get down immediately".
Her face when they turned round and saw they weren't the teenagers she expected! They got straight back up when she'd gone, while me and my siblings, the actual teenagers, cringed as far away from them as we could reasonable go. 😂
They dined out on the "mistaken for teenagers" for a long time.

Does it matter if it turns out they knew diagnosis retrofitted for dramatic effect? If indeed it was. Also does it matter if they knew other inconsistencies amped up?

Do we know when she signed her contract with PRH?
If TSP was published in March 2018, how long before must it have been to allow for all the editing, the advertisement campaign and whatever else is part of the publishing process to have taken place?

So is it possible they payed for that trip with advance pay by PRH?

I’ve been thinking about this, @PullTheBricksDown and @Uricon2, and I think she constantly refers to this to help ensure her situation is seen as memorable and unique, to further add to her USP. It’s hardly groundbreaking as a technique, I know, but when added to all of the other things we’ve discussed on these threads, and given it’s marketed as an honest and true story, it does give it a clear USP.

Oh, and the widespread prejudice against 'old people' that they experienced in the UK is also present in Iceland! On p213

'You shouldn't go up. It's not safe for people like you up there'
'Like us?'
'Yes, old people: it's not safe for you'

Such global bigotry against fiftysomethings old people!

This riles Moth in a major way. Several pages back Raynor says 'I haven't met many people, old or young, with a lower conformity threshold than him. He'd spent his life turning left when he'd been told to go right' (p208). Yes, we get it, Moth is A Rebel 😇

Thanks but I meant, does Moth listen to cricket in the book in 2013 before Polly's or in 2014 after Polly's? I wondered if it might flag an inconsistency if things don't tally.

Yes. This is an ‘unflinchingly honest’ true account. The interview with John in today’s print Observer highlights the cruelty and danger of dressing fiction as fact. The publisher has a duty of care to keep the contract of truth with the reader. These books sold so well because they were ‘true’. They offered hope, comfort, inspiration and stand on the pillars of the walk, the diagnosis and the unjust loss of the forever home. Without these, where is the dramatic elements? The emotional investment from the reader? The joy at their triumph over adversity? The redemptive element? This is the magic of these memoirs.
Without ‘truth’ these books are simply fiction. As works of fiction they are not strong enough to compete in a crowded and highly competitive market.
if we can’t depend on an institution like Penguin to ensure non-fiction is exactly that, then what is the point of this genre even existing? In a post truth age, truth matters more than ever.

Indeed, it is, and has been compared on these threads (way back) with something written and attributed to Izzy Wyn-Thomas of Gangani fame, according to the archived website:

"her book grew from the idea that nothing is as it seems, and every story changes in the light of the readers viewpoint."

👏🏼👏🏼

Sorry, before Polly. It felt to me that Moth did enjoy listening to the cricket, and she perhaps added the specifics about that test match from Wiki - no evidence that that is the case, but surely if they'd left early in August, it would have been the previous cricket match that he wanted to hear, when the result of the series hung in the balance.

Great post @IvyGoldenM. She / Penguin made it stand out from all the novels by saying it was true. But it isn’t and it’s ’highly misleading’ to call it non-fiction. Anyone who has bought the book or taken anything from it to apply to their own lives and problems has been hoodwinked by a thief and a publishing company who appear to have been happy to gamble that the money would keep rolling in and no one would question the story. It’s a literary scam.

Sorry- just saw I cross-posted with @MargaretThursday !

I have followed all the threads and am impressed at the forensic research and what has been highlighted as questionable when compared to the narrative in TSP.

I read and enjoyed The Salt Path probably two or three years ago when I saw it at a house where I was dog-sitting. I have visited the north Devon and Cornwall coasts and Exmoor a few times over nearly 70 years, and liked reading about some place names I recognised. Then I bought The Wild Silence and didn’t like it at all. I’ve no inclination to watch the film and although hugely sympathetic to anyone affected by theft or dishonesty, I don’t really care if the timeline is completely inaccurate. My feeling was that the “unflinchingly honest” claim was only about Raynor/Sally’s feelings about their experience of losing their house and then wild camping along the route, rather than portraying an accurate account of each event.

I would just pick up on the quote from a piece that was in The Independent, linked some threads back, which said “Moth (real name Ray)”. I don’t think that is attributed to either of the interviewees, it’s a mistake by the writer of the article who got their notes muddled and should have said, “Real name TiMOTHy)”.

Thanks to all who have put the hours in to make this threads such a fast-paced and fascinating read!

Very well said 👏