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.

😂They're staying uncharacteristically silent on the matter, I must say.

No I meant the OWH cover art in the attached picture. I've looked for it on AH's website but haven't seen it there.

Agree entirely, @notwavingbutdrowning1 (and there should be more Stevie Smith usernames, like MotherAmongtheDustbins).

An editor thinks 'Will this sell?' And yes, agreed that her editor will (entirely correctly, as it turns out) have thought that the pedestrian style didn't matter, because the story was a strong one.

I do think the humdrumness of much of the style, with occasional flights into post-Romantic communion with nature (and the godawful dialogue) is part of the appeal for some readers. I think it attracted a readership who were/are not necessarily big readers, and who would have been put off immediately by the dashing high style of a Patrick Leigh Fermor.

With PLS you're so high on his style and the dizzying shifts between dossing on the ground with shepherds in a cave in Germany and shoots and with eccentric aristocrats at country estates in Hungary, you don't expect details on wild pooing and how he washed his clothes.

Whereas I have a feeling the irritated depictions of other people met on the path, be they cafe owners or dogwalkers, and the sneaking off campsites, Moth's snoring and glumly staring at a negative ATM balance, is just as important for many people as the 'nature healed us' stuff. However leaden.

Nah, can't see it. Sally's style is more tua culpa.

In one article (The Times possibly) some neighbor said there are people who want to buy but it's impossible because they can't find the owners.
They said the value was not great, something like 20,000 or 30,000 pounds or Euro.
Not much for land but useful if you have debt to pay.

Exactly. Though it would involve a lot of work, and I think that to appeal to steadfast fans, it will still have to involve a walk, and a penitential mode.

I'd probably suggest she walked, solo, a particularly difficult and remote bit of the Camino off-season or something, only she's too well-known now, she'd be recognised a lot.

I mean, in PRH's shoes, I wouldn't be cutting her off either.

@GogleddCymru -- yes. that would feel much more likely to me. A two-book deal initially, but with a clause meaning the second book doesn't happen if the first one tanks. And then another two-book deal when TSP is huge. TWS has the feel of a sequel to a massively successful book that doesn't really know what it's doing, quite. There's her mother's deathbed, moved from its original position in TSP, which gets a bigger focus, and Moth's health after TSP, because so many of the interviewers and fan questions at book events focused on that, and the appealing idea of retreating back to the land on the cider farm, and then a walk (which may not, as various people on here have pointed out) have taken place at all close to where it purports to happen in real time), and which is short and not exactly exciting. (The main jeopardy is Moth forbidding Ray to tell Dave and Julie he's not coping, and some arbitrary subplot about a woman in red trousers and the people she's walking with.)

Clearly an editor said after TWS, 'Look, Raynor, you need a better hook, and a better walk, for the next book', hence the Big Walk of Landlines.

They even put it into the
"true-stories-of-heroism-endurance-and-survival" category 🙄

I think that's a fair point about their dislike of Moth being dismissed as their prejudice against a 'townie', rather than them simply thinking he was awful.

It's like

'You just don't like my boyfriend because he's not white!'

'No, I just don't like him because he's a serially unfaithful prick with poor personal hygiene, who by hook or by crook has convinced you he's God's gift.'

I mean you wouldn't have to be un Uptight Late Victorian Parent With A Prejudice Against Non-Farmers in order to be unimpressed that your sheltered teenage daughter's first (and apparently last) real relationship is with a workshy eco-warrior who encourages her to bunk off college and work, and takes her on frankly unsafe climbing and hiking trips. (He has to go straight to A and E after their first climbing expedition together, and they both narrowly miss dying on their first camping trip.)

My tuppence worth is that this furore will pass and book 4 will be published unaltered or largely unaltered in a year's time. How SW will feel about promotional tours will be interesting.

I have found two. One owns and runs a lovely garden centre.

I'm not going to be around again until much later today, so here is Thread 13 a bit earlier. As usual, please fill up the current thread before hiking over in a noisy crocodile to the new one:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5386458-thread-13-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

As always, if anyone can forgive my presumption and post the link again very shortly before this thread is full, it will go down like a dry squid and be as welcome as copious supplies of fudge, cider and Simon Armitage.

I will head over and post up the timeline....give me a few mins!

@WrathfulDeity exactly. Shades of the late, great Peter Vaughan calling Wolfie Smith a "flamin' yeti".

In Cornwall this week and walked some of the path today (near Polperro). Observations similar to the great Oscar Burton article listed earlier on thread 12: only 2 hrs in and I wished I had walking poles as the hills are numerous, almost vertical and treacherous on the down. Cannot imagine doing this daily without them. Zero scent of salt, blackberries were sweet not tinged with salt (more artistic licence). Beautiful, beautiful coastline. I was in Scotland and last month and the wind farms on every horizon ruined every view. Fortunately here there’s none and for that I’m happy. Staying at a lovely quiet campsite too and can see quite how easily it would be to sneak in late, set up, use facilities and sneak out early w/out paying 😢

Simon Armitage's agent. "Hi, I've got an online Q & A lined up for you".

SA "Great, where?"

Agent "Mumsnet"

SA "No. No. Just no. All they'll want to talk about is that Moth person. You know they will"

Agent "Oh go on. They've got fudge and cider and they've promised to talk about the poetry for a few minutes."

SA (sigh) "Oh OK, as long as it's nice fudge. Tell them I'm not signing that headless cardboard cutout though."

There is a new video on the Observer Youtube today - an extended interview with John, his wife, and his doctor.
It really highlights the damage this book has done - and also how very unusual Tim's diagnosis is.
Watch it, it is both illuminating and heartbreaking.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_RSQi6iZX80

PMs to @AldoGordo and @FurryHappyKittens re new thread/timelines/inconsistencies.

In the comment section several people say they are experienced hikers and it would be impossible to walk the SWCP on on a diet of mainly cheap carbohydrates likes noodles and Mars bars.

In addition to that, one says you would need about 3,000-4,000 kcal per day.
At the end of chapter 9 Sally describes them buying enough noodle packs for a week. I've looked those 20p noodles up and they have 295 kcal each, meaning Raymoth would have had to buy between 140 and 189 packs that day, and somehow fit them into their backpacks...

She used her pseudonym when she was a director for a homeless charity

What we, in the business, refer to as 'Handwavium'. Dismissing any inconvient details that people bring up with a vague reason or excuse as to why they can't go into the nitty gritty about it.

Is it true that if they ate only as Ray described, blood sugar would drop & make the walk impossible? Heartbreaking to see John here.

Nah, noodles are carbs and fudge is unadulterated sugar; they'd have plenty of carb in the diet to keep their blood sugar up. What they'd be missing is protein and quality fats, and calories enough to maintain weight; and of course all the vitamins and micronutrients that would help keep you going too.

I think the person who said that was talking about the calorie deficit mostly, not the type of food

Yes, that makes sense. It feels improbable & irresponsible especially since Moth seriously ill.