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.

A two-book deal initially, but with a clause meaning the second book doesn't happen if the first one tanks.

I've never seen a clause like this in a contract. It's either a two-book deal or it isn't. She wouldn't have got a two-book deal for TSP.

Quite a funny typo in the blurb: "Coast to Coat Path"!

Not really, my aunt was 48 and my nan 45 when they had their last child . My classmate was born to a 50 year old in 1966.

"Drawn north like a migratory bird" .pmsl

And SW's gran was 41 when she had SWs mum - her eldest was born in 1902 then 1905, 1907, 1911, 1914 and then SWs mum came along in 1924.

Sorry if I'm behind on the zeitgeist of this thread but as somebody who was horribly slurred in an admittedly terrible book that sold next to no copies, I really feel for the café owners.

I wasn't even slurred really but it never happened. Neither to me or to them. So infuriating.

Yeah - they tend not to go north in winter

@AldoGordo I saw there was a question re: discrepancy on ferries earlier. This is an edited and expanded version of my original post. This is one of the reasons why, the Plymouth onwards part of the route, does not seem authentic.

This is them, in Plymouth, when the ferry has apparently got stuck on a sandbank:
".......we wandered aimlessly, finding ourselves in the centre of the city as the street lights were coming on. Past the shopping centre, then on through the university buildings.
‘Next month I’ll be part of that uni; now I’m walking through it without enough money to catch the bus.’"

For what it's worth - I think they're talking about the wrong ferry again and/or they're in the wrong place to get the one they want.

Plymouth Sound has huge Brittany ferries, and British and international warships going along this same channel of water constantly.

The short crossing for Mt Edgcumbe goes from Stonehouse - not the Barbican, where they are. (As another poster has explained, from 2017 in holiday season it does).

I don't understand how you can not have enough for the bus - but have enough for the ferry.

If they had asked, the other people waiting, they would have told them how to get on the bus and reach their next point - when you're on the bus, that will take them to Mt Edgcumbe, the Torpoint ferry is free.

They stay in Plymouth overnight. The next day they again they describe the Barbican, before going for the ferry.

Looks like SW had the idea for a coast to coast book some years back

TSP really seems to be an amalgamation of past ideas & previous books/drafts. The ‘locals’ & ‘Grant’ type caricatures in TSP seem like the amalgam, hybrid, fictional characters of Gangani publishing Co. Unflinching honesty? I think not.

The vidéo with John is heartbreaking. Feel such anger on his behalf, and for his wife too.

Meanwhile I trudge along with TSP. More unbelievable encounters, stupid running gag about SA , and we are asked to believe Tim had never heard of him.

Tim with the large library; Tim the declaimer of Beowulf.

Pah!

If anybody has a screenshot of the FB msg from Raymoth's son regarding the trip to Bristol, wonder if they could PM me. Many thanks.

In addition to the underlying story of deceit and subterfuge surrounding TSP, what I find equally depressing is the unwillingness of a host of Salt Path flag bearers - aka those who have interviewed Raymoth and supported their cause in literary festivals et al - to step above the parapet and give their honest view on the controversy. I am thinking about the luminaries of British media and literature such as Sophie Raworth, The Rev Richard Coles, Patrick Gale, Richard and Judy, Fearne Cotton and Rick Stein. At times, it seems that there is a literary conspiracy of silence.

Yes to the above @Catwith69lives and it is extraordinary how this has been sold by all the media. No searching questions at all:
A 1,000-mile trek is not something everyone would think to do with their terminally ill partner - but for Raynor Winn it only seemed right.

Salt Path author on completing 1,000-mile walk from Scotland to Cornwall with terminally ill husband | ITV News West Country

The premise of Landlines is even more ludicrous than TSP. Just when Moth's condition deteriorated to the worst it had ever been, they decided to embark on a 1000 mile walk in very remote areas. How could such a sick man manage it? Did no one ask any questions at all?

Any thoughts about the identity of Grant?

Just finished Landlines, with the scan “lit up like a Christmas tree” and all I can say is if they’ve made this up- this part in particular- they’re just evil people. If it’s true then why the hell isn’t Moth in a study of some kind??

Because his case couldn't be anonymised, so he would have to give consent. And if he doesn't give consent, no studies involving his miraculous recovery can be published.

OR ---

It hasn't happened, he's not a medical miracle, and there's no study to be done.

Which would you choose?

This is it, not sure if it’s been posted before. Hopefully in the right order!! How they can say they aren’t flogging long-distance walking as a cure, I don’t know. They absolutely are.

I’m still not very far into the book, but I get the impression she genuinely loved her mother and had a complicated relationship with her, and wanted to write about it on its own terms, so I don’t think it comes across as just a vehicle for her relationship with Moth.

Yes, I shared a similar thing above with : A 1,000-mile trek is not something everyone would think to do with their terminally ill partner

What I haven't heard about this is : how long did it take, please?

Rumour has it they're still walking it....

Anyone, surely, would think "this simply cannot be CDB, it doesnt fit, he's been doing too well for too long."

Either they are knowingly lying, or she thinks they genuinely are SO special that he is a walking miracle.

I can't decide which.

or, they're souls still wandering the riverbank, searching, as they won't pay the ferryman (Charon) ⛴

They leave Cornwall at the start of May and get back I think in September- they’re in Weston super Mare at August bank holiday.