Thread 13: 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's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

The 12 Observer reports currently available online: The real Salt Path | The Observer

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?^

Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12

Thread 12: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse welcome. It would be helpful to read at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently 12 interesting items on The Observer website and linked to above.

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 twelve 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 our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Have the sales or thefts of fudge gone up recently?
Will Simon's head ever turn up?
Has the shed of doubt yet burst at the seams?
Will the old charabanc hold up as a tour bus for our hip new band The Drive-By Scolders?
And finally, how much salt can we possibly cram into a giant pinch?

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

Or the layout of the house!

She has been referring to the final court judgement, Moth's CBD diagnosis and the bailiffs' arrival to seize their house all happening in a week in pretty much every interview or article that has appeared since 2018.

However, imo all the evidence points to it being completely made up.

By repeating the same story so many times, maybe she has convinced herself that it actually happened like that!

Does anybody have a copy of Paddy Dillon's 2013 guide to the SWCP?

Maybe it was lifted from HNTDDD, as a ‘dramatic’ literary device? Given that only a small number of copies of HNTDDD were sold, it might seem sensible when writing a new book (covering similar ground) to recycle parts?

As I mentioned in a previous thread, I have not read the book or seen the film, but it does strike me that the scenes described in previous threads (of Grant and his beauties) would probably fit very well in a novel about a ‘romp’ over three mountains in the Highlands…

The very first audio book version of TSP 2018 was narrated by a woman called Anne Reid, and then the next edition 2019 by Sally herself. From then on all other books also by her.
So it looks like they tried a professional narrator and for some reason, probably the desire for a personal connection, it was not what people wanted.

I'm going to listen to both TSP samples to see how big the difference is, should interesting!

https://www.overdrive.com/creators/1538890/raynor-winn

There is an article - quoted in another thread -whereby all children’s possessions were being thrown out (?) lost forever & they could choose only one item each in a dramatic call with Raymoth.

Ditto their library, whereby all (!) books were lost forever & Moth devastated except, serendipitously, Beowulf illuminated by a lucky shaft of light…

Well, almost, he happened to have in his hand at the time. To paraphrase Moth said ‘how will I leave all beloved books forever (?)’. His daughter replies:

’You can do it Dad, which book do you have in your hand? Ah..Beowulf…Just pick it up & walk out of the library’.

There has to be documentation somewhere that would either support this or disprove it. Chloe H may have found some or be looking into it 🤞 I note that the 2013 medical letters showing TW being diagnosed then still haven't turned up.

I don't know whether this has been raised before, but I wonder where they recharged their phone. They wild camped for 100 nights but I can't remember any mention of recharging their phone.

There are various references to packing a charger, the battery dying in the cold, and a few references to recharging in cafes when they're asking for hot water. They plug it in in the visitor centre where the girl with pink hair works, and ina cafe in Pendeen (but by then it's got wet and only shows a white screen, only to spring back to life wherever the mine chimney with the Heinz label is). The next reference to charging it is in Fowey, where Polly has left a message. Apparently by then they're 'forgotten we had it', and their daughter will 'give them hell' for not charging it. When Poily calls again, the phone ringing is 'harsh, insistent, interrupting'. Presumably because they're so attuned to nature. References to other people on mobiles are invariably negative.

I remember reading phone largely ignored & rarely switched on? When they did their son etc ‘had been trying to get hold of them’. This might point to limited, well publicised, bits of path being completed when they said or retrofitted by a few years & other bits even done in late 90s? Mobile phone technology might back this up?

They have no water & have to drink it unsterilised from a stream etc. Later tech can’t help them find a pharmacy re: solving forgotten meds issue & ‘the guidebook, good as it was, didn’t show inland shops’, to paraphrase

I think it’s possible they were already quite familiar with path from 90s & some anecdotes point to that time .eg. Man running or working in Mullion cafe, a fit with late 90s, or thereabouts, not otherwise

So not an iphone (?) & no online banking or access to internet either. In mid 2013.

I did think that the whole book might be an amalgam of different walks.

By 2013 phone ringtones & message notifications were no longer default setting ‘harsh & interrupting’.
Thank you for all this excellent detail. It does remind me of life with mobiles about 2006-8 or even before.

Did they also do a pre Iphone semi flit to TSP one wonders (?) & went off grid to avoid ‘harsh, interrupting’ creditors or similar, one wonders.

Sorry should have checked first, there is no sample for the Anne Reid version 😥

I have the SW narrated audio versions of TSP and just couldn’t get past the first chapter because of the narration. I kept having to do a quick translation in my head for every word. So distracting. I wonder why no one told her it wasn’t the best idea?

Narration is so important. I love listening to a Jenny Eclair book written and narrated by her because she is a seasoned performer as well as skilled writer.

Luckilu I found the free pdf version of TSP online so I didn’t have to buy it twice - that really would have been rubbing salt into the wound 😂

I see a PP has answered this for you but it got me looking at the book. Probably raised before but why does their daughter need to send them a phone?

‘I’m sending you a new mobile, with a battery that lasts more than ten minutes. Call me every day, and don’t ignore me when I call you. And tell Tom.’

Seems extraordinary they didn't have decent phones already given they allegedly ran a holiday let business. This passage above also shows RW must have used the phone daily to call Rowan or she didn't keep her promise. I note also they used the phone to take photos on the trip(s).

Sorry but that doesn’t stack up for me re: summer 2013. Maybe pay as you go though? Raymoth prob had burners too for double lives (?) :) But Moth was seriously ill so this irresponsibility doesn’t add up again (?)

If I'm honest about the whole thing I just cannot get past the embezzlement. I just can't and how others, including her publisher, can is something I fail to comprehend. A woman in her forties doing this to her employer suggests not just a lack of judgement but a serious lack of scruples. If she can do this she can deceive about anything else. Embezzlement has consequences. The homelessness was the consequence.

I also meant to say that it's one thing ignoring an embezzlement history on an author of fiction but when the whole book pivots on the homelessness do PRH and RW seriously think we are idiots?

I raised this and someone above replied that it's currently the fashion for 'memoirs' to be narrated by the author. Which I understand, from the point of view of making a book sound authentic. But when the author has no gift for narration, no track record of public speaking and a speech impediment that makes them hard to understand - is this really the best call? Are potential listeners not put off in their droves? And those of us with hearing difficulties are most certainly not going to endure something we can't get to grips with.

It's almost like self-sabotage.

I found one here, in case anyone wants to listen to it:
https://www.listening-books.org.uk/book/the-salt-path/1450
She clearly is a better speaker than Sally, but I found it irritating that she sounds so much older than the person she represents - from her Wiki page she was 83 at the time of recording.

What I also found is another MN thread of people wondering why that recording has disappeared from their audible libraries and speculating that maybe Anne Reid asked for it to be pulled: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5369480-audible-version-of-the-salt-path-narrated-by-anne-reid-has-disappeared-from-my-library

I actually find it spooky that you can BUY something and the seller can it retroactively take away from you, simply because they don't want you to have it anymore.

The forging of signatures on cheques, the serious illness of Mr Hemmings & their close family friendship, spending Christmases etc together compounds the deceit for me. It’s not like nicking groceries from office cupboard or the odd tenner from petty cash.

Also the ‘mistakes were made’ putting it back on Hemmings’ business imcompetence.

Well, in TWS, Moth, claiming not to understand Twitter, says his phone is 'for texts and calls'. Not clear whether that means he has a non-smartphone, or just isn't interested in what it can do other than text and call. (By LL, they clearly both have smartphones, as some 'chap in the village' has downloaded the OS app on his phone, and they both use their phones to keep up with the news, navigate the path, book hotels and order deliveries. )

And yes, it's not clear whether their daughter actually buys them a better phone, and the single phone they appear to have between them throughout TSP is that 'better phone'. TSP mentions 'credit, so its a PAYG.

The only calls TSP mentions them making is to cancel the house insurance and to borrow money for their train fare to Polly's from the children, and there's a reference to them not being able to afford to make the call that would untangle why one week their tax credit sum is less than usual. There are mentions of 'masses of texts' arriving from the children when the phone is recharged or dries out, but the only calls they mention receiving are two from Rowan when she's stuck and scared in Venice, and one from Polly offering them her shed.

It's quite chilling

But what would her publisher do about it?

They (presumably) didn't know about her criminal past when they signed TSP, and published it and its two sequels to big success, then CH approached them with her story, they didn't comment, and when the story broke they made it clear they took no legal responsibility for the book's accuracy, said they had done all necessary due diligence, had had no approaches about the accuracy of the book before CH came to them, and that they were postponing the publication of RW's fourth book because of her distress at the allegations.