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.

Yes you're absolutely right but they do know now and have still made one statement " supporting their author" and I somehow suspect book 4 will go ahead in a year's time.

Funny that in some interviews (such as the one below) SW deviates from the line that she wrote TSP for Moth. In the extract below, she claims she wrote it for herself and there is no mention of Moth!

The book has been a huge success and no one is more surprised than Raynor herself. “I had no idea I was going to write a book,” she says. “I started to write it, just so I could remember it, because it felt like something important to me. But once I got back onto the path in my head, it was like I was walking the path again and couldn’t stop myself. The writing just ran out of me.” The book is a blend of adventure, endurance, human spirit, travel advice and a love story at the heart. Not some romantic nonsense, but true, gritty, raw love for each other and for life itself. “I wanted every word to count and keep you on the path,” says Raynor. “I wanted to immerse you in that walk so it felt like you had walked it with me.” This is what makes the book such a wonderful read, it really is like you are walking the path. Feeling the pain of every step, the pressure of the steep incline in your lungs and the discomfort in your knees as you go back downhill.

Swimterview: Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path - Outdoor Swimmer Magazine

And she was a student, about to go to Venice and then Croatia for a late-summer job. Yet can only give them £20 towards the alleged train fare in early October.

In fairness, they'd also pulled all advance proofs, or didn't print any, because there are none around, so they knew well in advance that they wouldn't be publishing OWH as originally planned. I would, in their shoes, have probably put out a general ass-covering statement at the time as well. I mean, they're not detectives. All they had was a journalist's story alleging things they didn't know about.

I don't think it would be reasonable to expect them to say 'Oh well, now we know she's a wrong'un, we'll cancel her contract, let her first three books, which are big sellers for us, go out of print, and officially take her off our website'.

Whatever one thinks of RW, she's still their author, and under contract to them. It's not their job to put the boot in. One assumes the decision to cancel/postpone OWH was done in conjunction with her?

I don't know whether OWH will ever appear in any form.

I suppose a lot will depend on whether PRH think her reputation has received such permanent damage as to mean it (or another book by her) wouldn't sell. Or whether they think publishing another book of hers would accrue significant reputational damage to them.

I re-read The Independent's 2018 piece (of Moth real name Ray fame) earlier and noticed RW spoke about first writing up the trip as 40 pages and gave them to TW for his birthday. Then he and daughter said it could be worth writing a book.

I don't think she even makes it to Croatia, does she? The next we hear, after the missed bus in Venice phone call, is that she's been offered a PR job in London and is heading home immediately. (And now she's a tattoo artist?)

Whereas by TWS, she's written an entire account of the trip (the dubiously-entitled Lightly Salted Blackberries) and given it to him for his birthday.

The narrator Anne Reid is the very wonderful actress of Dinnerlaides, Last Tango in Halifax etc etc etc

A Cat B house sale is classed as non-standard, including (but not restricted to) repossessions due to non-payment of mortgages. The loan SW obtained to pay off the money she embezzled was secured against the house, so was in effect a private mortgage.
Apologies if somebody else has posted this before me - I'm just catching up with posts since last night 😶

I wonder if she did stints on her own? Reads like it. As a PP said before the evidence points to an amalgam of walks. I think she was already very familiar with path in places.

The Portillo interview suggests walking without any impairments & pushing self uphill on treacherous, rocky terrain with no rest breaks. She was very self-congratulatory here.

In 2013 does that all stack up? It’s a pay-as-you-go but sounds Nokia circa 1995. He’s a sick man.

Here is a photo of Raymoth doing a selfie on the SWCP. It's been deleted from SW's IG feed but you can just about see the phone Moth is holding. SW has a sunhat by this point of the walk!

I would like to know where and by whom the changes were made to the original manuscript . Who decided to move the mother’s death, originally in the LSB version of TSP, to LL? That editorial decision, writing out the sister and using it as a foreshadowing of M’s demise in book 2, makes a total fiction of the books and is a calculated decision for narrative impact. If that took place in house, then the editors are aware of the retrofitted time line. Penguin are culpable if this is the case and stand to lose as much as the Walkers - if this can be proven.

I am wondering why Dave and Julie have not issued a statement corroborating Raynor's statements about TIm's physical challenges and shared information publicly about their experience hiking with Ray and Tim. They could possibly be media shy. It would really help the RayMoth's rebuttal of the Observer article.

The 'abandoned car at Llandudno' episode was several years earlier, after the Hemmings family discovered the embezzlement. SW had fled to the rich relative in London; the implication is that she was trying to make it harder for the police to track her down. This is what the Times says about it.

Sounds very Lord Lucan esque.

Attached is a German article about SW's writing desk. She shares it with Moth. It was in the kitchen of her parent's house and her father repaired it many times (apparently)

Mein Schreibtisch: Küchentisch mit Blick auf den Obstgarten - buchreport

To drive from Pwllheli to Yeovil via Glastonbury is 236 miles & would take just 5 hours 39 minutes according to Google Maps.

https://tinyurl.com/ye26rmre

But she’d never written before & Moth had no idea she could write?

After a lot of digging I've finally managed to get hold of a photo which shows Raymoth at Land's End on 15th September 2013.This does at least prove that they did do some of the walk in 2013 as described in TSP

Had she been practising her RW signature?

The table is from her parents house but she mentions the apple harvest in the article, so presumably was then at Haye

That proves the day but not necessarily the year?

But what really strikes me is how happy Sally looks in so many of the SWCP pictures, even though it was supposed to be such a difficult time for them.
In contrast, in many recent pictures I think she looks troubled, sad, scared and with a forced smile.
Tim on the other hand not at all.

It says 2013 on the signpost at the back. The signs at Land's End and John O'Groats are changed every day for the photo op.

Having a kitchen table as a desk is exactly the right thing for someone who has no experience of writing, so it makes absolute sense in her self-image (whatever the actual truth is).