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.

I no longer have a copy of TSP to check - what does it say about this bit? If it was a Sunday that they went to see the show it was probably a dress run as first night was the Monday. Did the cast drive them to the pub and then on to the campsite? In that year, most cast would have gone to the Cable Station Inn after performances for a late licence. It's only a mile on to Treen campsite by van (or a stagger along the cliff path in the dark!)

The book states everything was closed and no photographer due to the weather, and they went over a barrier and took the photo themselves.

She does look properly happy here, not her usual media teeth baring rictus grin at all!

Not having read tsp I don't know how often they claim to have stayed at a campsite, but TimMoths beard seems to have been kept pretty trim in all the photos.

@HatStickBoots
I can’t understand Penguin at all. Why aren’t they suing her?

Because she made them a shitload of money with her books?
And I don't consider them innocent victims at all - she came to them with a manuscript containing a completely improbable miracle cure story about a disease that is not even 'just' life-threatening but 100% deadly.
And they bought and published it.
That alone makes them guilty in my eyes, whatever additional knowledge/complicitly there might have been about changed timelines etc.
I wish it was possible for someone to sue them.

Good point! 🤔

I guess Sal could have been going at it with the nail scissors..

But re the points about the general level of possible fabrication, I noted a couple of threads back how in one interview at least Sally was definitely relating the start of tsp story as if it was something she'd read in a book and was describing what she'd read, rather than going straight to her memories of the time. Which would make sense if indeed she had made it up and then had read it back to remind herself what it said....

If nothing else then the book should be stripped of its award. I understand it won the Christopher Bland prize for 'first book by someone over 50'. If HTDDD was really SW's first book, then TSP wasn't eligible for entry. I wonder who entered it, whether it was PRH? But the award (and the ten grand prize!) should go to the second prize winner, not someone who had already self published a book.

Like your conclusion that "RW is a fictionalised version of ST." Couldn't agree with you more. In fact I feel I don't know SW as all I have seen of her are when she appears on camera - whether on stage at book fairs etc. or on TV (e.g. "The One Show") - where she is introduced as Raynor Winn, the LD walker and BS author! (BS standing for Best Selling!) Invariably Moth is otherwise engaged or appears remotely, has very little to say except when prompted by RW and just smiles and waves! But when he is on his own e.g. picking up cider apples, he becomes alive. Is that when he is TW and not with SW as MW? Even without knowing their background - or perhaps because of - they are in my view a very odd couple. The film company should perhaps have engaged SW to play RW and TW to play MW!
And I naively thought when the Observer story broke the books on display would have to bear a sticker "Based on a True Story" but as far as I can see, nothing has changed!

Very true. You’re absolutely right of course, they sucked it up.
The blurb about OWH reads like it was going to be another smash hit for them. Holding off the launch while they do some damage control rather than the reasons they stated.

Maybe the lion headed bunny rabbits from the film version nibbled at it during the night? 😃

Today I got The Wild Silence and Landlines from the charity shop where I volunteer: I can take them back when I've finished and don't have to pay. They look as if they haven't been read. This is the first time I've seen any of the 3 books in charity shops here: non-fiction (!) tends to be donated later than fiction. Sometimes readers keep books that they regard as special. I will keep looking out to see if they're donated in other shops whilst I'm looking for my next read. I live in a popular walking area so would guess that a lot of copies of The Salt Path were purchased here.

On rereading her posts re the house raffle on The Accidental Smallholder (2012) it’s clear that Raymoth have been BSing for long,long time. She/they claim to be a publisher (Gangani) running the raffle to help out a “friend” who needs to sell their house/smallholding, but consequent posts imply that she, in fact, is the owner. Other posters are rightly suspicious and question the legality of the raffle. She makes claims about how many books have already sold, and which countries they’re being sent to (uhuh, right). When asked why the book isn’t available on Amazon, she claims that she’s running the promotion with independent local booksellers and it wouldn’t be fair to them to list it on Amazon ( what a hero), she’s hoping that the actor Rhys Evans is going to draw the winning ticket etc etc. The tone she uses throughout is unbelievably patronizing and self aggrandizing. Unsurprisingly, a couple of people who bought the book seem to have difficulty downloading it. There are, however, a couple of (suspiciously)rave reviews. I don’t believe a word S or T Walker say. Someone posted the link way back I think, and I couldn’t get it to work, but google The Accidental Smallholder/ Gangani Publishing/ hello from Wales. It’s definitely worth a second look.

Agree. OWH blurb is very enticing. Pitched to play on our emotions and hook us in again - Moth facing inevitable decline. Sal can't accept. Very emotionally manipulative.

Angela Harding is talking to Martha Kearney on 'This Natural Life' 31st July 2025 on BBC Sounds
'where the illustrator of books by the likes of Simon Armitage and Isabella Tree seeks her inspiration among the seabird colonies of Fair Isle'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002gg7h?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

I've learnt how to link!😄

Did they really get a lift from the ‘army’/was path closed off for army manoeuvres? Someone said this doesn’t ever happen.

Didn’t they get rather a lot of lifts from Grant, military & theatre folk?

If PRH were to try and take control of the narrative shortly before a launch of OWH in Oct 2026 by:

• orchestrating a series of controlled interviews with SW and Clare Balding (R4 - Ramblings), John Craven ( Country/Cuddly File) and Simon Armitage and
• during these programmes SW expresses a 'mea culpa' in the form of I was a foolish first time author whose primary concern was my husband and never expected TSP to achieve the success that it did, so applied some artistic license to the narrative for which I am incredibly sorry if some sufferers of CBD misinterpreted my message and got false hope but (in atonement)
• SW's publisher and herself have agreed to donate all sales of OWH to PSPA

Would that sort of work to make the best of a bad situation?

Also got a lift from 2 homeless guys in Weymouth to some wooded encampment of "rural homeless" out of town. Very trusting of them given they had trust issues and a tent to camp on chesil beach if they walked a short distance out of town (where they camp the next night). I don't doubt the encampment existed. But I doubt the Raymoth went anywhere near it beyond reading something about it afterwards.

Well it doesn't address her fraudulent winning of a First Book award with associated large cheque, when she'd already written and published a book...

She can fudge that. No proof she wrote it 100% herself. The cackhanded Gangani website (Paul Calais et al) suggests a familial involvement.

Does self publishing and only selling about 3 copies count?

I know, but genuine sufferers of CBD would potentially benefit from the monies raised by book sales to fund research. Despite having read TSP, before the current controversy I hadn't understood how awful a disease CBD is. Maybe some good can come out of this shabby story of deceit and emotional manipulation.

In Paddy Dillon's guide it is five days from St Ives to the Lizard but they are five long days. They are not as hard as some of the N Devin says but they ain't easy. The actual path after leaving St Ives is particularly awkward.I thought they were doing shorter days?
We did this section last October in absolutely stunning weather and very nice it is to.
And then they double back towards St Ives to stay at Lamorna (where we met two delightful couples) and the back further to the Minack? By foot?
I've tried to avoid the details and hang in to the big picture, they weren't homeless, he hasn't got CBD/CBS, and she is a thoroughly unpleasant and unreliable narrator. Not that he's innocent in my book but this doesn't make sense to me.