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.

Sure, but I’d be surprised if anyone was dying for their blog to attract thousands of readers who only read a single post for a reason which is nothing to do with the bloggers themselves.

Maybe it's just an editorial policy by the Observer not to link to private blogs?

It's a really nice idea to think she is reading all our theories - it would make them actually potentially useful rather than just a private endeavor. But I wonder how she would find the time beside all else she is doing now, maybe she has an assistant for MN fine combing...

On 8 August 2015, according to the Observer,
Moth told the Parsons that he had a neurological condition that left him with stiff legs.

On 19 June 2015 he describes all kinds of symptoms to the neurologist, but 'stiff legs' is not one of them.
There is a mention of a strange sensation in his left leg and general problems walking unless on very even ground (!!) but most of the problems described concern his left arm, including the need to support it in a part of his shirt.

So it looks like his symptoms have shifted considerably in the 7 weeks inbetween - some like the inability to walk on uneven ground miracuously disappearing, everything concerning his left arm at least not worth a mention anymore (and I have never seen any pictures where he had to support his left arm in his shirt), but a new symptom of 'stiff legs' suddenly appears.

Interesting.

Why not? I haven't found the blog yet but it's often the way that you follow a link to a blog post that leads to exploration of other posts on that blog. The whole premise of the WWW is that information is linked from one website to another rather than remain in unconnected silos.

So what do we think now? Does it suggest they did some of the walk in 2013, up to Land's End perhaps, given the photo? Then did other parts as short trips over the next couple of years? Or set off to finish it in reverse from Poole to Land's End following Tim's 2015 diagnosis? Or had the idea of the book and needed to find filler material and inspiration by meeting folk on the path?

Either way, whatever RW wrote, it is not the true story regarding the walk, let alone the cause of losing the house and the severity of TW's illness.

What strikes me about this image, every time I see it, is that GA and JI look genuinely comfortable with each other. OK, they're actors, but that's the vibe I get.

Raymoth, not so much. I know that dealing with the glare of publicity may be difficult if you're not used to it, but by this point they'd done a lot of media appearances.
ETA Gah, sorry, it hasn't posted. It's the red carpet image with Moth Tim leaning towards GA and GA/JI with their arms around each other. Sorry.

The blog is called "David and Jo's European adventures" and the URL contains their last name, so easy to find for anyone searching their names after reading the Observer article.
They knew the article was coming out so could have taken the blog offline if they wanted to.
And I think the sentence
They catalogued their journey in their blog, which is still available online.
almost screams 'go ahead and have a look'.

I guess it also in someway answers the question what happened to 2015 in the timeline

This one?

Yes, thanks @Hyenana that one.

I think one is Bristol based

Morning all. All credit to CH for getting in a day early with a new article containing clear evidence of further significant inconsistencies in TSP. Many of us thought that it was too much to expect any of the Australians or Americans described in TSP to pop up and yet here two are. Brilliant.

A note about the hidden blog links: some links like these are automatically hidden by the MN system and can remain hidden for longer out of office hours. They may reappear once MNHQ have had a chance to look at them.

Because bloggers want people to read their blog because they’re interested in the content, not for a single encounter with a famous/notorious person. I mean, I don’t think the Parsons asked CH not to link for that reason, especially as she gave all the information needed to find it and said it was still up — I imagine it’s just Observer editorial policy not to direct link. I’m only saying that a single blogpost of mine being pored over by Walker sleuths wouldn’t enthuse me, quite the opposite.

I haven’t looked their blog up, but from what CH says, other than the date discrepancies, the most interesting thing for me is that SW turned what the Parsons appear to have thought was a friendly hour-long encounter into something that makes the Australians look greedy (two ‘mounds’ of all-day breakfast), superficial (concerned with highlights, and having to eat less when they’re back at home or get fat) and a bit wussy (‘a bed and a bath every night’).

One wonders how many other ‘negative’ interactions with other people on the path got the same glumwashing treatment designed to make the other peoole look bad and hammer hone the message that the Walkers are the real deal and have it harder than everyone else.

It feels particularly odd in the circumstances, if the Walkers were no longer even technically homeless, and walking that section of the path either just for fun, or specifically so that SW could write about that part in what would become Lightly Salted Blackberries. Is SW trying to imagine, cackhandedly, how two homeless, hungry people would actually have felt meeting tourists with money for two breakfasts and B and Bs in bad weather?

I imagine the tension between the two of them re: any deliberate omissions, exaggerations & possible embezzlement pending public revelations took a toll.

I also wonder if previously supportive, wider family really knew the truth behind embezzlement etc? Maybe only the party line ‘a dispute with a lifetime trusted friend’. Imagine if other doubts on illness especially now sown with them..

Yes, the ‘missing year’. Clearly partly spent walking (previously unwalked?) sections of path, so those could be interpolated into the book.

The silly thing is that if SW had said that in an introduction somewhere (path walked in several stints, interpolated with other stuff — too dull and complex to describe as happened, so have combined them into two periods on the path for the reader’s sake), I don’t think anyone would have turned a hair.

The one thing it does tell us is that they had the audacity to use their own tea bags in a cafe while they were, according to their own story, not homeless.

I'm still puzzled by their unknown whereabouts between 2014 and 2015 if they weren't in Polruan.

There is an old adage in medicine that everyone who takes a history from a patient gets a different story. People forget to mention symptoms that aren't bothering them that day.

I am quite enjoying the idea of cafe owners all along the SWCP laminating large notices for their walls that say USE OF OWN TEABAGS NOT ALLOWED.

Possibly with a cartoon drawing of a teabag with a large cross through it.

That’s hilarious.

Can't Anna from Fowey be contacted to find out when she first met them and when they started living in her flat?

The pace has really picked up since last week, now we get far more than one article per week on this by the Observer.

I wonder how the rest of the press will react - following the article about the misrepresentation of the Mullion Cove café there were a number of similar articles by other publications, but when the article/video about John the CBD patient and the harm done to people him by the book appeared, none of them seemed interested. 😥

Or possibly they thought everything that involves casting doubt on Tim's diagnosis is too risky? I remember the biggest backlash against the 1st Observer article was because of that, even people who believed the embezzlement allegations were calling any discussion of diagnosis tasteless and immoral.

Excellent stuff from Chloe H (and anyone here who helped..) I'm not sure which of the theories above is my preferred one, but it definitely seems like some version of this. I can imagine the Parsons' story sparking the idea in RW of appropriating it. They were Australian, it would seem unlikely they'd ever find out..

This also casts more doubt on the dramatic CBD diagnosis. As I've said earlier, lots of the narrating of Moth's symptoms and the ups and downs of it seem more like a chronic (but not terminal) condition, where you will have good days and bad days, and suffer for it when you've overdone things.

It’s possible CH has attempted to find her. As you say, it seems as if it should be possible to track down the owner of a flat in a chapel in somewhere as small as Polruan. It’s possible she didn’t want to talk to a journalist, though.

Any more than ‘Polly’ might want to, given her lack of planning permission for her converted meat packing shed, and representation as a slave driver.

ETA. I mean, I’m interested in this story because of the literary scam angle, but it’s a pretty tawdry tale. I can understand some accidental bystanders not wanting to associate themselves with it. Or indeed their property.

If he was doing the access course before starting the degree proper, as hypothesised, I think that would allow them enough time to spend weeks doing sections of the coast path during that 2014-15 year.

I suppose it makes the ending the walk and TimMoth starting uni straight away make sense now. The walk just took two years in random chunks perhaps, understandably, but also makes the premise of the book a little more fiction than unflinchingly honest. Although that was PRH marketing speak not SalRay quote.

Perhaps the meeting with Anna wasn't quite as it seems in the book, as they seem according to Jo P to have been heading away from Falmouth not towards it as suggested in TSP. Eg they wouldn’t have then reached Talland Bay which is where they apparently met her (if they were walking the other way, leaving aside the year gap).