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.

This is gold ...

stopping only for the winter in someone else’s property

But they do stop for much longer, don't they?
According to the TSP timeline, they do the first part from early August 2013 to October 2013 (so about 2 months), then they stay in Polly's shed and don't restart until July 2014, so 9 months later!

I haven't read that part of the book but it has always seemed strange to me that they would wait for so long, even though according to this guide it is possible to backpack/camp on the path from March onwards, and the best time for hiking is even supposed to be April and May - not too hot and less tourists, which I would have thought would be a huge draw for Raymoth (but maybe not - less people to favorably compare themselves to).

Did they never do any short hikes in the book during that stay? If they don't is the reason possibly to avoid the suggestion the hike was done in multiple small portions rather than 2 big ones?

https://wanderingwheatleys.com/south-west-coast-path-hiking-guide/

The long stay in the shed is also weird regarding Sally's claim she had to readjust to sleeping indoors when they moved into the Polruan chapel, if she had spent 9 of the last 13 months indoors.

The latest report, from the Australian bloggers, suggests to me a sequence of events that seems to make perfect sense:

2013 - the Walkers lose their home. Off they go for a walk because they need to get away, have all the time in the world, and why not go for a walk. Crucially, TW has seen a doctor, maybe already under the pain clinic, but no diagnosis; physio may have been suggested. So they keep going, past LE, until the weather closes in.

They probably outstay their welcome with Polly from Autumn 2013 - early 2015, when SW's mother dies. I suspect they didn't walk during 2014.

Then in Summer 2015, TW sees the neurologist who raises the spectre of CBD. The doc basically warns them off googling it, but they ignore that and are v alarmed at what they see (SW in particular). And all reassurance from the doc is forgotten, buried under the horrible case histories and scare stories that Dr Google offers. So, believing that time is very limited, they decide to fill in the later part of the SWCP. Perhaps TW is a bit stiffer and less mobile than he was 2 years earlier; they are time limited (he's starting a course though NOT a degree!) so they don't bother walking the boring, tricky bits, but cherry pick the bits they'd rather concentrate on. Wouldn't we all?

The rest is history, and a bestseller ---

Although the claim she barely spoke to anyone in Polruan is dubious. This review, posted in these threads a couple of weeks back, suggests she was well known by the locals.

"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."

At this point I think TSP movie is crying out for a remake- 'Rashamon'-style.

Fabulous movie (and short story it's based on)!

Yes, I agree on the health angle. It’s awful that sufferers from CBD may have been given false hope, or felt their sufferings were being minimised as something curable with exercise, but in fact TSP is very careful not to make a firm diagnosis or to claim a ‘cure’, far less advocate other CBD sufferers should take the same approach of extreme exercise on a restricted diet. The medic who reviewed it in the professional journal makes no diagnostic points about it, merely claims that hope and positivity can help people with serious conditions.

I don’t think it’s comparable to the Belle Gibson case.

Insofar as I understand it, BG claimed to have multiple cancers she knew she didn’t have precisely in order to peddle products, a wellness app and cookbook, with plans to expand further when her fraud was outed. She made vast sums of money when her app was pre-installed onto IPads. She was in perfect health throughout while claiming to have numerous metastasised cancers she was self-treating. She advocated not engaging with traditional medical treatment, and advocated dangerous pseudoscientific treatments, anti-vaxxer positions etc . She withheld large sums of money she’d supposedly fundraised for cancer charities, using them to pay for a luxury rental, car, designer clothes, cosmetic dentistry, and holidays. Action was taken against her by Consumer Affairs. Her publisher agreed to make a payment to the federal Consumer Law fund as a penalty for not fact checking. BG admitted to fabricating her cancer claims, but did not apologise, and has never paid her vast fines.

Yes, the Walkers sold a memoir off the back of a retrofitted diagnosis, but TW was in fact diagnosed with an atypical form of the condition SW claims he has in TSP, and presumably already had some symptoms. They’re not selling anything apart from their own story. There’s no actual snake oil. The alleviation of symptoms, even for TW, is temporary and impossible to maintain. When he tries to replicate the path experience with gym going and long hikes with weights exercise bikes it doesn’t work. They don’t advocate not using traditional medicine. The CBD charity, while cutting ties, says that all money the Walkers raised had been received by the charity.

I've been trying to get my brain around why SW would crop the photo of her and Moth at LE on 15 Sept 2013 and then remove it from her IG feed..

The only reason I can come up with (if it wasn't 15 Sept 2015) is that in the cropped photo, Moth looks a wreck compared to how he looks on 8 Aug 2015 at the Fat Apples Cafe). He might look an even greater wreck if his full mug shot had appeared in the photo. It's hardly a stellar advert for the recuperative powers of walking to halt the advance of CBD (even if the diagnosis didn't occur until June 2015.)

So they have walked around 230 miles from Minehead to Land's End in 5 weeks from 8 Aug to 15 Sept and Moth looks completely knackered! It's hardly a story to shift 2 million copies of a book! You can see why it might have needed a bit of re-engineering!

I've only just seen the article- wow.

Confirms our general theory that 'the walk' was 2015. Also proves they are pathological liars. That's more than creative licence, I wonder how the publishers feel now.

"Lost our house because of embezzlement and went on a walking holiday 2 years later, hubby getting older, mild odd symptoms" doesn't quite have the same hook.

I think that if you were reporting these symptoms to a doctor, and then said 'we're planning to go hiking round the coastal path' that doctor would feel that was a bit ambitious and unwise given your unsteadiness and pain and would advise you against it, or maybe say 'some exercise is good but don't overdo it'. And I'd think that would be in the letter, like the plans for university, if they'd mentioned it.

Did you get out of hospital, @Uricon2? That all sounds absolutely horrible. Being a medical mystery is no fun at all. Hope you’re actually feeling better along with infection al markers falling.

I think you're spot on.

I agree that the embezzlement is much easier to prove than a possible health scam, and also that 'being conned out of our house' is half of the double whammy that is the emotional hook for the first book.

But in TWS and LL the planned OWS the homelessness narrative fades into the background while the miracle cure gets milked for all it's worth over multiple years without any regard for what it does to the real sufferers from the disease.

And I certainly HOPE that CH finds some killer evidence that shows without a doubt that Raymoth knew it was a false diagnosis.

Although I think the letters they provided already show that from 2019 on at least (so before the 2nd book) the diagnosis was openly called into question, his condition was described as stable, and yet she continued to describe him as a man under the shadow of death per doctor's diagnosis.

That's already way more than a subjective, emotional difference to what she describes.

Missed earlier, and have to applaud @Gouache for, the brilliance of 'glumwashing' to describe RW's 'look how bad we have it' style. Genius. And I brought 'drive-by scolding' to these threads so I should know 😎

I wonder why Raynor Winn/Sally Walker decided/felt the need to confidently claim in writing and in interviews that they walked all the 630 miles and that her husband only had 2 years to live?

I wonder why Moth Winn/Tim Walker felt the need to claim to Bill Cole (cider farm) that he only had a couple of months to live?

Is that the original version of the lands end photo? Why can I see a hole through Tim’s shoulder to Sw’s hair and sea behind?
can anyone else see what I mean?

SW is careful not to present walking as a ‘miracle cure.’ She writes a lot about how it helps Moth physically and mentally - and that’s a subjective feeling to a large extent and therefore harder to disagree with. Likewise, her catastrophising about his health is a subjective thing… she could claim she felt devastated as soon as he presented with symptoms.

This is true in TSP, but I would argue that by LL she is being a lot more explicit about the “curative powers” Moth experiences- the scene at the end where the consultant shows them a before scan and an after scan, and says ‘this one is normal’ makes an explicit link between the 1000-mile walk and reversing signs of neurodegeneration on brain scans. I think that goes way beyond what’s reasonably subjective experience.

It will tell you a lot about my authentically glum week if I say this is the nicest thing anyone’s said to me during it! 😱😀

That's what I mean. Either they didn't tell him they intended to do that or they decided to walk after the consultation date.

Oh yes I see - thought at first it was a white or grey patch on his top, but you can see her hair there in a weird gap. Very strange.

I think it's TW's jacket collar creating the perceived hole.

It's not a hole through Tim’s shoulder. It's just the collar of his jacket sticking out behind Sally's head giving the illusion of a hole in his shoulder.

"Is this the best you've got?" was my initial response to the letters - and I think the 2019 one was at least as bad in that it openly called for a re-evaluation of the diagnosis.
I think publishing these letters was a huge own goal for SW - there were certainly people who were satisfied by any medical letter containing the words CBS or CBD, but she has also given valuable information to all her critics (and one of the symptoms described in 2015 seemed so contrary to what I found in the literature that I even wondered if it might be faked).

Ah, I only read TSP (precisely because of the hype) and I thought it was so poorly written that I couldn’t face any more!

so in LL she explicitly says the walking has led to the normal brain scan? Wow. She definitely needs to be held accountable for that too then

Ahhh ok, I can see that now. Thank you!