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.

Is this the man who remembers him going over to France, to do some plastering?

Seems like Moth was still working at the NT property in 2007 and interviewed somebody to take over from him as the head gardener at that time.

But what if she'd already got a tentative 'yes'? I had a similar thing with one of my early books (fiction, admittedly), where a publisher said 'we'll take it if you change one or two things...' What if her agent had already seen it and suggested revisions and/or taken it to PRH and they'd said they'd take it if she made it 'punchier'?

She could have written it at any time and retconned a lot of the other stuff. Then they'd only have to go and do a wee bit of the SWCP, making sure that they were visible and remembered in a couple of places....snap some pictures and BINGO, suddenly the whole thing is current and contemporary and relatable.

I don't think there's any evidence that Raymoth went to the SWCP in the early 2000s let alone thought about writing a book.

I think a far more likely scenario is that
a) they lost their house in 2013
b) went to visit their son who was based in Newquay (as described in his now deleted FB post)and maybe did a bit of walking on the SWCP in 2013
c) got the CBD/CBS diagnosis in June 2015 and
d) went off and walked chunks of the SWCP in 2015/6
e) retrofitted the narrative to fit into the story about losing the house in June 2013 and during the same week getting a definitive CBD diagnosis - both of which narratives Chloe H has torpedoed in her recent Observer articles.

@OpenThatWindow

I wonder if the 'Christmas lights' brain scan was her starting to edge away from Tim's diagnosis in a lead up to declaring him cured in the planned 4th book, as he's now lived too long for it to possibly be CBD.

I wonder if she is edging towards him having a different diagnosis altogether - there is that strange reference to a 'sizeable brain mass on your recent MRI' in that scene, and 'brain mass' normally means a tumor of some sort.

So it could work as a nice narrative off-ramp: he does not have CBD but he does have something life-threatening, a big bad tumor that has been growing in his brain, pushing on his nerves and causing all kinds of symptoms that his doctors have confused for CBD.

But crucially, in brain cancer, as opposed to CBD, there is the possibility of survival, even if it's just a small chance, so he gets cured and Raymoth and their money live happily ever after.

(Wasn't there a reference in one article that some people said someone told them he had cancer? Was that in France?)

I've been thinking the same for a while now. Anyone interested in books and writing knows how little money most writers make and how remote the chance of a bestseller is. If you need to raise money it's the last thing you'd do.

The Jeffrey Archer thing keeps nudging (fudging?) at me. Remember the 'amazing' story of how he wrote his way out of bankruptcy? He decided to write a bestseller, and that's exactly what he did. Turned out later he had a mate at the publishing company who facilitated the whole thing. Allegedly.

But the resemblance between the Gangani books and the final published works seem clear. So I do think there's been a plan for a long time, and TSP wasn't an original response to a series of unfortunate events.

But in that case the 2004 BBC article that refers to her as a 'law clerk' is also wrong - or rather she was embellishing her credentials just like TW about his 'botany degree'.

Exactly. A person working in the 'fines office' at the local magistrates court is neither legally qualified nor training to become so. They are admin staff.

It's a slippery use of language because in 2004 'articled clerk' was a term for a trainee solicitor and I expect many people would have been left with the impression that she was in the process of qualifying as a solicitor.

There has been a bit of comment on this thread about SW being a fantastic natural history writer. I'm not so sure.

The stuff about hatching ladybirds near Clovelly seemed to me somewhat spurious. The peregrine falcon anecdote at Polruan seemed utterly bogus - peregrine falcons aren't like migratory swallows returning to the same spot each year.

For the bulk of TSP there is precious little insightful comment about the natural history observed en route apart from a few comments about the flora on the Lizard peninsula which could have been lifted from a leaflet picked up during the walk (as with the history of the Minack theatre)

Personality, reliability as a worker, ability to get along with others, did he seem to live beyond his means.

Brain tumours are often deadly, so won’t people definitely smell a rat if they pivot and start saying he has a brain tumour after living so long with a previously described ‘mass’ on his brain?

I know where the campsite is, and yes, it’s a good walk from the harbour front where Moth purportedly did his Beowulf performance.

What did he say about his reasons for moving to Wales?

What did he say about his life, previous jobs etc in Staffordshire?

Any mention of moving to France?

Any mention of writing a book, either him or Sally?

A first draft containing just the betrayal by friend - let down by justice system - evicted -homeless angle might have been written in 2013/2014* and possibly presented to an agent. Result: interesting but not enough.
So when the 2015 diagnosis happens, they work that in and then the agent says: double whammy sob story might be a winner.

*didn't they spend the majority of 'the walk' taking a long break in Polly's shed anyway?

Also, the Walton Centre where he was first seen - the 'hospital in Liverpool' isn't named in the book but it's the only one they could mean - is the only specialist neurological centre in the UK. I said in an earlier thread that a family member was treated there.
They know their brain conditions. If RW is going to take the route of a misdiagnosis or missed tumour as explaining Moth's unexpected longevity, that looks even more fishy.

If they did the walk in 2013 as described in TSP...

Was he one for telling tall stories?
Was there frequently some problems/dramas in his life?
Was he reliable?

WHEN DID HE LEAVE AND WHY?
Was it 2004 like Ros Hemmings said?
Was he kicked out or did he leave - even just rumors?
Was he considered good at his job, or indicisive/nervous like RH said?
What work did he do afterwards if known?
Was he even there or possibly in France?

How in depth was his actual botanical and gardening knowledge?

Is that certain? Because that is a HUGE discrepancy to the version Ros Hemmings told, and if she turns out to be unreliable 😬

I think she’d clearly always had writing ambitions — as well as probably being the author of the Izzy Wynn-Thomas novel, she describes in TWS writing stories about animals as a child (and also fantasising about writing a book with a penguin on the spine). I’m not sure it was about money at that point, or not in the sense that she knew in advance that she had a surefire hit on her hands.

She has some ability, and has clearly the instinct to piece together a compelling narrative out of elements of their lives, embellishment and omission, but I don’t think she could have known how well it would sell, and that there would be such an appetite for sequels and author events and the film adaptation. I think if she’d known, she’d have played it cleverer, and been less inconsistent. I think it was probably intoxicating, how in demand it was, though she must have known that the more she wrote, the bigger the TSP phenomenon got, the more likely she was to be rumbled.

Which people, those who have bought 3 books containing the same decline-walk-improvement formula for an untreatable condition?
There are people who are very willing to believe them anything that has just a superficial similarity to things happening in the real world.
Not everyone obviously, but it doesn't have to be.

Yes, according to my source. I hasten to add that I have zero knowledge about the reliability of my source!

Not the way things are now, but I was speculating about a possible plan she might have had while writing LL in 2021 or whenever on how to bring the storyline to a close.

That hypothetical plan did not involve CH getting on to the case and talking to neurologists, we are in a completely different situation now.

Maybe she could have genuinely believed he worked there until 2004, or perhaps fed lies by SW?

Or the source could be mistaken - how reliable do you think they are, @catwith69lives ?

Is it? A huge discrepancy, that is? The Sacred Timeline (in the style of Loki) at the start of the thread has:

. 2004Ros Hemmings states that Tim Walker left his job at Plas yn Rhiw in ‘I think, 2004’ (Observer ‘The Slow Newscast’ podcast, 29 July 2025)

That sounds like she's estimating. It wasn't her own job or family so I think being several years out is within expectations.

What's more interesting to me as a potential link is TW buying the French land in 2007. Was a move across the Channel in his sights?