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.

There are people who are very willing to believe them anything that has just a superficial similarity to things happening in the real world.

Yes, there are, of course. However, I have a feeling most of RW’s readership accepted Moth living with CBS and didn’t question it that much, otherwise it wouldn’t have got as much promotion as it did and it wouldn’t have sold so well. And I think that’s a major reason (in addition to everything else) for why we feel so duped on this thread and why lots of other people do too, and why the Observer is spending time and money trying to get to the bottom of this.

Ros Hemmings said she thought Tim left the gardening job in 2004. She wasn't sure.

She isn't sure of a lot of the dates back then; she also can't remember what year Sally started working for Martin, for instance.

I agree.

I was debating whether to reply to you, as I don’t want it to seem like a pile-on, but I didn’t gain any particular insights into nature from her writing - neither from TSP or from TWS, which I’m currently reading.

I think Chloe Dalton (Raising Hare) and Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk) are both superior nature writers. In terms of others who write well about nature, I also really like Barry Hines (he wrote A kestrel for a knave, which was turned into the film Kes), and Ted Hughes is also brilliant and so original.

This may be a bit of an irrelevant tangent but I’m curious about the teaser SW offers regarding OWH - specifically about the walk needing to be done in winter. (See screenshot below).

I’m sure I’e come across this in several interviews e.g https://cornwall.muddystilettos.co.uk/life/people/muddy-interview-raynor-winn-author-writer-on-winter-hill/

Is it just because walking in winter gives her endless opportunities for more metaphors about death, renewal and redemption or is she just trying to be enigmatic or is there something else??

Maybe we’ll never know. Something else to go in the Shed of Doubt.

She mentioned him buying the house in France almost in the same sentence though, and said she assumed he had family money to be able to afford it.
So while she was not sure about the exact year, she seemed very sure it was a considerable time after he had left his job.

Also, 2008 was an extremely important year in her relationship with the Walkers, and if Tim had been her colleague until just the year before, I would expect her to remember that.

So yes, I think 3 years in this timeline is a big deal.

Yup I am with you there! Kes - A Kestrel for a Knave. What a fantastic book and film.

She worked there herself, she said she worked there with him until he left

I'm terrible with years/dates, not long ago I couldn't remember the year I got married and had to really think about it (!) so I don't feel necessarily causes doubt on RH's reliability. But will keep an open mind!

I'm increasingly of this position. The walk as described in TSP seems more and more like something cobbled together from separate trips and general life experiences with a good dose of embellishment and fiction (e.g. I don't believe the Grant story.). They obviously walked some it given there are photos, but I think sporadically and over a number of years. If one needs evidence to support this, the photo of TW standing on a wall (since removed from IG) near the start of SWCP is a younger looking version of the TW in the image of him and SW where they are reflected in a road mirror (where on the SWCP, I don't know) and also the closeup selfie image that is often used in media coversge. Could this be why the IG photo was deleted recently by RW? There are also very few photos of them to compare, which is odd.

Possibly the Walkers intended to do up the French house and move there...there was plenty of demand for English speaking plasterers out there at that time, amongst the expat community.

She says he left in "I think, 2004". She's not sure.

If she had been adamant and was wrong, fair enough, but she's not sure herself.

OK, happy to agree to disagree. I don't think it is, and there's room for manoeuvre in the way Ros Lemmings puts all this IMO - eg '2004, I think', as @FurryHappyKittens noted. I might well be 2/3 years out with remembering when friends or acquaintances did certain things. I do expect people to be more accurate in recollections of their own lives, which is where the WWs have fucked up repeatedly.

Yes, very possibly. There were signs there that they started renovation, but they bit off more than they could chew.

Same with the cider farm - lots of promises to work the land properly but they didn't have the knowledge/experience and couldn't be bothered

There was a comment to the first DM article (link amongst Timeline links), where someone who knew the family said Tim's dad had said they were doing up the French property and he was going to move there and live with Tim and Sally.

So I wonder if Sally was expecting the embezzlement to last undetected until they left.

I'm not sure we are talking about the same question anymore?

SW had a 4 book deal with PRH, so there must have been some plan on how to bring the narrative arc to a close, and I was speculating on how she might have planned to do that, based on a rather mysterious sentence in the 3rd book that must be there for some reason.
Then someone said that storyline is not believable, and I said her books are full of impossible events and yet many people have believed all of them.

I was not suggesting the Observer should not have investigated, or people should not feel duped.

One of the things that has intrigued me about a couple of the recent Amazon reviews is that they say they’ve read it since the Observer story broke, but are unbothered by this — one says they bought if after the scandal broke, but their only negative notes are the language being ‘overblown’ at times, and a lack of dialogue between Raynor and Moth.

Another describes the Observer’s main revelations at length, but says ‘People do outlive their diagnoses’ and, about the alleged embezzlement says ‘I don’t know what happened’, concluding ‘regardless of all the above, this book is an unusual wonderfully written book and I recommend it.’

Another says she only bought it because of the Mn threads, and says ‘despite the revelations, true or not or most likely a bit of both, I really enjoyed the book and got quite invested in both characters’ lives. It’s well written and easy to read.’

So there you have it. Some people only read TSP because the ‘scandal’ brought it to their attention, and some of those readers simply don’t mind whether or not by of it is true.

Apologies if this has been posted - I thought it was interesting to see that many reviews of the book questioned the content, years ago.

How on earth could the publishers not have questions?!

"Poor decision-making skills and lack of self-reflection runs through this book and it made me wonder about the veracity of some of the things that happened to them."

A 2020 review: https://bronasbooks.com/2020/12/22/the-salt-path-raynor-winn-uknonfiction/

I think it must make a difference that those new readers already know the plot/narrative is in question. So they won't feel duped in the same way pre-investigation readers might do?

Did the embezzlement years coincide with the purchase of the French property?

Just curious really, (and question not about Moth), but would this person know what Sally’s job at the hotel was previous to working with the Hemmings. And the reason she lost that job?

I understood what you meant.

I was responding to this question from your previous post: ‘Which people, those who have bought 3 books containing the same decline-walk-improvement formula for an untreatable condition?’

My understanding was, in your previous post, you were asking about the people who’d be likely to be duped by Moth having CBD followed by an alternative diagnosis of a brain tumour.

I replied that I thought most people would probably be duped by the CBD-then-brain-tumour diagnosis. That’s because most people have been duped by his unlikely diagnosis this time around. I think that is shown by the success of the books and film, which suggests to me that people didn’t really question his diagnosis (which is understandable for many reasons). I wasn’t suggesting the Observer should not have investigated or that people should not feel duped. Sorry that it came across that way - that was not what I intended.

That's what I was wondering.

@Hyenana, I can see I quoted the incorrect but if your post in my initial post above when I wanted to reply to you. I think that’s why my post seemed unclear - sorry!

Slight overlap. She was embezzling for years, and got found out in 2008. They bought the French property in 2007.

I wonder if it was going to be a fresh start.

I suggested this as a theory the other day, linking it to the deleted references in TSP to her mum's death.

I'm equally open to the idea that there was no "big walk" though. We still seem to have very little corroboration from people who remember encountering them on the walk. Given some of the anecdotes included in the book I'd have expected more people to come forward with recollections of the couple.