Thread 14: 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 13 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer

3 more from The Observer:

‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...

The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)

‘We thought: it can’t be the Salt Path couple – they’d ha...

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?

Thread 13: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5386458-thread-13-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 16 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 thirteen 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.

Are we all becoming Hyperglycaemic from all the fudge?
Have shares in Cadbury's gone up?
Can we remain cheerful in the face of such shameless glumwashing?
Will I need to fill up with much petrol this thread for the drive-by scoldings?
Will our Chloe H get exclusive interviews with the disgruntled peregrine, tortoise and Hollywood rabbits?
What has our Simon A got to say about this, preferably in verse?

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

The trail seems to be going cold. I get the feeling that there aren't going to be any huge new revelations and the story may just fade away over the summer. It would be great to nail down the definitive date when Raymoth met Anna and started living in Polruan.

The last definitive date marker is Raymoth at LE on 15 Sept 2013 and the June 2015 tentative CBD diagnosis (in Liverpool) taking place, the meeting with the Parsons at the Fat Apple Cafe on 8 Aug 2015 and TW starting at Plymouth Uni in Oct 2015.

SW can claim that she did complete the walk from LE-Polruan in 2013 and Poole to Polruan in 2014 and apart from the son's 17 Sept 2013 FB page, nobody can definitively prove her account is a lie. Yet...

Maybe everyone is staying quiet because they actually believed in the stories that SW told them and now they feel a bit daft and possibly fearing the "but HOW COULDN'T YOU TELL THEY WERE LYING??" questions which would probably be thrown at them?

Someone has mentioned this in previous threads, but I suspect that improvement of mental health has more to do with improvement in TW's wellbeing than does his diet. Many of the comments he makes in TSP sound like a cloud of depression lifting; and (despite what I got flamed for by a drive-by scolder a few threads ago!) anyone sensible will know about the mind/body interface; that if you feel crap mentally, you don't feel great physically; and vice versa.
Regardless of fault, there they were - empty nesters, lost their jobs, lost their home, TW had chronic pain issues (he was under the pain clinic and on pregabalin) and all the above will bring financial problems. As well as that, I suspect that after the 2015 clinic consultation, they had googled CBD and gone into a panic. And rereading TSP makes it clear to me that there WAS a rift in their relationship, even if only a physical one - although SW is a bit coy about it, it sounds as though their sex life had gone out of the window too. There's a lot there to feel depressed about, perhaps even more so if you know that you brought it on yourself (or your adoring wife did!)
So they get away, they get fresh air, lots of vitamin D, new surroundings, other things to occupy their minds (and maybe start to formulate a hopeful plan that they can write bout this and make some money?) - and lo and behold, TW starts to feel better.

Yes- absolutely this. Plus the pregabalin- someone I know takes that and says she knows exactly when it’s time for the next dose, she describes it as an addiction, although benefits from the therapy and doesn’t want to give it up. So maybe there was a sort of fog and then the withdrawal. I have personal experience of mental strain showing up in physical symptoms, and that previous drive-by scolder really didn’t seem to understand the complaint they were making, that the references are psychological but the physical manifestations can be real and measurable, as well as subjective.

If I got too into my cod psychology I could speculate about the stress of spinning increasing numbers of financial plates- and masking that there is an issue, pretending to family that all is jolly. if we assume the financial pressures and the embezzlement started developing around 2004 then that would tie in with subsequently developing chronic pain and undergoing tests etc by the 2010s.

@AldoGordo thank you

Same with readers. My sister loaned me TSP and now says ' fancy you clocking them as a pair of scammers' whereas she says when she read it she just couldn't see it.

Very good points.

You're probably right: any friends of theirs are having to deal with betrayal which is painful. They might speak out later when they've come to terms with it more. Casual acquaintances and landlords won't be so emotionally invested and it's easier to go public.

Seeing the investigative skills and in-depth discussions here, I certainly wouldn't want to go public, if I knew them. And I have nothing to hide... that I remember, anyway! Lots of people must know David and Julie, but I'm not surprised they're keeping quiet.😂

I wouldn’t make a public statement either. Or, for that matter, give one of those comments usually attributed to ‘a close friend’ or ‘a source close to the Walkers’.

If the pregabalin story is even true...we only have RW's word for it, and it does add a convenient dramatic twist to the story following the alleged pub quiz.

Unlikely.

I wouldn’t be surprised if confirmation bias has a big hand to play - MothRay only see evidence of things that back up their belief that walking relieves Moth’s symptoms and ignore any evidence that doesn’t.

Although, they have been quite a few studies into Parkinson’s and the placebo effect over the past 2 decades. Research suggests that people with Parkinson’s can exhibit a strong placebo effect, with a significant reduction in symptoms and increase in motor control. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that placebos can stimulate the release of dopamine in patients with Parkinson’s.

It is not impossible that if Moth believes walking will relieve his symptoms that it does. CBD is an atypical Parkinsonism disorder, although I am not aware of any research into the placebo effect and CBD. Maybe @AldoGordo wants to head to PubMed 😂

Pregabalin is often used by pain clinics (at least it was 10-15 years ago) so I can easily believe that it had been prescribed for TW.

Yes, what I meant was the story of accidentally forgetting their supply, which in turn leads to their realisation that walking seems to be a remedy for the pain. If that moment of withdrawal doesn't happen in the story, then there is no walking in nature cure because there'd be no way to know if it was the drugs or walking - Moth in effect becomes a walking experiment.

Yes, my friend absolutely adored all three books and now feels betrayed, as she really believed that it was all true. If she can feel betrayed and 'raw' as a reader, then I can only imagine how people feel who thought they were friends of the Walkers. They must now wonder whether they ever knew the couple at all, when all these revelations keep coming out, and that can lead to a feeling of 'how stupid were we, believing it all?' So I can understand why they wouldn't come out to talk about their relationship.

I think people don't stick their heads above the parapet, or delay doing so, for many reasons. Yes, there is feeling a fool, or fearing that other people will think you are. Some people are unwilling to air dirty linen in public, be it their own, family or friends. There is sometimes still a misguided sense of loyalty, even if you feel betrayed or deceived. Some people will still not want to believe the Walker/Winn/Wyns capable of all this and will feel very sorry for them for the 'press intrusion'. The Emperor's new clothes springs to mind too. There is also the fear that the tables could be turned and you will be attacked in response. Perhaps they have 'made mistakes' themselves, have vested interests, something to lose. Many people just want to live a completely private life, without public or press attention. There are also the old adages of 'if you fly with the crows, you get shot with the crows' and 'if you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas'. Perhaps some people are worried about being tainted or seen as guilty by association.

Sometimes however it just takes a little longer for people to decide, or to build up the courage, to do the right thing and speak up.

I’m baffled by the amateur sleuthing from these armchair detectives.
Apart from one perceptive review on Amazon in 2019, everyone swallowed whole the redemptive feel good story. Sally Walker perfectly captured the zeitgeist; unfettered egoism, superior moral attitude and overcoming adversity by walking along the coastline.
So what?
Every single memoir written is a mixture of fiction, mis-remembering, reconstructions, self mythologising and blatant lies. We are all heroes of our own life’s.
Sally managed to turn a set of unfortunate calamities and her husbands health into a sellable manuscript which made a fortune for them both.
Reserve your anger for the publishers who ignoring considerable discrepancies decided to publish and enjoy the rewards. Penguin still support and stand by the author.
I don’t see any mass boycott of the publishers.
Stop hounding the couple and hanging them out to dry.
I rather admire her Chutzpah, the supreme self confidence to write her way out of penury with a ridiculous feel good narrative that gullible fools swallowed.

We may need to take a commercial break and talk about scones, Strictly or naked ramblers again.

Oh no, not the elderly rambler in a turquoise G string!

A quick question - in the latest Observer piece (quoting from the print version dated 10th August) the Australian couple David and Joanne Parsons emailed SW - "When we saw the picture of you both in the article, we kept looking at each other and saying 'That's Sally and Tim!'
What was the article referred to, have I missed something or am I being especially thick!?

He certainly seems like a welcome vision on the path at this point!

Well a naked man is a naked man, and some of us can't afford to be fussy....

I'll leave you to your daydreams, @DisappointedReader 😅

Aside from that, I don't know if this has been picked up over the last 14 threads BUT I've just noticed that the 2025 consultant's letter refers to the Cognitive Function clinic.

Where I've worked, clinics for people with Parkinsonian problems have usually been called just - the Parkinson's service - or, more generally, the Movement Disorders clinic/service. I would assume that a Cognitive Function clinic dealt with dementia type problems.
ETA - yes, there's a "movement disorder service" at the N Wales hospital which covers Parkinsonism in all its forms. Google the same hospital and "cognitive disorder" and you get info re dementia dervices.

Parkinsonian syndromes are associated with earlier onset of dementia symptoms (SW refers to this in her books). Maybe this is the real reason why Moth is so flighty and difficult to pin down whenever interviewers come calling.
(Hope you all see what I did there!)

May I direct you then to Budleigh Salterton, @Vroomfondleswaistcoat ?

I know it well. The pebbles can be most uncomfortable on a bare behind! Er. So I am told.

Agree with all of that. To add, I can't imagine anyone wants to become the subject, or be drawn into, a social media storm, or indeed a swashbuckling mumsnet discussion, which our illustrious @DisappointedReader never anticipated would snowball from one thread into many - should soon be enough to crochet a life sized Simon Armitage, possibly of hemp.

I remember attempting a swan-like but quick progression across those pebbles, shepherding the offspring and calling out 'eyes forward, children'!