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.

And I think the sons subsequently severed contact with the parents (maybe that's covered in the film?)

Also not attributed to anyone in particular….

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

Samuel Butler

I think there's a strong possibility that Paddy Dillon's book was mentioned in TSP precisely because Sally Walker had taken so much from it.

She then had a ready excuse if anyone ever remarked on the similarities.

...Oh, it was such an inspiration, we must just have remembered bits of it where he experienced similar things to us...

She definitely used the Paddy Dillon guide. Its the best available guide to the SWCP imo. I suspect there were at least 2 copies - one weather beaten copy taken in 2013 and possibly 2014 and a subsequent fairly pristine one annotated by SW (as below) used to write up the walk.

Perfectly suited to SW's embezzlement I'd say..thank you. Couldn't have put it better myself.

Not sure this has been shared before as I hadn't seen it.

It's the recording of the Observer in person event held recently that quite a few posters in these threads attended.

They’ve taken those pages down now, it’s page not found.

Yes, you need to put the link into archive.org

MN doesn't seem to link properly to archived pages.

I don't know about that aspect: those parents would have to work hard to get their children's forgiveness. I do recall Harry Hill getting a lot of mileage out of the Panama Canoeist. The rest of us lead boring lives by comparison to these kind of characters.

We have posted and discussed this on past threads. It is the last part of the 2021 ish interview with Sophie Raworth, from about 55 minutes, shortly before Timmoth joins and towards the end.

Q. SR What did Moth study at university?
A. RW He had a lot of experience on the land and in horticulture and he went on to study sustainable horticulture and landscape design.

Q. SR How are you?
A. MW I'm very well this evening thank you.

Q. SR You must be very proud of your wife?
A. MW Oh so so proud I can't say. She's an amazing woman really. Really keeps me on my toes.
Q. SR And did you not have any idea that she could write, at all?
A. MW Um no, not at all. I know we like so many folks we enjoy reading and we thoroughly enjoy taking books and stories apart and trying to you know express our feelings and you know just discuss a very good story but no not that she could write. Completely surprised me.

Before TSP (2018) we strongly suspect that she/they had already written the book/raffle ticket How Not To Dal Dy Dir (published August 2012, Gangani) and had a second Scotland-themed book on the go at that time, so perhaps Moth also isn't averse to 'mistakes were made' with the truth.

I keep being drawn back to this (in bold above). It is one of the things that has played on my mind - in those very rare idle moments - since I first watched it. It contributed to my Jigsaw Theory (see my pp back in the salty sea mists of thread time) about how the books were written and by whom. Several pps have identified passages of interest in several books and the Parson's blog.

In my experience, sometimes people just tell you.

I wonder about Dave and Julie

• clearly they are great friends with Raymoth_
• they went to Iceland with them and
• walked the Thames Path in April 2024 to raise money for PSPA with Raymoth
• they must have read TSP at some point

So did they indeed meet Raymoth in 2014 as described in TSP? Seems a bit strange imo as most people walk the SWCP from Minehead to Poole as described in Paddy Dillon's SWCP. Raymoth's apparent decision to walk in the reverse direction from Poole to Polruan in 2014 was unusual. Even more unusual to have met a couple (Dave & Julie from Up North) doing the exact same thing.
More likely scenario that either Raymoth met them in 2014 walking from LE to Poole or they met them in 2015 walking from Poole to Polruan. Neither scenario as described in TSP.

Sally’s tone to the reader is an exasperated eye-roll moment when she recounts the tale of Moth and the child, the hand shake outside the court, the giving away of their food to an elderly homeless man on a bench who cursed at them. Is the reader supposed to share her irritation towards some aspects of Moth’s character or feel sympathy and kindness towards him? I’d say that she was coming across as passive aggressive except that she claims to have written the book for Moth, so he would have seen what she thought and what she shared in public. I don’t suppose it matters… but I’m confused between the loved up, self contained, mutually adoring, passionate portrayal and the irritated, critical one. I thought their relationship soared above everyone else’s in terms of uniqueness… but it doesn’t come across like that in reality.

I'm not sure it's that unusual to walk the SWCP in the reverse. Might be less common but the signposts i've seen in images clearly point in both directions. Maybe a SWCP correspondent could offer some insight?

Fair point - I've walked sections in South Devon in the opposite direction. You don't really need a guidebook as the path is extremely well marked.

From the SWCP website: There is no set way or direction to walk the Path, however most people walk anti-clockwise beginning in Minehead and finishing in Poole.

If you are walking the southern section between LE and Poole it makes more sense to walk from West to East because the prevailing weather (wind + rain) arrives from the west.

Thank you @Baileysandcream

I could have sworn I had added it to the OP. Mistakes were etc.

Forgive me if this has been mentioned already but I'd love to know if Moth ever paid back his SFE loan for his horticultural degree? Has he worked since? Or was it just a way to get free money from the tax payer for 3 years?

I should imagine he has. His profit from their company would have flagged that up.

If he hasn't worked or earned above the threshold for repayments, and all the income from TSP industry is paid in Salray's name, then probably not.

I also wondered whether income was in Salray's name and debts were in Timmoth's name to avoid collections?

If you look at Four Hares Ltd, Sally,Tim and their children are all shareholders, but Sally and Tim are both listed as directors

Oh yes, Four Hares. I wonder how that works with percentages for TW, his student debt and the old debt on the Welsh house and barn.

I expect the latter. I looked at this a while back and there's an income threshold of £20,000ish (i dont have exact figure to hand) before repayments are required. Not sure what happened to the teaching idea, if it ever existed beyond a fiction in TSP.

Another thing I just noticed in this interview is the discussion (around 34:00) of her mother's death, which we now think may have happened before Moth's diagnosis (per earlier draft of TSP). Obviously for the purpose of this interview she has to talk as if her mother died after Moth was diagnosed. And it's odd. One of the odd things is that by the end of the segment she really is talking about TWS as if it's a novel with herself and Moth as characters - "this [her experience of her mother's death] goes on to affect what happens later in The Wild Silence and the decisions we make". I don't know - would you really talk about the aftermath of one of the most traumatic events in your life like that, if you hadn't already fictionalised it into the distance?

Does anyone know what Four Hares does? I'm not very knowledgeable about accounts but looking at the filing history, the capital and reserves amount has plummeted over the last couple of years - do we have an accountancy correspondents, or (dare I ask?) A bookkeeper?

I get that too. It almost became quite garbled and hard to follow what she's actually saying.

BTW, not sure if this has been raised before but there's a passage in TSP where RW mentions that her mother never accepted Moth up until she died and then imagines her mother laughing as they walk on through a wood. For a book set in 2013 and the narrator is very much embedded in that context, it's rather telling given her mum died in 2015. I seems like it slipped through the edit net and fits the mention of her mum dying before Moth's diagnosis in the manuscript.