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.

It's been discussed way back and pretty much ruled as made up.

If anybody is near Polruan, I wonder whether a trip to the Lugger Inn, just around the corner from where Raymoth used to live in West St, might be worth a visit and whether any of the locals remember when Raymoth first moved to Polruan!

MN outing to Polruan?

Alcoholism/drugs/addiction did they feature in HNTDDD?

We don't really know: nobody has managed to track down a copy. The blurb on Goodreads suggests the novel includes a character called Jeremy, who "scans the property markets of the world in a cocaine fuelled race to the next big deal, but will his past and the pending economic tsunami catch up with him?" (It's tempting to imagine this is a fictionalised portrayal of the moneylending uncle/a proto-Cooper, but with the novel untraceable we just don't know)

In June I met a lovely man, from the Netherlands, near Polhawn Fort ( between Rame Head and Whitsands) who was walking from Poole, tent in hand, and hoping to at least make it to Newquay during his walk. So one person is definitely walking that way this year. 😃

Goodreads author background. Somersby is a small village in Melton Mowbray registration district where SW was born

there was something about instability/trader/markets need to relook at blurb. Wondering if addiction ever an issue for our couple or wider family.

Just did some more research into the horticulture degree. Previously it was mooted TW may have done an access course first to account for the 2014 discrepancy (ie in TSP he starts uni in 2014 but in reality it seems he started in 2015).

The Falmouth packet article featuring the students in June 2016 states they are first years on the HND & BSc degree in Landscape & Garden Design.

https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/14607378.eden-students-take-award-winning-garden-to-hampton-court-flower-show/

Turns out the first year was actually the HND. I looked up two of the other students on LinkedIn. One states they completed the HND (starting in 2015) and carried on to complete the BSc, finishing in 2018.

Another only did the HND, finishing in 2016.

So it's plausible TW actually only did the HND. I'm not sure what kind of funding that would attract..but given the unknown 2014-2015 year, it seems less likely they needed a student loan to solve their homelessness as described in TSP.

Ah you found what I was looking for - thanks. Wondering at addiction theme.

@Animaladina

Tim says of them buying their Welsh home that it was:

"a life-changing experience to restore a house as a key piece of history"

That grates as faux selflessness - even when they buy a house for themselves they have to make it look as if they're being altruistic and thinking of the greater good. Like the facts and statistics of homelessness SalRay mentions in TSP, as if that's a good hook to reel in the middle class readers who feel a bit of guilt about their own good fortune.

In fact the whole book reads like a patchwork of walks taken here and there, with a few political and social issues levered in, ideas and passages lifted from other writers and the internet, some sentimental overblown descriptions of nature, some unpleasant portraits of other walkers and an inadequate explanation of illness, all held together by a tissue of lies to conceal the stealing.

Having Googled Mark Wallingford I see that the sequel to 500 Mile Walkies was
Boogie Up The River - One Man and His Dog to the Source of the Thames which I recall enjoying enormously on my commute when it was read as a Book of the Week on Radio 4.

I don’t know that this is the case with Four Hares, but it’s one obvious option. When was it set up?

6th April 2020

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12547141/filing-history

@AzureStaffy

I should have said that it wasn't just the WalkerWinns who cobbled together TSP but also Penguin, as explained by posters who have knowledge of publishing.

I'm still a bit confused by what happened between 15 Sept 2013 (selfie at LE) and the start of TW's HND course in Sept 2015.

We know:

• they went to Bristol with their son on 17 Sept 2013
• their son helped transport their stored belongings in Feb 2015
• they had the tentative CBS/CBD diagnosis (in Liverpool?) in June 2015
• they met the Parsons on 8 Aug 2015 and were walking towards LE which they would have reached by the end of Aug (in time for TW to start his HND course)

So when (if at all) did Raymoth walk from LE to Polruan? When did they meet Dave & Julie from Up North and walk from Poole to Polruan?

There's no need to apologise for pedantry on this of all threads - you're quite right 😀

You are right @fruit66 and I apologise to Mark (and the memory of Boogie). I absolutely LOVED both those books when they came out, they were favourites of my mum who passed them on to me. I reread both in the last few years when I was writing something about the Dorset coast (because now I live a long way from Dorset, but to avoid TSP-type allegations, I did live there for a long while).

I also seem to recall SW does a lot of 'TW studied XY and Z' but without mentioning whether or not he studied officially or passed any exams in said subject. Which might be why we get confused with what his actual qualifications are?

@AzureStaffy
Totally agree with you.
I bought 2nd hand copies of TSP, LL and TSW for £4 on Vinted but just can’t bring myself to reading it 🫠 I started TSP, read few pages and put the book down, it’s so badly written!

SWs mother died Jan 2015.

They met Parsons during their 2015 walk in August(?) - dashing out so can't check exact dates, sorry!

I'm afraid that my further research reveals that mistakes were made. What I recalled as a BOTW was actually a 1992 full cast dramatisation in six parts starring Timothy Spall now available for purchase

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/456610/boogie-up-the-river-by-wallington-mark/9781529910520

Maybe they did the entire stretch from Poole to LE between July & Sept 2015? Or some of it and never actually did all of the path.

Thank you. I read all 14 threads but just couldn’t remember the details.
Looks like they both like to reinvent themselves every now and then 😂
And I’m sure this was mentioned earlier, but Dr Timothy Walker was certainly Moth’s inspiration…

Dave and Julie would surely have read TSP and realised there were some timing anomalies?

@Catwith69lives I don't know, Jon McGregor sounds ideal inspiration for IzSalRay :

The magic trick:
Building a character portrait through the revelation of his insecurities and paranoid concerns

“If It Keeps On Raining” puts us in the mind and thoughts of a man, who as far as we know, wakes up every morning, walks outside, and urinates onto the stone path that leads from his front door to the river.

Also it’s another example of her explaining the LL walk as an unplanned, spontaneous series of decisions to walk a bit further, despite evidence that the whole thing was planned in advance.

Yes, I agree. Yet RW in the Sally Magnussen video said she wrote the whole thing and the finished book was pretty much the original manuscript. Penguin only lightly edited it and apart from changes to one chapter it was mainly superficial edits. If that's somehow true then PRH did a very poor job. But I don't believe it is true.