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.

8th of August.

You'd think. But maybe they were explained away by Raymoth as artistic license or "that's what Penguin wanted." The children and others would have known things didn't line up either. I'm sure Raymoth had a great cover story to excuse the discrepancies.

Absolutely - she clearly sought recognition as an author right from childhood and wrote/compiled TSP (and then the sequels) as novels, i.e. based loosely on real events but fictional nevertheless. Did SW present the drafts to the publishers as a novel, or written by RW as non-fiction etc. because - as has been suggested, as fiction it was poorly written but if presented as "unflinchingly honest" i.e. non-fiction, it would sell well. And, again, as has already been mentioned earlier, why use a pen name as author of a true account. I think we now know the answer to the latter question.

Same when they bought the French place which they said they purchased to 'save it from developers'. 'Developers' wanting a relatively small patch of land and a run down house in rural France 😂..if true and having lived in a similar area, the only thing it would have been suitable for is an agricultural building or building a small home for a French person and both unlikely.
Raymoth never seem to have grown of the angsty 6th-former attitude common in the 90s and possibly their era.

The thing with the book timing makes no sense. Okay, maybe TSP didn't need a lot of editing and went to PRH in virtually the same state as it was published. But, as everyone has pointed out, it usually takes a lot longer to bring out a book because everyone has their slots allocated so far in advance (which was behind my suggestion that TSP got bumped up to cover for a book that didn't hit its deadline). But it's correct that this would still mean a rocket-fuelled timing, if SW is correct in her dates.

But if it took longer - then why not say so? There's no shame at all in a book taking a year to reach publication even if it hardly needs editing at all, editors are busy people and publication (especially in a big publishing house like PRH) is going to be a slow process. Yet SW is almost proud of the haste with which TSP came out? Which makes me wonder why.

I keep thinking 'did she sell the book on a pitch?' Which can sometimes happen with non-fiction books - which aren't my specialist area, we need a Non-Fiction Writing Correspondent! In which case she might have touted the idea to agents, one picked it up and told her it was a good idea, and then the agent sold the idea to PRH? But for a first time author this would be huge kudos, because the publisher has absolutely no idea of whether the author can actually write a book (unless they have already seen an example of the writing). So why not admit it?

Unless (and now I am rambling) the publishers were shown HTDDD as a sample of the writing to expect, but if they were they surely wouldn't have allowed TSP to be entered in a competition for 'first time writers' - would they?

Seems that the brother bought the adjoining pigeonnier in 2004. Raymoth and family had visited the Village du Dropt in their caravan with his brother's family in 2004.

So why did TW buy the property next to his brother's place. His brother would surely have told TW that it was about to reach the market. If sold to a 3rd party it would have very negative impact on the value of his pigeonnier which he was planning to renovate.

Penguin
The publishers will be glad to correct any errors or omissions in future editions.

Well, I hope there won't be any more editions, but, we could let them know!

Email [email protected] and let us know.

If the French property was so valuable to developers, why is it described as a worthless bramble patch, What's happened to the so called developers? yet more inconsistencies.

Not a great night but it allowed me to read about 2/3rds of Simon A's "Walking Away" about the SWCP.

I am really enjoying it, for the same reasons as "Walking Home", bits are extremely funny and I won't spoil for anyone who might want to read it themselves. There's some interesting stuff about how the path is so badly eroded in places that landowners have to be asked/paid to allow a reroute across their property to preserve the integrity of the trail. In comparison to the Raymoth expedition, a few things struck me.

It's clear that SA finds the constant "up and down" of the terrain in many parts a real challenge and also alludes to sections where the path is narrow with an electric fence on one side and a sheer drop on the other as not being conducive to relaxed walking/appreciation of landscape. He's pretty much the same age as our pair of desperados and fairly fit. Although his walking days are a lot longer (13/14 miles usual) he is also eating very, very well and sleeping in a bed at night. His overnight stops were meticulously planned in advance, with the hosts picking him up and taking him to their homes/the venue for the evenings reading and transporting The Tortoise, his massive suitcase. With all this in mind, I'm even more perplexed as to how Raymoth managed the same route on some noodles and nicked fudge, before we even get to Mothtims symptoms, even with shorter days.

There is one funny bit that made me gasp. He says that a woman from the audience at that nights reading got into bed with him. Had our hero fallen victim to Grant's bevy of beauties after all? Fortunately not and the explanation is quite sweet. Sue (his wife) had lain in wait for him on that days section of path (hood up and sunglasses on) as a surprise and stayed on.

Sue sounds like a pretty good walker herself, in the first book he is debating using her old rucksack on the Pennine Walk and finding it lacking. Her response? "Well, it got me to Everest base camp".

Would be really interested in the take of anyone else who's read it and hope noone minds the detour.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat

Yet SW is almost proud of the haste with which TSP came out? Which makes me wonder why.

Because in her own head she’s simply better than other writers. The book hardly required editing (was written so well in the first place) and also got published almost immediately! Just wow!
The ego and grandiose of this woman is astonishing!

Grandiose Delusions:
In psychology, grandiosity refers to an unrealistic belief in one's own importance, abilities, or significance. Wikipedia explains it as an exaggerated sense of self-worth and superiority that is not based on reality

Good morning all. Here counting the rabbits. Bear with.

I think this might be it - but surely much of any 'blame' that she could attribute to a delay in publication would come from PRH anyway?

I mean I ALWAYS turn my books in well before deadline, and I don't need much structural editing (taking out all the commas on the other hand is a week's work for someone...) but my books come out pretty much when they are supposed to - although I sometimes get bumped forward by a month or two if there's a gap to be filled. But none of this is anything to do with me and my (obviously stellar) writing, it's because my publisher and my editor have allotted 'slots' - both for the editing and the publishing. I've got a book with my editor now, because I turned it in three months early. It won't come out three months early because she won't even get around to reading it until its 'slot' comes up.

So if we believe SW's timeline - how did PRH get the book done so quickly? And if they didn't, then we need to add some extra time into the timelines, because it would mean that PRH had the book for maybe up to a year before it came out...

I imagine St Austell would be mentioned in the same tones as a council house.

Just listening to the Sally Magnussen interview at Edinburgh; you’d love to strap SW up to a lie detector, wouldn’t you? It all just sounds so hokey.

As someone pointed out on here, even if we were to believe the chronology as given in TSP and TWS (which is clearly largely fictional), they’ve spent approximately four months in total on the path, and nine in Polly’s shed conversion by the time they move into the Polruan flat. It’s not that they’ve been under canvas so long that she can’t adjust to living in a house and has to put up a tent in the bedroom, any more than she’s only lived in remote places and can’t cope with the 300-person metropolis that is Polruan!

And all of the beats of all of the anecdotes are the same — the woman prodding them with her foot as they grovel for coins, the people retracting their dog leads, the Mars bar in the tea, the charmingly self-deprecating anecdote about the ink in the printer being so depleted the end of the MS was pink etc etc.

I do wish she had done an interview/ Q and A with someone from, say, a creative writing programme, who be much less interested in her life but would ask very concrete questions about her writing process, what her first draft typically looks like, how she revises, the experience of being edited, what her worst writing problem is etc.

SW says in that Magnussen interview that PRH ‘sprang it on her’ that she would have to do publicity for TSP at the last minute, and that shed been horrified, and ‘tried to get the book back’. I hadn’t heard that before , and wondered if there were a grain of truth to it? That she didn’t realise that some publicity was contractual, and panicked that she wouldn’t be able to remember her various halftruths, rejigged chronologies etc?

Re the French land:
TW's brother bought the pigeonnier in Village du Dropt in 2004, but in 2006 had started doing up the château de la Grande Barrière, so he had given up on VduD. What was he planning to do with the land?
This made me wonder whether he owned all the French land, and split off half to sell to TW, expecting TW to come back and buy the pigeonnier when they had funds. Of course, they never did, leading to the animosity expressed by the nephew. This is pure speculation though!

The brother didn't own the land adjacent to the pigeonnier. TW bought it from a 3rd party.

For PRH to allow RW to say such things about it being barely edited and such a quick turnaround it can only mean either it is true, or PRH have created this backstory and persona of RW as a publishing phenomenon.

[ETA] or PRH couldn't care less what she spouts as long as it sells books.

Where does SW say that TSP needed hardly any editing?

Maybe he's pissed off that they bought that cottage to 'save the land from developers' and now it's just moldering away there like an eyesore? So even if he did up the pigeonnier, there's a rotting ruin right beside it, when it could have gone to someone who'd want to rebuild it and turn it into an asset.

And I still don't understand why the Walkers didn't go and camp out there when they were 'homeless' rather than wandering around the coastal path. If they even did that, of course.

In conversation with Sally Magnussen posted a page or two ago. She asked RW about any help writing and the editing process (not sure if it was her question or one that had been emailed in). I get the distinct impression that Sally M has a hard time believing a word RW says.

SM often responds with a "riiiiight, OK, moving on" sort of phrase. It could just be she's aware of time pressure to get other audience questions in, but the way she says it gives an underlying impression of disbelief, to me anyway.

@Featherbeds

SW says in that Magnussen interview that PRH ‘sprang it on her’ that she would have to do publicity for TSP at the last minute, and that shed been horrified, and ‘tried to get the book back’. I hadn’t heard that before , and wondered if there were a grain of truth to it? That she didn’t realise that some publicity was contractual, and panicked that she wouldn’t be able to remember her various halftruths, rejigged chronologies etc?

Sounds about right, SW panicked and produced a manuscript to which she’s been holding on and repeating the same thing over and over in each and one of the interviews 🫠

The French land issue seems like they bought the adjoining piece to stop anyone becoming neighbours (developers) but then neither property has been restored, people buy French property thinking it's cheap, not realising how much materials cost in France and the transportation distances.

I agree with @Vroomfondleswaistcoat definitely illusions of grandeur, back in May King Charles was rumoured to have bought a house next door to Camilla's incase developers bought it :)

Thank you, I didn't realise that. It does seem strange that the brother hasn't sold his bit of land though.

Perhaps they couldn’t go back to France
a) because they owed loads of unpaid taxes (tax demanding letters arriving at the repossessed cottage in Wales)
b) TW told the locals he had a cancer and probably also played the same “I have a few months/ years” to live narrative?
if they returned they’d have to pay the debts and explain the miraculous recovery 🤔

This is actually weird. Because if TSP hadn't been a huge success, then any publicity SW did would be very very minimal, maybe the odd book signing but no talks, no interviews, no literary festivals etc. Publicity work is only really called for when the book is a big success. But SW 'always wanted to be a writer' in which case she would know this.

So either - she wanted the book to be a huge success in which case she would know she would have to do publicity; or she DIDN'T want it to be a success so she wouldn't have to do publicity, but in which case, why would she want PRH on it? Why not send it to a much smaller (even local to TSP) publisher, have a much smaller selling book but without having to get up on her hind legs and talk about it?