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.

If they were short of money, wouldn't it have been much cheaper to find somewhere to rent in St Austell rather than Polruan?

Good point. Adds weight to the idea they lived in Polruan first, then the uni idea came. If true, that would mean the latter part of TSP isn't just a year out but also re-jigged. It was already hard to believe the peregrin, and tortoise prophesy.

I am she, after one of my regular name changes. (And regretting that I didn’t follow the poster formerly known as Mauvish’s example and rebrand as ‘Glumwasher’…😀) Yes, have never tried to quote across threads, come to think of it.

I think @Cinaferna makes a fair point about ‘normal’ rearrangements, embellishments etc in memoir, though. I referenced Educated on the same grounds about five threads ago, maybe more. And some of Tara Westover’s siblings have disputed some of her claims into the bargain.

And I’ve been around the ‘real’ circumstances that were subsequently presented in memoir or newspaper columns on a fair few occasions, so am unsurprised by the way they are appear in print. Some family members didn’t want to appear in a friend’s book about a period spent living somewhere unusual, so it looks as if she were a single parent to one young child when there (which then involved creating some other fictions because of that). I visited her there and was with her for a thing that happened and was the focus of a chapter, but likewise didn’t want to be in the book, so, because the incident wasn’t something that could have been done alone, she had to invent a local friend to be with her for it.

It is hard to tell. I wonder if they had some other sort of idea or plan back then for a different deception. They're generally deceptive people, and in 2009 they'd "fixed" the embezzlement problem (or so they thought).

Disability Living Allowance and Carers Allowance are not means tested, so they would have received those regardless of any property or money in the bank IF they had medical evidence to support the claim. ( not necessarily a definitive diagnosis). If the description of the extent of Moths difficulties before and at the beginning of the walk in TSP are true, there would have no difficulties in getting TWs consultant to verify this. DLA is split into 2 seperate parts, care and mobility components. If TW qualified for even the lowest levels of each component, in 2013 he would have received £41.10 pw, plus SW would have received £34.40 pw. This is without ESA which IS means tested. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

I’m now imagining a mashup where Uncle Matthew chases the Walkers cross-country with bloodhounds, and they hide from the bailiffs in the Hons airing cupboard.

In the margin notes to Paddy Dillon's SWCP Guide SW writes that she had a delicious mackerel salad at the Lamorna Cove Cafe. Just looked at the price - £10.95!

Hilarious!!

Wow. Thanks for that. So they could have had a council house and non- means tested benefits. And however 'shaming' they might find it, a way to quickly get back on their feet. But instead they go live in a tent and eat nothing but noodles? Pull the other one, Raymoth.

Thanks for mentioning Educated, which I’ve been meaning to read for a while and heard lots of good things about.

I’d heard that TW’s actual life differed quite a bit to how she presents it in the book, but never knew the details of it till your post here.

Out of curiosity before I read the book, I’m just wondering what’s the main bit of truth she kept in it? Is it her Dad and how she escaped his influence (as I think I read in reviews that she was home-schooled and her Dad was against women’s education and was a cult leader of some sort)? And, regarding the bits that she later admits are embellished, I’m assuming they’re not very important to the story - is that fair to say?

When you’re talking dishonesty on this scale, I agree, it’s hard to be sure of anything. I mean, it’s entirely possibly Moth had some symptoms back in 2009. But it’s also possible they could be exaggerated for their own purposes, eg: although they’d ‘fixed’ the immediate problem of the embezzlement, I’d bet they were mighty pissed off that they’d only been able to do it by borrowing a huge sum of money at an exceptionally high interest rate, with the loan secured against their house. They didn’t want the daily grind of both working 9-5 to pay back the loan. On some level they surely must have felt they were ‘out of the frying pan into the fire.’ Exaggerating an illness could have been a way to try to garner sympathy from the relative who loaned them money. Fits with the narrative of always being the victims.

I also wonder what led up to all of this, I just wanted to say I would not rely on the claim he left his job in 2007, because that mightblead to the wrong conclusions if it's not true.

I hope we will learn some day if possibly a book were written about this that goes that far into the backstory - although I'm not sure that will happen.

What exactly was it their nephew said about them being pathological liars? And did he say it on a social media platform? I’m assuming it’s now deleted but it would be good to hear from someone who actually saw what he said/wrote

Ha, then you must adopt the marvellous ' Glumwasher' next thread! I am previous herring! I do find myself drawn to your sensible clear-thinking and eloquent posts! Top sleuth!

I also don't think it was a master plan leading up to TSP.
For one thing, there seem to be no mysterious deadly illnesses in HNTDDD to make it more sellable.
But there were potential financial benefits to a diagnosis, and they were in trouble so there might have been the incentive to possibly exaggerate a bit.
And plans might have changed afterwards.

I think there’s more of a case to feel sorry for Sally:

Didn’t grow up in a very loving family unit. Parents had strong ideas for who she should be with and how she should live her life.

Meets Tim, falls head over heels. Her parents aren’t impressed - is that just because he’s not a farmer or can they see he’s not a good ‘un? -so they elope. After an unexplained quick move to Wales in 1992, they buy a 40k house. By the time of repossession the mortgage is £230k. Is he a spendthrift?

Ros said in 2004 he stopped work. Why? How did he help support his wife and kids? Is that when the embezzlement really ramped up? Is the France place in just his name? She might never have known he had bought it. She took £600 earmarked for wages. She must have been desperate.

She might have been writing as a hobby all through the 90s and 00s. She puts this material together in 2014 for a potenial book. She needs it to work as they are back at square 1 financially. Is it possible someone at Penguin or her agent liked the idea but it needed more hook. ‘You need to include the whole walk’ so they go back in 2015 to do more. ‘You need an emotional hook’ so she puts in her mother’s death and Tim’s diagnosis. Then they say take mum’s death out and make the diagnosis more serious. Together the publisher and Sally are manufacturing a marketable story so she does everything they suggest. She has to as Tim has no interest in working or contributing and isn’t in perfect health.

The book is finally published and a massive success. Penguin want more of the same and, as she has no other income options she goes along with it. Does she hide him away from journalists as he’s a liability in her life and so far removed from his TSP personal?

TLDR she married a good looking layabout and has made some very poor decisions to keep the home fires burning as she is blinded by love.

If you read TSP you'll notice the lengths RW goes to to make up excuses for any other sensible option other than the ridiculous one of walking and camping with a sick and terminally ill husband. Pull the other one indeed!

Yes, the central theme holds true, that he didn't believe children needed a formal education and basically set them to work in his incredibly dangerous junkyard instead. So she genuinely did have to fight and trick her way to a real education and it is remarkable that she ended up teaching at Cambridge University.

It's a great book, brilliantly written. Even if you take it with a pinch of salt (excuse the pun given this thread) it is well worth reading.

This was talked about in previous thread 13. For many, yes in this case it does matter. In summary of yesterday: because the physical journey drives the narrative, so the accuracy of the timeline matters for it to be claimed to be true and on which the homelessness and illness hang onto.

Thanks - I’m looking forward to reading it!

I agree that SW reinvented, fictionalised, rearranged etc her actual life circumstances to make a book with a strong hook, but she can’t have predicted its success. Excellent books of all kinds sink into obscurity every day, including nature redemption ones.

A walking and illness book I only read because of these threads (I think someone suggested it? If you did, thank you!), Jenn Ashworth’s The Parallel Path, has had nowhere near the success of TSP, despite being by an established, award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction, having incredibly (and deservedly) positive reviews, and being simply a very good piece of writing.

In some ways this seems very like TSP. It’s also about walking a LD path (the Coast to Coast), also about terminal illness (not Ashworth’s own, but an Artist friend who is living with terminal cancer and writes to her and sends her artwork at every B and B overnight stop, though she does also have symptoms of what she would later discover is a brain tumour), but it’s very much about not any kind of triumphing over the elements, or finding inner strength, or anything at all ‘heroic’. It’s more about grief, being cared for, and caring, and her own vulnerability, grumpiness and smallness, and it requires much more careful reading than TSP.

This is an interview with JA that captures some of the things I liked so much about the book, and why, despite having superficial similarities to TSP, it’s a much more subtle and self-interrogating book, and less obviously appealing.
https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2025/08/the-parallel-path-jenn-ashworth-interview-karen-lloyd/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-parallel-path-jenn-ashworth-interview-karen-lloyd

You know, when all this broke I was going to get a copy from the library. Then I read a few of the quoted passages and changed my mind. Never read such florid bilge in my life.

To me that seems one of the core emotional draws of the book: when something bad happens, you don't do the sensible, responsible thing that is expected of you, but something mad, spontaneous and wildly irresponsible, and somehow that thing miraculously solves all your problems far better than the sensible option ever could have.
It's a modern fairy tale.

Also, I worked in environmental conservation for a while and am nutty about wildflowers. From the little I've seen, that woman has no interest in, or knowledge of flora and fauna.Buttercups my arse.

Just want to be clear, I’m NOT suggesting that they fraudulently claimed benefits, but I’m puzzled as to why they didn’t take any of the help that would have been available to them if Moth had been diagnosed with a progressive, disabling, disease.