Thread 15: 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 14 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer

4 more from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...

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

(Live/online event)

The Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/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: 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: 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?

Thread 14: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5388981-thread-14-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 get the background from at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently a number of 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. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. 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 fourteen 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.

#Pinchofsaltpath
#Fudge
#Cider
#OurChloe
#OurSimon
#Correspondents
#Salray
#Timmoth
#MistakesWereMade
#EmbellishedBollox
#JustBollox
#DriveByScolding
#Glumwashing
#ThereBeSharks
#Scones
#NakedHikers
#TurquoiseGString
#BudleighSalterton
#SallyForth
#YesItReallyIsThread15
#Rabbits

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

Thank you @mauvishagainI understand what you are saying about first line treatment, as @mycatismyworld has said plastering is a well paid job and TM should have been able to bring in a good wage if he could work, I also think that he preferred to tit about :) honestly the clothes. But as @SwetSwetSwet points out the plastering would have been difficult if he was having pain in his shoulder and couldn't reach up, as he would need to for his work.

I agree it doesn't make sense at all.

I do hope she's not going to set up writing retreats. At least, not 'taught' retreats anyway.

Dramatic effect? Her MO is drama. Long distance walking is by and large fairly undramatic and doesn't make for great reading. Hence the need for DRAMA, whereby common place encounters are embellished for dramatic effect. And lets be honest, it worked like a charm - 2m copies sold and a nomination by the ST as one of the best 100 books written in the last 50 years! Let that sink in....

If everyone thinks it’s fantastic writing we’re lost. It’s ok, generously. As others have eloquently said it hit a spot, pulled at heartstrings & is everywoman.

The New Statesman claimed TSP was always suspicious.

Readers can access a few articles, then have to register - though some posters here know how to link to archived pieces.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2025/07/the-salt-path-was-always-suspicious

In our book group we take it in turn every year to be admin , and this year is my turn .
We get our titles from the library and part order the books and the library chooses the rest . TSP was a choice from the library and I have politely declined it !

I don't think it has anything to do with the writing. It has everything to do with the story - a fairy tale packaged as a 100% true account of being unjustly cast down and achieving redemption through a Herculean death defying 630 mile walk along the SWCP.

Totally agree.

Pain in one arm is apparently quite a common early symptom in CBS.
With my medical hat on, I can see a scenario like this:
Fall - pain - not settling - eventually gets pain clinic referral.
Tests negative.
Pain not going away - maybe other slight symptoms (a bit of stiffness maybe) superimposes. Maybe a bit of mental hazing as well - could be due to gabapentin but maybe not. Patient not getting better; "something needs to be done".
Someone astute at the pain clinic suspects this is not just musculoskeletal pain from a fall and decides to refer on.
Tells TW that they think it might be a problem "with the nerves or nervous system" "we'll refer you to a neurologist".
The Walkers understandably think maybe a trapped nerve.
See neurologist in 2015. Google CBS/D, panic.
The rest is history, embroidery, fabrication and a best seller.

Spot on. I've said before that this is the SOLE reason I committed to reading it - the homelessness and terminal diagnosis both at the SAME time. That cannot be glossed over with ' creative license ". The book is a fraud.

2m copies sold and a nomination by the ST as one of the best 100 books written in the last 50 years!

Just to clarify, I think the ST listed it as one of the top-selling 100 books from the last 50 years (not one of the ‘best’ of the last 50 years).

Worth a read

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1H9kdVtWF7/

Fair point but its still quite an achievement, by fair means or foul.

I've noticed other instances of this. It happens A LOT. The last time I noted it was yesterday when I watched the Good Morning interview with GA when talking about under the stairs. I find it quite unsettling to listen to her.

Nailed it

Didn't someone mention a couple of threads back an occasion when Salray referred to her and timmoth in the third person - "the couple". Makes it pretty clear Ray and Moth are invented characters who shared some events in their life with sally and tim , but have had a whole fiction constructed about them to creat TSP and then sally and tim have to try (and somewhat struggle with, and aren't all that successful at) to inhabit and represent those characters in public.

How exhausting it must be, if this is the case 😬😬

(Edited for typo)

"Huge thanks to two amazing people: my incredible agent Jennifer Christie from Graham Maw Christie and my talented editor Fiona Crosby of Michael Joseph. Without these two visionary women this book might not have made it into print"**

Its called emotional manipulation. Its the way con artists and fraudsters operate. Raymoth have achieved a literary heist using the same MO.

It was a double whammy, which if true would move most people, especially the lovely readers who felt for them and their plight, it cannot be excused as a little creativity, they have made themselves very rich with this masquerade.

I don't think Moth is abusive to Raynor, I think as others that he is complicit in this fraud (it keeps making me think of the great rock and roll swindle) I'm sure Salray wants to keep him happy and I'm sure that hasn't been easy,

Or cheap :)

I should add that the faithful fans (and I'm not denigrating them for having fallen under 'the spell') and host of almost hagiographical interviewers over the last 7 years, are probably victims of the now somewhat discredited Stockholm Syndrome - in hoc to their emotional captors (aka Raymoth)

@freshsocks Re:homelessness and RW as representative of the issue....

Indeed! And in TSP they actively avoid sleeping in a shop doorway in Exmouth because they have a choice. They get a bus to bypass the town. I tallied up how many encounters documented in TSP that they have with rural homelessness, as RW talks about in the Big Issue and beyond. They are very thin on the ground.

The only encounters I could find are the following - and almost exclusively in towns, which isn't surprising:

• Glastonbury (street homeless, before they walk)

• Newquay (soldier and soup kitchen - but did they actually go in?)

• Near Harlyn Bay (A man on a bench who tells them to fuck off, Moth gives him their rations)

• Weymouth (when they opt to go with two strangers in their van to a wooded encampment full of people who can't afford a roof - can we believe they went here rather than camp on Chesil Beach as they do the next night?)

• Plymouth (where they are given a beer by Colin a homeless man to celebrate his birthday)

• Oh, and of course, themselves.

Note the recent great charity sleep out for the homeless was conducted in what looked like a relatively comfortable barn rather than a city centre in the West Country like Plymouth,Torquay or Exeter

What do I look for in a travelogue?

Honesty and and insight.

I grew up and lived for much of my life in Asia and, on a few occasions, visited fortune tellers in Hong Kong, South Korea and Mongolia..

Suffice it to say I was sceptical.

However, this is a travelogue by a hard nosed Italian journalist called Tiziano Terzani, that I have always found enchanting, uplifting and illuminating.

A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East: Terzani, Tiziano: 9780609809587: Amazon.com: Books