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.

I wrote in a previous thread about how lucky I've been to survive cancer. My luck was down to 2 factors - my NHS team who cut it out, and the fact that I (atypically) had early symptoms which allowed for (atypical) early treatment. Nonetheless it was YEARS before I could allow myself to believe this, because luck is never guaranteed and can always run out.

We think that the Walkers probably did do at least some of the north SWCP in 2013 and we know, thanks to the australians, that they did some of the southern path after TW's neurology consultation in 2015.

Again with my dr hat on but also deriving from my own experience, I can see this possible scenario, following on from the previous one:

2015 - neurologist suggests CBS/D though clearly an atypical version, tells them not to worry about what they will see on the internet as clearly that refers to people with far worse disease (we know this from the consultant's letter).
But the Walkers google CBD, panic, and all reassurance is forgotten or emotionally overruled.
They'd meant to go back and finish the SWCP - now is the time, there may not be another chance. They do believe at this point that TW is fast heading for the worse-case scenario (because that's often what happens when people get bad news, it certainly happened to me!)
It may have been years before they started to believe that the consultant was right. But by then they had invested in the diagnosis - it had already been pasted retrospectively into a best seller so millions knew of it. A rotten diagnosis for most people, but for the Walkers it had opened doors and made them rich.
Ten years after the diagnosis was first suggested, it must be obvious to them both that those initial terrors were misplaced. But too much is invested in it now. They can't go back. Some paths have no turning places.

I think this makes a lot of sense and fits with the fact (one of our few real fixed points because there's a contemporaneous blog entry) that in August 2015 they told the Australian couple a memorably "sad story" that didn't involve being homeless.

Hang on a sec - this is not what the 2015 diagnosis predicted. SW has claimed that TW was given 2 years max to live, but this doesn't seem to me what the 2015 letter says.

The sad story to the Australian couple apparently did not include the terminal diagnosis but did include the fact that TW needed heavy massage to his legs every morning to get him going in the morning.

They did say how his legs kept giving way and his legs had to be massaged every morning so he could get out of the tent.

Absolutely. But maybe the Walkers, having consulted Dr Google, really believed that TWs days were limited.
It took years, as I say, before I started believing my consultant (she'd memorably said to me, "You'll be fine - and I can't say that to many of my patients!" She was right, but my fear and anxiety wouldn't let me really trust that!)

@Catwith69lives thanks for posting that comment from someone about schooldays cheating. That would suggest what a lot of us have thought, namely you don't suddenly decide to embezzle £64k from an employer and that this probably wouldn't have been the first brush with dishonesty.

Anyway, I've been steeling myself to go back to the Private Passions episode with RW, which anyone who wants to can find here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n25r

I'd forgotten how awful I found her voice, but that aside, it's a more interesting listen knowing what we know now. This was broadcast initially in June 2023, so well before the Observer expose. SW was riding high at that point; all 3 books have done well, she's gigging with Gigspanner, and she and TW have done the London Marathon earlier in the year. There are some familiar stories, such as the Mars bar in tea retelling of their first meeting, plus Ye Olde Court Case and seeing the walking book while packing with the bailiffs at the door (no under stairs hiding, though).

There's some childhood anecdotage which presents the farm as a tenanted farm, but interestingly no direct claim about the tenant being her father. She describes walking the farm with her father when he's seeing to the animals, which maps on to him being the herdsman. However, she states clearly that TW was diagnosed with CBD in 2013 (abt 15 mins in) and later in the programme, she's also explicitly linking walking with his improved health and saying there are other people with neuro conditions on whom walking has had the same effect. The interviewer (the lovely Michael Berkeley) asks after TW about 29 mins in, and he's doing fine apparently, just done the marathon, and again, there's a link on improvement to walking and how when he can't walk, his health declines significantly. [Though doctors are baffled, apparently. I'll just bet they are!]

Also interesting with hindsight is that she describes the Welsh house as 'being on the edge of Snowdonia'. I've never heard anyone from the Lleyn describe themselves as such. They say that they're from Pen Lleyn. I wonder if that was more vagueness to avoid being identified. And the reason they moved to Wales was all about the dream of restoring a house and back to nature again. There's also a fascinating elision about the orchard stay. They had moved on and handed it over to someone else who carried the cider making forward, v much giving the impression of passing on the baton as opposed to the flit once found out described by Bill C.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unlikely_Pilgrimage_of_Harold_Fry
I too can see so many similarities in The Salt Path.

@TonstantWeader she describes the Welsh house as 'being on the edge of Snowdonia'
This is like their assumed names then - when he was an Eden Project student, they say Tim from Snowdonia.

Yes, good point! There is absolutely no mention btw of him doing any gardening work at all in the PP interview, nor of her book-keeping. She makes it sound as though they lived solely off the restoration project/farming for the 20 years she says they were there.

I am am absolutely delighted to hear you came through your illness but with absolute respect you did not write an " unflinchingly honest " book about it. SW put it all down in black and white. She never said " I have a terrible dread of the future but must remember that Moth's diagnosis is atypical, extremely mild and i ndolent". It's one thing scaring oneself on Google but it's another publishing it as a factual diagnosis.

@mycatismyworld Oh not another source - this is strange as the authors have been interviewed simultaneously for the Stroud Book Festival. Love to know what Rachel thinks!

It won't let me post the YouTube link - but it's on there.
TRAVELLING HOPEFULLY with Rachel Joyce & Raynor Winn

I'd say both things can be true... They really believed the worst at some point, and then they fictionalised a worse-than-the-worst and leaned into the fiction. The former's completely understandable, the latter isn't.

Well exactly, as I said previously I would never tell anyone else that they'd be fine just because I turned out to be fine.

But it may be that when they did that 2015 walk, "their truth" (ugh!) was that TW had a terminal diagnosis. And it might be very difficult to turn around now and admit that they were wrong - it's become a massive cash cow for them, not to mention becoming their raison d'etre and USP.

Nah, I don't believe for a second that the Walkers thought Tim had a terminal illness.

However it came about, they found out about CBD and ran with it.

But it may be that when they did that 2015 walk, "their truth" (ugh!) was that TW had a terminal diagnosis

It really wasn't. She released the letter from 2015, no one could take from that that he was terminally ill.

Mild and indolent /= sure death.

In TSP the doctor is not quoted as saying that he has 2 years to live. He says that the post mortem is usually 6 to 8 years from onset but Moth's is slow progressing and it has been 6 years since symptoms began. He then goes on to explain to them about degenerative brain disease, but SW does not explicity say at that point that he has two years to live.

Though I think for most of us this would cross our mind but we wouldn't write books about it.

How often do we see posts here on MN in which someone has been told something by a doctor, googled it, found a worse case scenario which is not what the dr told them, and posts in a blind panic seeking reassurance? It's really really common.

2015 - neurologist suggests CBS/D though clearly an atypical version, tells them not to worry about what they will see on the internet as clearly that refers to people with far worse disease (we know this from the consultant's letter).
But the Walkers google CBD, panic, and all reassurance is forgotten or emotionally overruled.

I disagree. I think if they looked up CBS and found CBD, they would have seen an opportunity to deceive.

They're deceitful people. And have been since at least their mid thirties that we know for sure. And potentially even further back.

I very much doubt there would have been panic of any sort. After lying about a botany degree to get a job with the NT, after embezzling £60,000+....a medical fraud would have been nothing to them.

I can see them sharing with people for the sympathy factor.

What actually counts as farming, for the purposes of earning a living (says very urban me). Because I'd assume you either grow crops to sell, or raise animals to sell them or their output eg dairy. If you're not doing either, are you farming, or do you just own land? Does having 3 pet sheep count?

This would count at the very most as smallholding or market gardening.

Absolutely, but the way she talks about their life in Wales is definitely designed to suggest that they live off the land. There's talk of sheep and vegetable growing, but nothing about any salaried work. She's definitely creating a persona in that interview about them being special children of nature.

Yes, it is.

But most people haven't lied about degrees, defrauded people, left massive debts, absconded, then lied a whole lot more about being on the cusp of death.

If these people were ordinary, like most of us, then yes, I can see panic and worry and catastrophising.

But they're fraudsters, we know they're fraudsters, they've used CBD in many ways to garner sympathy, and she's used it in part to become a successfuly author.

They aren't normal people. They're opportunistic fraudsters.

And opportunistic fraudsters would leap on the possibilities CBD could bring them.

Hmm, anyone thought of the SAL(ly)T(im) Path?

You may be right. I don't know the Walkers after all, I don't know what was in their heads in Summer 2015! I'm just offering a different interpretation of SWs initial catastrophising in TSP.

But certainly since then they've milked it for they're worth, far past the point where they must have realised that TW doesn't have any worst-case scenario.

(Perhaps they're now in their own worst-case scenario thanks to the Observer of course!)

If you click on the link right at the bottom of my post rather than on the box it should work.