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.

At last I have been able to change out of those cheesy french socks :)

Oh bugger you're all at it, name-changing like rabbits!

Signing in.

No name changes to report (yet).

Nah, after a temporary flirtation with frothing indiginantly, I've gone back to the Real Me, as it were (although I'm not really mauve)

Introducing my new persona- this one feels more accurate to be honest. The Poster Formerly Known As AlertCat reporting for duty.

I've been meaning to ask - has "Saltlines: The Journal" been discussed/revealed anything at all?

@DoubtfulCat There is a very nice Shed of Doubt for you to live in if required - though you’d have to share it with the damp squid.

One thought about her being alarmed by "discovering" how much publicity she was expected to do for the books. Her performances with Gigspanner were independent of PRH weren't they? I suppose by that point she may have thought "in for a penny, in for (many) pounds" as nothing untoward had come to light by then. I think it was the film (premiered in Totonto in September 2024) that really took the lid off.

All the links in the OP should be working again. We're not sure where mistakes were made but MNHQ got their hammer and heavy kicking boots out and all seems to be well again. It's a mystery.

On the timeline theme, I have a sort-of theory about how TSP comes to be (apologies if this just repeats something that's been said in one of the many threads). I'm going to suggest there are 2 phases of walking:

(1) Summer 2013, shortly after the house repossession, walks on the SWCP including visit to Lands End. Probably not continuous but probably involving lots of time outside, mostly on the 'north side'. At this point TW has mild and unexplained symptoms.

Between then and summer 2015 there's... possibly some time in Polly's shed or equivalent, figuring out what to do next, finding place to live, TW applying to university. Ends up with settling in Polruan.

(2) Summer 2015. After a tough phase of life (death of SW's mother, TW's continued health problems culminating in diagnosis of possible CBD), they have a few extended periods of backpacking on the SWCP, mostly east-west on the 'south side'. During this period they meet the Australian couple - to whom they tell a genuine 'sad story' (see the Australians' recollections) viz. SW's mother died and TW is ill.

This is the 'not lying about everything' version - on this theory TSP would be a heavily fictionalised combination of 2 periods of life, with various details added in/made up to turn it into a continuous narrative and to cover up some bits they don't want to admit, but also with some genuine recollections of specific locations/people & of the underlying traumas (losing the house, mother dying, TW being ill).

It's highly speculative obviously but FWIW.

I agree, I suggested something very similar in a previous thread.

Thank you @DisappointedReader for the new thread!

Just watched the latest Observers yt video (linked already), and imagined SalRay saying “Polruan” 😱 😂

great minds think alike 😀 apologies for the repetition

That timeline does sound likely. Previously there was speculation that the Land's End photo was doctored, but maybe SW started with that photo, and built the book back from that.

It’s HMRC who dealt with tax credits! So it’s the taxman they may have defrauded…
Also if they were working elsewhere in the EU for a British employer (say, if TimMoth was self-employed and doing some work in France) they would still have been entitled to claim, so going to do a bit of work in VduD would have been fine…

The more I look at the LE photo, the more I think it is indeed dated 15 Sept 2013. I believe they did indeed walk from Minehead to LE as described in TSP but that a lot of the incidents and encounters were either made up or embellished. The stretch from LE to Poole is more of a mystery but we do know they were walking East to West on 8 Aug 2015 when they met the Parsons and that they also met Dave and Julie on the Poole to Polruan section in either 2014 or 2015.

Apologies for missing off anyone's favourites from the # roll of dishonour. They were the ones I could remember off the top of my head in the short time I had. I've since remembered the ones below, but if mistakes were made do feel free to let me know.

#Shedofdoubt
#Dampsquid
#Roveringcorrespondent
#Pettygriftingandgrumblingupnorth
#Pettygriftingandgrumblingdownsouth

Sorry to be cynical, but how do we know Dave and Julie are actually real people?

I know we’ve seen a couple of photos of RW and TW with another couple who are supposedly Dave and Julie. However, it could just be that they took a photo with this couple after a pleasant chance encounter (like with the Parsons) and that there isn’t actually a real life couple who fit Dave and Julie’s description from the books.

I’m just wondering this, as the Observer haven’t said they’ve tried to track down Dave and Julie or that they’ve been in touch with them, and neither Dave nor Julie have publicly defended the Walkers.

I do realise though there are many good reasons for why these things haven’t happened. If D & J really do exist - whether as D & J or under entirely different names- I understand why they wouldn’t want to come forward to get tangled up in this palaver!

This where my thinking is too.

Among my reasons for thinking they probably did do some walking in 2013: if you were making it all up on the basis of 2015 experiences, why project it back two years and tie it to a story that's a danger area for you (losing the house)? It wouldn't have mattered to the book if she'd set the whole thing two years later.

Having said that, I'm no psychologist, but I do wonder whether the very frequent "anchoring" to 2013 in the early part of the book (the Ashes, Armitage, Iolanthe) is related to a desire to rewrite that particular summer, which otherwise is associated with lots of shame and guilt. IIRC there's much less anchoring to 2014 for the second part.

I believe they did indeed walk from Minehead to LE as described in TSP.

I’m curious as to why you think they did the whole walk - even if it wasn’t done continuously?

Some of the anchoring (good terminology for this thread btw!) feels to me as an attempt to stitch together earlier and later walks, particularly the section after Land's End (Minack to Polruan) to make both parts (ie before and after Land's End) convincingly seamless.

ETA. The present lack of photos after LE feeds into this too.

There are photos of them in Iceland and doing the Thames Path in 2024 so I am pretty sure they exist. A Dave and Julie from Up North also contributed £100 to TW's 2024 walk for PSPA via JustGiving. However, tracking them down isn't quite so straightforward.

FOMO NC as well. I've forgotten which previous one(s) I've used. It does get horribly complicated but it is nice to have a fresh start.

The chronology seems to work. I compiled a spreadsheet with miles walked each day from 8 Aug to 15 Sept and it seemed to match up with the photos posted on SW's IG page and also the incidents described in TSP. There were also some 3rd party confirmations that some of the incidents (ie meeting the blind mystic at Porlock) could have occurred even if they were embellished.