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.

Not read all these threads but was amused by this advert...

Video of SA's 2013 walk along the SWCP including a poster advertising his poetry reading.

Difficult to imagine TW being mistaken for him on countless occasions!

No sign of a rebound in sales for TSP in the latest ST best seller list

The Sunday Times Bestsellers List — the latest UK book charts

That worked for me, thanks @Tealeaf3 .

I was also entertained by the confidence implied by "..book about a couple of idealists who buy a smallholding then have to face reality, and one of the 250 000 people who buys a copy will win the property in a totally random draw on 31.01.2013."

250,000!!! 😅 - didn't someone note upthread that Robert MacFarlane only sold ~100,000 or so of one of his..?

Also, the window (for the couple who were claiming to be waking up and facing reality) to sell the 250,000 copies seems to have been just six months, ie about 1,400 copies every day.

@Catwith69lives Thanks for the bestseller lists. I followed through this novel:
In David Nicholls’s You Are Here — the baggage is represented quite literally. His two would-be lovers are tramping ........ on Alfred Wainwright’s famous coast-to-coast walk with massive, unwieldy rucksacks.
Johanna Thomas-Corr Saturday April 13 2024, 6.00pm BST, The Sunday Times

Interesting theme - I see it was published 23 April 2024. It reminded me of this interview I shared, dated 27 June 2025. I thought: here is another made-up backstory:

TheBrandyPath · 06/08/2025 18:03

COAST TO COAST WALK:
How did this walk come about? I know you’ve done other walks since the coast path, but why that particular crossing walk rather than one that circumnavigates?
When I first met Moth, I was a teenager. It was a long time ago, and I even now I can remember sitting in the college canteen having our very first conversation. The Coast to Coast walk had just been designated as a walk, you know, and Wainwright’s book had just appeared, and I can remember Moth talking about it. He was so excited, saying this will be a fantastic thing to do. I really want to do this thing. So our very first conversation was straight into this. We really wanted to do it throughout our life together; it was something we were always going to do together, but then a downturn in his health meant we didn’t do it. So I ended up doing it alone.
I think this book came out in 1973 - so she is 10 years old then, and Tim is 12?

Raynor Winn On Winter Hill | Muddy Stilettos Cornwall | Muddy Stilettos

A Coast to Coast Walk - Alfred Wainwright's classic walk across Northern England

After my questions about what counts as a farm here, I notice they are calling it an 'organic smallholding' here. Don't you have to pay to register to be calling your land 'organic'? Can't see them having done that. Plus it's fruit trees which sound nice but, as a pp of a forgotten name said, RW makes it sound as though they were living off the land. Not quite as Tom and Barbara as that. More Margot and Jerry without the cash.

it also interesting that in 2012 Gangani wrote about the house “Due to ill health they have to let it go - just when the housing market has collapsed and no-one is buying.”

So their reason for needing to part with it was ill health - an often given reason for house sales which even before this exposé would always make me wonder if that was true as how could you check when you rarely meet the house sellers themselves.

Was the diagnosis in TSP just a continuation and extrapolation of this claim of ill health?

Gillian Anderson is having an exciting time though. Wonder if any of the fantasies feature Mars Bars?

Some footage from Oct 2022 at the Falmouth Book Festival with Moth on fine form, striding around without a care in the world.

Salt Path author on completing 1,000-mile walk from Scotland to Cornwall with terminally ill husband | ITV News West Country

I also thought that it's not much of a smallholding with one sheep, one hen and fruit trees. That sort of description has 'hobby farmer' written all over it, where they call it 'self sufficiency' but he works in Finance in London and commutes back twice a week.

Hindsight is obviously 20/20 but watching him walk and move his upper body on uneven ground makes me wonder how anyone could ever believe her writing. Were the people watching and making the news reports and the readers of the books entirely separate groups of people with no overlap?

Also hearing her say he was starting to think the end stages of his illness were getting closer as his health was in the worst ever place so we went to one of the most remote isolated parts of the UK for a walk and then kept going for 1,000 miles is just BS of the highest order. I can’t believe she had the audacity to be interviewed live and say that.

I hope they are being shunned locally every time they leave their isolated country pile so that they get a sense of how their lies have made people feel.

I wondered this too. If anything, it certainly demonstrates a willingness to use illness to achieve something. And we know that illness definitely was not the reason for selling the house and even if TW had symptoms by then, the Dr's letter makes it clear TW stopped working in 2013.

Another thing I noticed it that her IG account never made any mentions his health (or very rarely like the time he was in hospital during London marathon, which might not even have been CBD related). On one hand that's perhaps understandable, yet the impression is that everything is perfectly normal, no stuggles etc, which is very much at odds with what she writes openly about in the books. Almost as if it's the one place she's semi-honest and doesn't always refer to the books for sharing life information.

Nice video, I really enjoyed that. He included some of those photos in his book but there are others that I recognise from his descriptions. I do think that the supposed resemblance and running joke was inserted into TSP just to draw a favourable comparison and bask in any reflected glory and those that knew Simon and were expecting him would simply not confuse the two men, no chance.

Came across this interview at the Tring Book Festival in 2021 when SW mentions several people who appeared in TSP who subsequently contacted her including the lady who made the remarks about lightly salted blackberries and some of the surfers at the shed. From 51.00

SW claims to be both a '"farmer's daughter" and a "child of nature", and yet she keeps one sheep and one hen both of which are social animals that need to be with others and get very stressed when kept on their own. She also buries the sheep on the property which is an illegal way to dispose of fallen stock.

I also noticed on the gangani pages that it appears to be the farmhouse itself that is the prize. I wonder if they originally planned to stay, living in the guesthouse. It's only on the accidental Stallholder forum that the prize becomes an organic smallholding although it didn't mention any land apart from the beautiful garden, which suggests that it is not a veggie patch. I don't think acres of fresh air can be classed as acreage. (Unless I've missed something on all the pages).

I presumed that the one sheep and one hen came about because they'd had others and these had gradually died? Which is a bit different to actually acquiring one single sheep and one single hen, because I don't know anyone who would let you take only one of each - as you say, they don't like living alone, but might tolerate it if all their flockmates had died.

Imagine if the raffle had worked and someone ended up with the farmhouse and the Walkers as neighbours in the converted barn… Awkward.

Hm. He walks faster and more easily than a number of people I know of 50+ who have chronic conditions. I know it's merely a snapshot and you can't get the whole story from that, but I'd have to say that it looks like he's having a very good day health wise in this.

Since the sheep was so old, it would be much more humane to euthanize it and hens can easily be rehomed in such a rural area. It's not purely about companionship for the animal but also about being predator aware, very stressful for single animals.

@PullTheBricksDown I'd have to say that it looks like he's having a very good day health wise in this.

Isn't this another good example of The Main Theme. It is amazing that these presenters keep a straight face. She is claiming that this very sick man has walked 1.000 miles. Now look at him. They are special, gods maybe.

I can imagine that if he were in pain, he might mask, particularly for filming. We all know you can't always tell just by looking at someone.

However, if RW had exaggerated symptoms for the book (which evidence suggests she did), why didn't "Moth" ham it up a bit for the camera in support? He just looks so relaxed, and doesn't talk about his awful diagnosis and the pains RW describes.

I find it odd that TSP has several passages where RW compares their abilities (ie speed and distance covered) to walk the SWCP against Paddy Dillon's abilities.

For example:

Paddy Dillon eats spinach for breakfast, wears a hair shirt and sleeps on a bed of nails, obviously, because he walks from Bude to Boscastle in one day.

This seems like such an odd comparison to make given Moth's illness, as well as RW writes at the outset of the walk they'll take it slow. How could they ever expect to match what Paddy Dillon did, unless they were walking it as regular walkers? I wonder if it could indicate that such comparisons were written in pre-diagnosis drafts and were kept without thinking.

@SimoArmo I find it odd that TSP has several passages where RW compares their abilities (ie speed and distance covered) to walk the SWCP against Paddy Dillon's abilities.

I now think of that as one of the books that were open to copy from - along with some of the others mentioned, especially for me 500MW.

If you take out these passages, some of the things that are on info boards along the way, facts and figures on homelessness .....