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.

We also don't know if they were as penniless as TSP described. For me, the homelessness angle is undermined through all the other lies or fabrications in pursuit of a compelling narrative to sell.

I don’t know the ins and outs of this, but according to CH in the TSP newsroom event (available to watch on YouTube), the France property may be beyond repair, so it’s no longer possible to do it up and make it habitable.

How much different would the criminality have made to the representation of homelessness, though? I thought that what was interesting about the beginning of TSP was how isolated they seemed, but I assumed estranged from most family and that they’d perhaps lived a very isolated life on their farm (before becoming aware that it was essentially a one-acre smallholding).

But it did make me think, if DH and I became homeless and unemployed, which friends or family (not prosperous people, small houses)) do we ask for a sofa or a spare room, and how long in reality might we expect them to let us stay without relations becoming very strained? We lived next door, some years ago when we lived in London, to a house that was emergency homeless accommodation, and the majority of residents we saw coming and going, appeared to have significant MH or addiction issues, or to be recently out of prison. It’s not somewhere I would have wanted to spend a night, or a month, whether or not I was ill, or whether or not I’d become homeless through my own fault.

They still own the land though. And they've got money (if they're renting that enormous estate in Cornwall). That money would be better invested in rebuilding or buying themselves somewhere to live rather than renting ad infinitum, because when the royalties start dwindling they aren't going to be able to afford to stay where they are.

Catching up this morning, so sorry to be going back to an earlier post (although it was just yesterday afternoon, but the topic has moved on already!)

I've just watched the bbc snippet from 2018, where TW actually takes part in the interview. He says at the end of the piece: "I'm 57 years of age, I've had a happy life. But walking the South West coastal path is probably singularly one of the best things I have ever done." Yet as he says this, SW looks like she's about to burst into tears, completely at odds with the positive message he's giving.

Yes that’s a good point. And I agree it makes more sense for them to buy somewhere rather than renting for the rest of their lives, as their royalties won’t last forever.

However, someone upthread pointed out that their earnings are likely to be earning significant annual interest. This is likely to be more than enough money to cover their living costs and to still have money left over, without eating into their capital. So, in theory, they could just use this money to pay for rental costs for the foreseeable future.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat It's the relentless holding the line that they weren't to blame in any way that is getting people's backs up.

Yes. I think her statement reinforced Chloe's original article.

I have returned to it to back up things on this thread; it's the gift that keeps on giving.

In their shoes, I don’t think I’d now move somewhere that was known to be owned by me, when journalists have been there, interviewing the neighbours and the mayor about my chequered past and unpaid taxes. If I were buying somewhere to live, I’d be looking for somewhere I had no previous ties to, where my exposure to neighbours was limited and it would be difficult for a journalist to doorstep me, or a local to sell blurry photos of me getting into my car to a tabloid, headlined SALT PATH SCAMMER SEEN TAKING IN LAVISH OCADO SHOP or whatever.

But I think I’d also wait and see if I hadn’t already bought somewhere by the time the story broke. Not blowing a chunk of cash on somewhere I might want to leave again because of hostility or papping might make sense.

I think the problem for Raymoth being housed in 2013 is that Moth didn't have a serious illness in 2013, he was seeing the doctor and under the pain clinic as far as we can tell, Salray thought it was either his roof fall or worn/trapped nerve/ligament mainly shoulder problem, even when he had been referred to a neurologist in 2015 she still thinks it's a trapped nerve.

They would probably have been offered emergency accommodation, over which they would have no choice, then wait to be housed more permanently, the more health or social problems they had the more points, so they could have had to wait a long time, but when you are homeless and you are offered that temporary accommodation, and I agree @SunlitUpland it is often accomodation that you would not choose, it is a lifeline when you need help to get into permanent accommodation, sorry I'm way behind.

Perhaps with no serious illness, some money in savings (? Speculation) and the French property they just didn’t qualify for emergency housing?

I assume they’re just renting a house on the estate, though, rather than the whole thing. The estate looks like a working farm, from those drone photos, with a big house, farm workers’ cottages, farm buildings etc. Maybe, as someone pointed out on previous threads, they’re not even renting the big house, but one of the cottages?

(Ironically, the estate SW seems to have grown up on now has lots of properties, presumably firmer ties cottages, which they rent out to people who are able to spend a lot more on rent than estate staff, including her childhood home.)

Maybe uses ‘Ray’ as a persona, like Beyoncé uses Sasha Fierce?

@candycane222 As a writer I really appreciate a good editor. I have worked with some excellent who have really improved my work so we can both feel very proud of the finished article, but so many just glance over it and that's it. It's all of a piece with fake news I suppose. It just makes me sad really that readers - and listeners - are not expecting and getting more 🙁.

I would be interested to know what you think of something that occurred to me. This started following the excellent quotes, of what I call The Main Theme, provided by @SimoArmo , yesterday evening.

I had been indignant that the editor seemed to have done ... well, no editing. This is because of the multiple inconsistencies, superior attitude towards people, etc.

In view, of the way the quotations are worded so that the 'cure' is strongly implicit but not actually explicit - and also in view of the unusually long disclaimer - is this, in fact, very cynical output by Penguin?

Also there was discussion a while back as to whether TW left Plas yn Rhiw in 2004 or 2007. In April 2005, Corinne Price was taken on as Gardener-In-Charge and lived on-site.
https://whgt.wales/documents/bulletin/bulletin43.pdf
This was not long after the bbc article.

That look between them is interesting.

My take is that it’s a knowing look, as actually they/he didn’t do much of it all at once or anything like the hundreds miles billed. ‘We got away with it’ look & we won’t get found out now.

The Coast programme with just Ray & Portillo made her sound like an endurance walker or climber & breaks were only for wimps. It made me wonder if she completed bits of TSP alone too (?)

Great find! Looks like my source was wrong.

You could well be right @toooom if the French property was unsellable and accepted as such the local authority may still have housed them if they didn't have a large amount of money in savings.

They could have gone and camped on the bit of land in France, it was still pre Brexit so certain benefits were receivable from the UK they would have had health cover from EHIC at that point, also a reciprocal arrangement with health care in the UK to share medical care.

Sorry to insert these thoughts at random into the thread, but going back to the question of “what next?”, these are my answers:
Firstly I’d like to see the original blurbs for the books dispensed with and replaced with new ones. If they’re still going to go with “unflinchingly honest” then please state explicitly what is meant by that? State that the books are the “unflinchingly honest” opinions of the author Raynor Winn or just get rid of that hook completely. Some of us on these threads have suggested that the honesty might be relating to confessions of skipping off without paying for things, leaving a foul mess in the countryside she so purportedly loves etc. I actually think she confided those things imagining that they would be forgivable because of the circumstances she’d manufactured and manipulated the reader into believing. Even Moth’s illness is not represented factually, the reader relies on Raynor’s histrionic approach. Again, the reader is expected to accept that the highly emotional and irrational sounding plan to push a terminally ill husband away from all the medical advice they were given, is a good one despite seeming to be the very opposite of what a loving partner would do. This really messes with my head! 🤯 But then of course they have a relationship like no other and this woman knows that the doctor is wrong. We are told this by the evidence, the stuff she writes is all about defying the doctor, stuff him, what does he know? (Ugh… why why why did I see her as a heroine??? Answer: the gushing hype and claptrap spouted by interviewers because of course…. Raynor was right! Look what happened to Moth! All singing and dancing, planking Moth.)
Secondly, I’m hopeful that all the supporters will melt away. Gigspanner won’t want this fraud appropriating their Folk culture. People who aspire to writing about nature will not sign up to be taught by her. She’s been dropped as an ambassador to the SWCP, the other charities too. The news articles about the deception have served the right people and given them a voice as well as issuing a warning to anybody who would accelerate their decline in health by taking her “story” as truth and inspiration.
I don’t see any necessity for people who were close to them to come forward (Dave and Julie). They will probably want privacy to process all this stuff. When you invest yourself emotionally into a real friendship with someone then find they weren’t quite who you thought they were, it’s a huge deal.

edited for typos.

I think that with careful management, the 'letting time elapse and then a form of semi-self exonerating mea culpa' strategy could work, up to a point, despite the statement. I mean, I think the 'Raynor Winn' brand still has potential options, depending on how they are advised, and how the Walkers are prepared to play it.

What would really help them, though, is TW markedly deteriorating.

Or at least going on one of those actor diets where they have to prepare for a role in which they are very thin, where they live on a supervised very low-calorie diet to drop several stone in a few months. I'm no suggesting in any way that all ill people look fine-drawn and fragile, obviously (I have a friend going through chemotherapy at the moment who is heavier than she was before it) but TW looking in apparently incandescent good health from his dashing shoes to the tip of his strikingly vertical silver hair probably doesn't help the Raynor Winn brand at this point.

I just watched the BBC piece and noticed something relevant for this topic. Salray describes following Mothtim's footprints. I'm sure in reality it was a mixture. But would be intriguing to know how this fits with/departs from the film.

I wonder whether Moth’s contrived absence from interviews & controlled vignettes when he speaks might point to her doing stints on path he didn’t, His unfamiliarity might trip him up? The bit about going back for Beowulf to recite when physically a long & difficult trip back to tent etc. Or one reason.

SW needs to a Lance Armstrong and go on Oprah to seek redemption and beg forgiveness. You know, stressful times, money worries, my gallant husbands declining health, memories got fudged, truth got trampled on. She could come out the other side exulting a new age fitness/ wellness business in the style of Gloop.
A channel 5 chat show beckons and maybe a channel 4 Sunday cooking show with Tim breaking the eggs.

Please please please no - to all of the above.

This occurs to me too… I’m worried they’re going to do something even more stupid.

The planking photo is this montage - is that the later one in Dorset, or an earlier one, please?