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.

It’s image 7 in the thread gallery (accessible at the top of the thread). I’ve also posted a screenshot here.

Afternoon all and I hope you are well today. Oh heck, the rabbit-eared shadow of a new thread seems to be looming over me already.

I've sent you PMs @SimoArmo @Catwith69lives

(tried to post image of rabbit shadow hand, failed)

Here we are.

I contemplated hunting rabbits. ........ I had shot rabbits, hundreds of them, .... We filled the freezer, sold them to butchers, made stews, pies, skewers, pâtés, soups, sandwiches, until no one could face rabbit again. I lay in the darkness thinking about making a snare, but had neither the energy or enough gas to cook a rabbit if I caught one........ From the volume of the snuffling, it could have been a big stew.

Yes - one cannot use a pseudonym as a company director - company directors must be registered under their legal name at Companies House, as this is a matter of public record.

There are very limited exceptional circumstances under which a charity trustee (as opposed to company director) could use a pseudonym. This is only allowed if a waiver is explicitly agreed by the Charity Commission, and normally only in situations where the use of a real name would put the trustee in personal danger.

There are many situations that would disqualify an individual from being either a charity trustee or a company director. These include certain financial/debt issues such as bankruptcy, insolvency IVA with creditors, etc. It is possible that something along those lines may have applied to SW/RW after the flit from Wales.

Playing devil's advocate re the 'cheating at school' - this is hearsay and might not be admissable as evidence without something other than 'people who were at school with SW say...' It's too easy for people to pile on in situations like this with all kinds of allegations, and it's not really fair to drag into the - already hefty - series of charges laid at her door.

Looks lovely.

Which is a little unusual, when you consider they lived in Pwllheli for some years. It’s tourist central, it’s surrounded by small villages with SPAR type shops where you pay much higher prices than in a supermarket like Tesco.

TW will get his state pension next year, such unimaginable fortune!

Should say, TW will get his state pension next year IF he has made enough National Insurance contributions, or been credited with them whilst in receipt of eligible benefits (I got NI credits whilst receiving Child Benefit, I don’t know which other benefits qualify).

And if he hasn't, won't he just get pension credits?

Pension credits are means tested so I don’t think he would be eligible as I assume he and / or Sally have received some of the revenues from the books and haven’t left it in the limited company they have.

Imagine if the reason they are renting that country estate instead of buying somewhere is so they can attempt a housing benefit claim!!!

I shared this on Saturday, and a poster transcribed it on here, it is now archived:

https://archive.ph/Pulbd

“The Salt Path” is a morality play in which the protagonists—homeless, dying, poor—endure a callous world, indifferent to their suffering.

I'd like to agree but, as I've said of my opinion before, the walk is very much intertwined with the house loss and the illness. Yes, outside of the narrative and The Salt Path, losing the house due to embezzlement and overstating the certainty and severity of what is a tentatively diagnosed mystery illness are the worst things. But those things are not the story and the story would not exist if they chose to wait for a council house. The story is about going on the journey in the face of those things. If the journey didn't happen as described, then it's just as manipulative and deceitful as the other things. The homelessness, the illness and the ONLY OPTION to walk are key ingredients of a bestselling book series, and all rely on each other to work. So yes, perhaps the embezzlement and illness claims are more overtly fraudulent in their own right (i.e. they would be fraudulent irrespective of the book), but the walk makes the book fraudulent and is the only reason we read about their "truth". So I do think the scrutiny of the walk and whether it happened as written is just as important and can't really be separated from the other two things. I think slight truth bending is acceptable but to the extent it's been done here is just deceit to create a contrived but compelling narrative.

The reader is left with the feeling of pulling on a thread.

Or, the disappointed reader is left with the feeling of pulling on 16 threads.

@SimoArmo I absolutely agree that the claims about the walk and the walking are worthy of investigation. I just think that, from the point of view of the general public, the writing about the walk is still valid, whether it was done in one go, in several instalments or (in the case of some elements of the reading public) not done at all but cribbed from guide books. They just want to read about pretty places and someone going around Devon and Cornwall. If you tell them it was likely a fake walk and never done in the way it's portrayed, they will just shrug and say they like the book anyway.

Personally I think the Walkers should be held to account for every single fake thing that they've documented, from the housing dilemma to whether or not they survived on fudge and noodles, but I think the general readership would just not care. But claiming to have a terminal illness or pretending to have lost your house because you were 'too nice' when really it was to pay back a loan occasioned by your theft - those are the things that I think the majority of readers would object to.

From the volume of the snuffling

This is the phraseology of nightmares and don't get me started on the volume of droppings.

I agree it would be difficult for anyone to do this level of walk on a subsistence diet. TW is supposed to be around 1.82 metres in height and I’m not sure about SW. I wouldn’t ever have described him as particularly thin and SW looks as though she’s verging on being overweight in recent photos.

For comparison:

At the end of more than a thousand kilometres carrying considerable weight, my own body was not the same as when I began. I was skeletal, despite eating well (not noodles and fudge), my joints clicked for probably six months afterwards, I had migrating pains and numbness, and I had lost two centimetres in height. I walked like a Thunderbirds puppet, and I had been healthy to begin. I could not have walked those many inclines and descents and maintained balance without walking poles. The other total-distance walker I met described the same migrating clicks and pains. For the most part, Raynor Winn has described a series of short hikes in warm weather and drizzle of about 6.75 miles or 10.8km daily, or around 15,000 steps, but arduous if you have a serious neurological illness.

This is from an article that has been shared, by a few of us, but is always worth another look
The Salt Path: a walk without a moral compass

It is right to treat anonymous posts online claiming to be by a friend of a friend with caution. It is the kind of thing to file for information but not to treat as gospel. What I would say is that seriously problematic behaviours in adulthood - lying, embezzlement, for example - can often be traced back to having started in some form in childhood and so it would not surprise me if the comment about SW was true.

Just to add, in Mark Wallington’s 500 Mile Walkies, he never mentions being short of food or or money to buy food, and generally seems to eat well, yet he also says he lost loads of weight doing the walk.

I agree to the extent that the walk lies are a much more subtle deception than those surrounding the embezzlement and illness, and owing to that they might be easily overlooked and shrugged at by a lot of people. But I think a lot of the people you describe who wouldn't care actually don't care about any of the falsehoods. I've seen so many comments of people saying they still love the book even in the knowledge of the "worst" lies. But I'm not sure if these people represent the majority. I'd hope not and like to think most are able to discern when they are being made a fool of by the complete, inseparable web of lies that make the book.

Has anyone got a copy of Our Simon's poem Ivory to hand they could PM me please?

@SimoArmo Re: another photo montage in a video. I know the interview with just Gillian and 'the real-life Ray Winn' has been discussed. I wondered about the photo at 7.24 This Morning

Sal at Godrevy Point. So, approaching St Ives, on the NW of the peninsula. She is wearing sunglasses and a crisp shirt.