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.

As Dance Correspondent, you could find yourself very busy when Moth The Agile goes on Strictly, wins and tours for the next 50 years.

Challenge accepted!

This is my first post, so I'm just learning the navigation; apologies if I mess up!

I've been (avidly) following the many threads of conversation, but could have missed that this has already been identified.....

However, for what it's worth, I think that the round, stone-built pillar trig point with Mr Walker planking on the top is the one on the summit of Snowdon. I'd be interested to see what other people think....

To find images, first input 'OS Trig Pillars Map - GitHub' into your search engine & click on the relevant website - this should bring up the 'Britain and Ireland Trig Pillars Map'. Navigate to Snowdonia, North Wales, just south-east of Llanberis, and click on the green marker for Snowden Summit. This brings up information on the TrigPointingUK website, including an album of photographs; comparison of the pillar stonework in these images with the stonework in the 'planking' image shows them to be identical, I reckon....

I'm not sure though whether this clarifies or complicates the whole situation with regard to timelines, etc and places visited....Snowdonia has been mentioned before, re the degree course, and it's not very far from the Pwllheli area where their farmhouse was.....

You are correct. Very well done. Individual stones are identical between the photo and another I saw.

I don't think this raises any obvious timeline inconsistencies though. The photo was used in a press montage but it could easily have been lifted off RW Instagram when it was on there (before recent deletions) and no one is claiming it was taken on the SWCP. My belief is this was taken after the walk(s) based on the bandana that appears in other photos, including in Iceland. Timoth's other brother lives near Snowdonia so for them to be in Wales post-SWCP isn't beyond possibility. A date would be nice though. But well done locating it!

I'm still baffled by TW's claimed botany degree qualifications. It seems he met SW at Burton Tech College (now Burton and South Derbyshire Colle) in 1980 and as far as I can see, Burton Tech only provided vocational courses in the 1970s not degree level courses in botany. SW attended John Taylor High School in Burton under Needham while TW and his brothers attended Wulfric in Burton on Trent.

And I've never been caught at silly point, nor yet bowled a maiden over. The butler did it. (I choose names "as my Wimsey takes me").

@ThisTookAWhile the round, stone-built pillar trig point with Mr Walker planking on the top is the one on the summit of Snowdon

A very warm welcome ..... and thank you for putting me out of my misery. It didn't look anything like the SWCP so was annoying me!

I think it shows how little evidence there is for their walks. I mean look at David and Jo Parsons blog - the cheerful Australians with their well-documented walk. Some of the pictures,of the Walkers, we have, show tents put up in unsuitable places.

This photo was embedded in a montage put out by the BBC, 6 days after TSP was published, and one by ITV to publicise the film. There seems to be relatively few photos of the SWCP.

I don’t think TW has a botany degree - my mother has one but they are very rare. I think it’s more a journalistic slip up - TW must have mentioned having some horticultural qualifications and it was likely a lazy journalist just thought a botany degree sounded about right. he would be massively over qualified in a head gardener role!

Yes I think it's important to remember that errors in articles can also be the result of journalistic slip-ups, rather than all being misleading statements by SW and TW. If I recall correctly that same article also says SW is from Gwynedd, which as far as I know she has never claimed, & which seems to be a straightforward error.

I'm not really Uricon2. That's a nickname. I'm really Viroconium Cornoviorum.

@ThisTookAWhile thank you, another put out of their misery re the location of that trig point!

Anybody any idea where on the SWCP comes from? It's in Hardy Country in Dorset but some way off the SWCP. I thought it might be looking down towards Little Bredy?
A couple of things struck me about the stretch from Tyneham Cap to West Bay, some of which is with Dave & Julie:

• why aren't there any photos of SW and TW taken by Dave & Julie?
• why aren't there any photos of Dave and Julie?
• how come Dave & Julie appear quite by chance to be staying in the same B&B as SW & TW in Weymouth?
• isn't it a bit of a coincidence that SW&TW's paths recross with Dave & Julie in the loos at Moonfleet Manor Hotel?
• so if I am reading it right there are 4 'chance' encounters with Dave & Julie on the stretch between Tyneham Gap and West Bay!

@Catwith69lives so if I am reading it right there are 4 'chance' encounters with Dave & Julie on the stretch between Tyneham Gap and West Bay!

I completely agree with your impression of this - I wrote this before:

The second walk in TSP is very patchy. More like they met up with old friends, Dave and Julie, and did some of it. Stayed in b&b - like when she is ill in the book. Some far-fetched episodes - red bikini girl, etc.

I know Devon/Cornwall very well - but not Dorset.

SW appears to have availed herself of some free hot water at the Moonfleet Manor Hotel to dunk her tea bag for most of the afternoon!

SW has said multiple times that TW was studying for a degree after the big walk

Yes. They are walking the wrong direction again.

They say they are going west in the book. That would be going the wrong way. Going west is Moonfleet then the swannery.

Indeed - and previous discussion has established that he did do that degree (see timeline), and we're pretty confident that it was his first degree; the point is that, contrary to at least one published article, he didn't yet have a degree when he was head gardener at the Welsh NT property in the late 90s/ early 2000s. But if I am keeping track correctly, we don't know that he ever claimed to have a degree at that time - we just know that an article said he had a botany degree, and there's reason to believe that that might just be a mistake on the journalist's part.Tangled webs!

Isn’t the fact that they’re staying in the same Weymouth B and B due to all the campsites being fully booked? D and J and the Walkers discover this separately, and end up at the same small hotel that has vacancies.

I agree that both could be journalistic error. However, knowing what we do about Saltim it also wouldn't surprise me if both were lies to get the job, to big TW up and to seem more Welsh. Cultural and professional appropriation if you like. I think they might have been doing it since, claiming to be long distance walkers, farmers, cider makers, rewilders. Despite growing up in the Midlands, they also seem to have become people of the sea and Cornwall. That alone isn't unusual but everything else and adopting terminal illness with a very short prognosis as a profession is.

@DisappointedReader Yes. I saw a local article that said Raynor Winn was originally from Cornwall.

Many, many mistakes have been made.....they seem to follow them around.

Welcome and thank you to @ThisTookAWhile . That is how to delurk and join a long-running series of threads!

Could the snowdon trig point have come from the Wales walk they did in 2017 detailed in TWS? When the Linkin Park singer dies. I can’t remember which part of Wales they were in.

Yes, they appear to travel with their own personal cloud of them, a bit like Pigpen in Snoopy. The difference with Pigpen and his cloud of dust is that his conscience is clear, he is confident in who he is and carries himself with dignity and respect. He treats others well and hopes they will do the same for him (they often do not, but he perseveres). Pigpen considers it a point of pride that he is cloaked in the ‘dust of countless ages.’

Have your scones ready.

I really need to read TWS as this is new info to me! That could make sense.

Off to Thread 16 we go!!