Thread 16: 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

More from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...
The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)
I will link to two more Observer videos in the first post of this thread.

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 fifteen 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.

Yes, it really is Thread 16.

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

From 32mins in Daphne reads the famous beginning of 'Rebecca' and talks about her longing for Cornwall when she wrote it.

Daphne du Maurier Talks to Wilfred DeAth - BBC iPlayer

From earlier discussion, do you think, if Martin Hemmings, kept to his word through the non disclosure agreement, that until he died the folk in Pwellheli would not have generally known, some people would have known, the family and staff of the Hemming's, Raymoth's family, police officers, bank manager.

Those that knew would also have known about the non disclosure agreement, It might not have been generally gossiped about and those with knowledge, would have known that the money was paid back, which MH must have been thankful for. MH does seem to have been a very reasonable man, no one has said that MH wanted Salray to go to court and risk a custodial sentence.

Sentencing is variable, case by case as it should be, but woman often get harsher sentences than men for similar crimes, the court might have been lenient with Salray as a mother, or they could have been concerned about the length of time and the betrayal of trust for the victim of the embezzlement as someone earlier said, we will never know. All we do know is that Salray didn't want to risk going to court to find out.

I am very grateful to Kaye Webb for Puffin books and, of course, Puffin Post.

SW claims to have read a fair number of books on nature according to the Penguin article below

Raynor Winn’s favourite nature writing books

Sniffup!

Thanks for sharing this. Like SalRay's statement, interviews, etc., so plausible on one level - then look/listen more closely. From the article:

Henry Williamson wrote his novel Tarka the Otter during four years of obsession with the Devon landscape. Sleeping in the undergrowth at the side of rivers and in woodlands..so when I eventually got to visit Tarka's haunts - I got the bus.

And Moonfleet?

One question I have is regarding the vehicle(s) Raymoth used. In TSP,

SW describes them driving down to Taunton in their van which was so small they couldn't sleep in it.

However, according to the Times article the farmer who lived next to Raymoth and saw them fleeing the property at 2am remembers the night that the Walkers suddenly left. While in the fields bailing, he saw two vehicles leaving the property at 2am. “The bailiffs knocked the doors in the next morning,” he said. “I had the shock of my life that they had gone.

Was one of these vehicles an SUV which was abandoned in Llandudno in 2008 after Raymoth fled Pwilheli? Was the SUV sold before they set off on the walk a few weeks later? Was there really a small van which they travelled down to Taunton in or was this a figment of SW's imagination?

I've never read Moonfleet, but I know the name. I've never read spy stories but I know who John le Carre is. You'd have thought they would have read up more about the SWCP and read 'around' the subject if they were such great readers, reading books set, for example, in Exeter and read about Jane Austen's visits to Dawlish, but none of this gets any kind of mention. If the book isn't 'literature', it doesn't appear to exist in their world.

And re being called 'tramps' and 'homeless'... I'm not sure I believe that this happened nearly as much as SW says. MOST walkers look a bit battered and scruffy, even the ones starting and ending the day in a B&B. Sweat, walking clothes and weather will make even the sveltest and most 'put together' person look generally battered, particularly towards the end of the day. So anyone who regularly encounters long distance walkers (people in towns, shop owners etc) would be unlikely to make the 'homeless tramp' remarks.

All the places they encountered "hostility" and were described as tramps, were on the SWCP - ie full of middle aged back packers. In all the photos of Raymoth on the SWCP they look like, er backpackers walking the SWCP. Why on earth would anybody think that they were tramps?

They wouldn't.

Mark Wallington was walking, and camping out, with his dog. It is from there - and fits the 'cast out from society through no fault of our own' theme.

The children buried themselves in their mother's skirt....And then the whole family backed away and made an unsubtle detour round me. There was much whispering and I heard the word tramp mentioned once or twice.
(500 MW)

Lyme Regis is the one I find oddest on reflection. It's very distinctive visually, and has a very specific place in literature and film adaptations of literature; it's "where Lydia falls off the Cobb" (and also the setting of The French Lieutenant's Woman). And RW doesn't say anything about it as a town. But it's in the south-east section, which is very under-developed in the book anyway.

Louisa of course. Mistakes were made.

There is an interesting comment by SW in the section at Lyme Regis. She says (p244) Leaving the sea, we entered the woods,our packs weighed down with fossilized ammonites from the beach, relics of other lives, other millennia, from a time when were fish.

Packs weighed down with ammonites collected from the beach at Lyme Regis???? Come on. I've done some ammonite hunting at Charmouth and there is no way that you find ammonites littering the beach!

So the first time I heard TSP described as a nature writing book I was shocked.

Me too. At last, something I share with Ms WW. This is from the Penguin article linked above by @WhoDaresWinns

For me, it does show a 'dumbing down' by the literary world.

They would be significantly heavy - unless you were taking them back to the van. It does add, to what I think, already.

That they met up with old friends, had a series of jaunts, and stayed in b&b.

Any fossil hunting place I've ever frequented was distinguished by its absence of easily found fossils! I doubt they were carrying the chisels etc that more adept hunters use to open ammonites.

Nice to see so many Puffin Club members. I was in it through all of my 60s/70s childhood thanks to my English teacher godmother. Some wonderful books.

Ive holidayed near Lyme Regis and can concur. The shore definitely isn’t scattered with large ammonites

@Uricon2

I was a Puffin Club member too.

oh yes, plenty of people would have known that MH had been ripped off even in the absence of charges. In our village, over the years I've been told about:

Bethan the hairdresser who was sacked for being off sick and on sick pay but was doing people's hair in the evenings for cash only
Stefan the retired solicitor who tried to get a slice of someone's estate and had to be warned off by the larger members of the deceased's family
Julie who tried to get her cafe waitresses to work without pay as part of some weird chapel tithing thing until they all quit and the cafe had to close

[all names changed btw]

The above is all dodgy behaviour which in some cases would probably have fallen foul of the law had any reports been made, without being anywhere near the ongoing level of sustained fraud that SW practised on MH.

Talking about Puffins, I was never a member of the Puffin Club but adored the children's lit of the late 60s & 70s. Kaye Webb had a positive effect on more lives than I bet she ever knew.

Except that apart from Polly, they don't seem to have had any 'old friends', certainly not any who lived in the SW!

Absolutely @TonstantWeader . Small rural towns and villages, even the outskirts out in the country, are not the places to live if you want to keep any villainy great or small quiet (in fact, anything quiet 😂) Move to a city if you want secrecy. As you say, things that are not "officially" reported will still be talked about and it seems at least one other local business (the garage) was also owed money and would not have been bound by any confidentiality agreement. Given the debt letters the new owner of their house was receiving years later, I doubt he was the only one.

Although they lived in Polruan for a number of years and nobody appears to have had a clue about their back story.

Look at Yeovil to West Bay.

Yes @TonstantWeader Eventually everyone would have known, I was thinking about how long this would have taken, initially while the non disclosure agreement was in place gossip might have been more contained until MH died in 2012. After that RH seems to have told lots more people.

I was puzzled by how they could have continued to live in the area with people knowing, but as @TonstantWeader pointed out last night their secluded location was close to Pwellheli but they did not live in town, I am assuming the children had left school, so no facing people on the school run. They could have kept themselves to themselves and shopped at Porthmadog not far away.

Kaye Webb had a positive effect on more lives than I bet she ever knew.

I think so too.