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.

Is there any evidence (from her degree or otherwise) that she was indeed rushing back to get a job in PR?

Some have suggested on social media, that she played a role in getting TSP published via her role in PR.

Yet her current (well documented role) near her parents in Cornwall, seems to have little to do with PR.

I find it odd that well read people would not at least have heard of Simon Armitage But as mentioned before, they did at one point talk about having a “library” in the ( tiny) welsh house.

I'm not convinced that blogger does much thinking. Even leaving aside the Observer revelations, he or she doesn't seem to distinguish the book from film episodes which simply don't happen in the book, and apparently accepts the film scenes as just as 'true'.

The section about the 'kindness of strangers' references the waitress who gives them leftover pasties, sure, but also the hippy commune and the Winns taking under their wing a homeless girl and paying for her bus to her grandmother's house, both of which appear to have been invented for the film.

There is something heartwarming about kindness, something elevating. Both the giver and the receiver feel encouraged, lighter, happier. The abiding truth continues to stand the test of time that it is ‘better to give than to receive’. [...]. I suspect that kindness runs more deeply in the nature of things than we comprehend. It is part of the deep architecture of reality.

I simply don't recognise that in the book of TSP (in fact, it's perhaps for that reason that the Winns helping out the homeless teenager and the hippy commune were invented for the screenplay). Most of SW's attitude to other people, as demonstrated in TSP is that, with a few exceptions, other people have it easy, are mean-spirited jobsworths, are annoying, recoil at their homelessness, try to make them pay for things, scold them for wild camping or having big backpacks, exploit and betray them.

It's not a particularly benign view of the world, far less an acknowledgement that kindness is 'part of the deep architecture of reality'.

Is it fair to say that one of the things that the screenplay does is to soften TSP's message that other people are mostly awful, by inventing the homeless girl and the commune? The Winns, as represented in TSP do give away food on two occasions, but far more often they pilfer food, or stay at campsites without paying.

@SimoArmo and @WhoDaresWinns could it be that the daughter had an internship rather than a permanent job? That could explain it maybe.

Yes, even if they're not particularly interested in poetry, they had two children who had been through the school system in recent years by the time of the walk -- SA's work was prominent on the GCSE syllabus for about 20 years, and certainly was while their children would have been at school.

Oh, and not relevant to the previous point, but a coincidental little connection. Angela Harding illustrated at least one of SA's recent books, Blossomise. Judging by his Instagram, he's a big fan of her work. There's a photo of him at her studio only a couple of days ago, and a warm paragraph of praise for her illustrations, which he says were the main visual driver for an EP and tour his band did in conjunction with the book and the NT.

Good question. Her degree was a Bachelors in "Management", graduating in 2014 (doesn't specify what kind of managment) but her listed skills on what is a now removed/hidden LinkedIn account but findable on Rocket Reach are:

• Project Management
• Customer Service
• Social Media Marketing
• Marketing
• Microsoft Excel
• Press Releases
• Marketing Management
• Internal Communications
• Advertising
• Online Marketing

Striking resemblance to TW in 2013 😀

I doubt an internship would begin in September at the start of third year of a three year course. Nor would an internship be suddenly arranged or confirmed while away on a late summer job.

I love that SA has the ultimate Resting Bitch Face. It must have been useful in his probation officer days.

I am always amused that, as represented in TSP, both Walker children are sensible, stability-focused types. (I mean, obviously we have no idea how much of a resemblance to reality that bears, but if I had parents who mismanaged their finances at best and got done for embezzlement at worst, damn right I'd be studying towards a deeply sensible career and focusing on having a job and a roof over my head.)

Yes it does seem as if nothing happens in 2014.

6 February 2015
Sally and Tim Walker’s son helps them move (Observer, Shock and anger: the real people in The Salt Path, 13 August 2025)

8 August 2015
Joanne and David Parson meet the Walkers at the Fat Apples Café, near Porthallow, an event that, according to Sally Walker in The Salt Path, took place in summer 2013 (Observer, We thought: it can’t be the Salt Path couple…, 9 August 2025)

Autumn 2015
Tim Walker began either a horticulture HND or degree, with full student loan funding for a first undergraduate qualification (Falmouth Packet, Eden students take award winning garden to Hampton Court Flower Show, 8 July 2016; The Salt Path, 2018)

If they moved to Polruan in February 2015 and in the summer of that year started to do parts of the south coast maybe?

If they finished up at the Minack in 2013, moved to Polruan from Feb 2015 and were seen at the FAC in Aug 2015 by the Parsons its possible that

• they did nothing in 2014 and stayed at Polly's for 18 months rather than 6
• walked from Polruan to LE in 2015
• walked sections of Poole to Polruan n 2016 which would explain why they were walking back to Polruan and why SW's first IG posts in Oct 2016 featured her most recent walk photos of the Fleet Lagoon, Chesil Beach and Adelaide Chapel on Penlee Point

Yes and why they are walking west from Prallow in 2015. And why they are walking east in Dorset.

I don't think they moved to Polruan in Feb 2015. Because, why - what would prompt that move and why then? That, and the first medical letter in June 2015, which seems to be from a first consultation at Walton Centre in Liverpool, makes me think they lived within the typical catchment area for it.

This was me setting out the timeline in response to @YarrowYarrow wondering what the Polruan blogger meant about them having done only half when they came to Polruan.

You wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that hard stare

I think they just misunderstood the book, because Raymoth arrived in Polruan twice.

Yes but we don't have any reason for them being in Polruan in 2013 or 2014? The locals would probably know which year it was?

Good point. So if they were based in the NW ( Staffs or with the parents in Criccieth) and this prompted the visit to see the specialist at the Walton Centre in Liverpool in June 2015, when and how did they end up in Polruan?

The Parsons encounter suggests they were heading west towards LE in Aug 2015 yet TW started his course at the Eden project in Sept 2015. If the 2013 walk finished at the Minack on 16th Sept and their son took them back to Bristol (to stay with TW's sister Jan), they picked up their van and went to stay with Polly, Polruan doesn't seem to enter the equation until 2 years later ( late 2015 vs early Oct 2013 in TSP)

Apologies but I'm getting confused about what issue it is you are raising.

Indeed! It is quite the puzzle. Could it be they were at "Polly's" in June 2015, TW applied to uni, they then secured accomodation in Polruan by July but had to wait for it to be vacant, so set off on some of the path before beginning Polruan tenancy and uni course by Sept? So technically "homeless" in between homes again as well.

TheBrandyPath · Today 20:05
Yes but we don't have any reason for them being in Polruan in 2013 or 2014? The locals would probably know which year it was?
**
When they arrived, penniless, halfway through their quest to complete the 630 mile South West Coast Path, they were just another couple down on their luck.
During their sojourn, we got to know them, and I was rather surprised to hear a woman being interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 one morning, whose voice I recognised and whose story seemed familiar.
She was introduced as Raynor Wynn, but that was not the name she bore when she arrived in our village. When we met them, they were Sally And Timothy. However, later on we called her Rain and Wind.

Because they're Christians, they'd be thinking about forgiveness and there may be some embarrassment at being taken in. It brings me neatly to one of the irritating dénouements of TSP; this is Mrs WW in 2018 in The Guardian:

"But, as we were walking, I started to realise that home is a state of mind, it’s what makes you feel safe – and you don’t need walls for that"

This idea that a physical home doesn't matter is bunkum and it's usually claimed by those who have got shelter and other stuff. If they don't need walls why are they living on a fab Cornish estate and not in a tent or campervan on their French land? Or somewhere in Britain in a makeshift hut or similar? I suppose the tortoise as a metaphor links in with this epiphany as it carries its home on its back. This kind of writing is so hackneyed and sugary it could be written by Patience Strong.

Sorry, think I get you now. You're saying in reality it seems likely Raymoth were never on Polruan on the path either in 2013 or 2014. So why would the local blogger not notice the inconsistency if they knew Raymoth arrived in say 2015/6?

I think it could be explained by the fact the 2013 timeline isn't made directly apparent in the book (only indirectly through Simon Armitage etc), so the blogger might not have realised. They may also not have known when Raymoth first moved to the village. I live in a small village and I'd be hard pressed to know or even remember the year a given couple moved here. They may not even have known anything about Raymoth until the book. The blog post doesn't actually state they knew them personally. To me it reads more generally i.e. "we" as in "the village" knew them as Tim and Sally.

Just offering possible explanations. I could be wrong of course!

OK thanks. Yes, I am saying there is no reason anyone in the village would ever have know them until 2015.

Tom Barrie Simmons does seem to pride himself on knowing everything that happens in Polruan.

He also says: whose voice I recognised and whose story seemed familiar.

Somewhere, in books or interviews, Mrs WW says that she and Timoth lost all their material possessions but in TSP she writes that they put their stuff in a 'friend's barn' and their van was left at Jan's home. That makes a difference in being able to reclaim valuable and sentimental things later on. Surely their relatives could have stored some things for them too?