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.

Well, Raynor didn't embezzle £64k from her employer. Raynor didn't decide that it was better to run off to London and get a risky loan from one of her in-laws than face the consequences of being charged. Raynor lost her home through being too trusting and having to represent herself in court, not as a direct consequence of covering up a crime. Raynor suffers the pure pain of a husband with a terminal diagnosis, rather than promulgates a retrofitted diagnosis to make a zippier memoir hook. Raynor is a simple child of nature, 'unflinchingly honest' and widely regarded as an inspirational figure, not a profoundly compromised memoirist hiding out from the press, her fourth book postponed, her credibilility dashed.

I can entirely imagine why SW might wish she were Raynor Winn!

PS With thanks to @ShrinkWrappedInSeattle for the artwork.

I am sharing this because Tim says more than I've ever heard.

Sal reiterates that they did the whole SWCP - 7 years ago (this is 2020). I skipped over most of Sal (can hardly bear it any more) to hear Tim.

What I took from it: he calls the interviewer by her name nearly every time he speaks. Ever the charmer!

Also, he calls Sal - Raynor - in a strange way?

BBC Radio 4 - On Your Farm, Salt Path Farm

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat I wonder if, had SW been missing her front teeth and swearing every other word and if Moth had had the 'car up on bricks' look about him

I now have this image of them living like that in private when away from the cameras. Quick our Sal, put yer teeth in an' mind yer language, an' where's me posh waistcoat an' neckerchief, we've got that Sophie Raworth comin' at 2!

Well, they hijacked homelessness so why not nature.

I listened to some. They’re both Walter Mitty types. It’s hard to say how much my view is tainted by my prior knowledge, but I get the sense they're both full of it, and neither is quite as clever as they think.

I came across a thread on Reddit a few weeks ago by a self confessed pathological liar in the US whose MO (self confessed) corresponded almost exactly with SW's.

Eerily reminiscent of the LI comments by the Southampton based naval architect nephew in the wake of CH's Observer expose..

Essentially everything has to be embellished or exaggerated to garner attention and there is a certain self gratifying thrill associated with getting away with the lie.

I have come across fantasists before - some as friends, which can be unnerving. It does help you to recognise others.

What I have not come across is a couple. Certainly a fantasist and an enabler. But two ...? I don't know if any one has more experience of this?

He did have a lot to say, didn't he! In later interviews he's invariably gone shopping for provisions or something - so "can't be with us." On the "One Show" he appeared via a video link. I wonder what happened between them.
It's clear they are both sticking rigidly to the story as set out in TSP so he is also maintaining that the walk happened exactly as written down.
Also they both use the term CBD rather than CBS.
I also noted that towards the end SW says "I" owned the house, rather than "we". He didn't correct her.

Yes, she sounds like she’s enjoying it.

Flipping heck that Radio 4 interview is one huge word salad. I am none the wiser about the farm really, apart from the masses of friends and family that pick the apples and Timmoth mows the grass to different lengths and builds wigwams. I could sense Salrays panic that Verity was going to ask her what variety the very old Apple tree was 😂 But Timmoth was bang on with the SP brand, Sal must have rehearsed him well.

The plagiarism is off the scale.

Its really striking and almost unbelievable how easily and naturally lies and misrepresentations trip off the Walkers tongues, for example talking about tending the orchards and heavily implying that they were involved in the cider making process, when (according to Bill Cole’s friend) the orchards had been left completely untended and Raymoth had never produced any cider or been involved in the cider making process - also see the Rick Stein program.

Thanks for that - I had never really heard Timoth speak before and didn't expect to hear those rather flat vowel sounds. It struck me how kind people have been to the WalkerWinns despite their sense of victimhood: the Hemmings, Cooper to get SalRay out of a criminal conviction, Jan, Polly, the owner of the chapel flat, Sam, kind people on the path.... I don't blame Cooper for striking a hard bargain with the loan because they almost certainly had a bad financial reputation.

I laughed at Timoth saying he was brought up in 'a culture of working diligently and hard towards our retirement' when they've freeloaded off others. SalRay said: "I found myself" on Twitter and that's a pattern with them, 'finding themselves' in situations, as if they had no agency and things happened to them rather than choices they made. They keep having these 'magical moments' when they instinctively know what they have to do!

Forgive me Mumsnet for I have sinned. I have been to another forum where someone says of Sally ‘I also heard through a friend in publishing that shes pretty nasty and demanding. So that put me off even more!’

Urgh. Just listening. I find it hard work. And Verity almost seems in awe of their "healing journey" and "reconnection to nature." It's all so twee.

This has almost certainly been mentioned at some point in the previous 15 threads BUT ---

On this webpage; https://www.librarything.com/topic/371935 a certain chloehadj is begging for a copy of HNTDDD by Izzie Wyn Thomas.

This was dated 29 June so just before the revelations broke, I think? But it seems that nothing came of the request.

I think this list is outstanding. I meant to comment earlier.

The "being of Cornwall and the sea" is something I thought about lately. RW constantly talks of the salt. I live next to a different coast, have done for many years and I'm outdoors daily. One thing I never notice is salt. Sea air yes. But salt is not something I'd ever consider as a descriptor. For RW it seems her perspective and ideas of the coast come from a place of misappropriation and misunderstanding of what living by the coast is actually like. Her words come across as if she's preaching to people who have never seen the sea before.

It's especially disturbing listening to them going on about the health benefits of going directly against medical advice. And SW using the present tense about the book again, and TW talking about how much he likes the "comedy" (rather than the "funny things that happened").

Good observations. So you think it suggests detachment, as in they are talking about a fiction rather that their actual lives?

Yes exactly. As was commented on these threads before about SW's interviews. She talks about the books as if they are the adventures of the characters Raynor and Moth.

Oh and SW said moving to Polruan was the first time she'd lived "among people". Which is clearly rubbish even in terms of her own previous stories. They lived in - I can't remember whether a semi or a terraced house - somewhere in the Midlands and she worked for a law firm.

Once you see the embezzler behind the facade you can't unsee it.

Yes, and the distrust with it, which we know is the reverse.

Don’t believe they ever managed to sell any print copies, maybe a couple of ebooks that people had trouble downloading (funnily enough). The glowing reviews on The Accidental Smallholder forum look suspiciously like the work of one Sally Walker- would explain why it’s impossible to find a copy.