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.

So it wasn’t that they weren’t entitled to legal aid, it’s that their case was “too complex”. I’m not sure that’s how legal aid works, though.

And during the case it was expensive because they both had to work on it and support themselves. So they didn’t work because they were too busy fighting the case.

They received working tax credits off the back of the holiday let business. These are the same tax credits they were not entitled to, it is very clear that having the house repossessed was the end of the holiday let, and these benefits were fraudulently claimed.

If I were to hazard a guess, I reckon the whole legal costs, tax credits word salad etc was just smoke and mirrors to hide the fact they probably still had some savings (on top of a derelict property and land in France), but they needed to be penniless for the portrayal of homelessness for the book. "Legal costs" was an easy way to make the character's penniless.

It's hard to imagine any solicitor presented with the scenario unearthed by Chloe H could in good faith advise Raymoth anything other than that they did actually owe the money.

Is there actually any record that they DID fight the case? Because, as you say, they clearly did owe the money and there's not much defence they could offer. But saying that they had no money because they were fighting a court case sounds better than having no money because neither had a proper job and they'd spent what they earned on fripperies like a piece of land in France...

Apparently they never contested the fact that they owed the money. The legal case was just a delaying tactic apparently.

Well, I now know about Anno Birkin and I didn't before, so I'm better educated as a result of reading this thread (again). The only one of his poems I've found online, I really don't like, but I can see how it's SW's kind of thing and presumably some other people's kind of thing. On The Women's Room, though, I still genuinely can't understand how the message she took from it is 'the only thing that's holding women back is ourselves'.

Its related to a young man called Anno Birkin who died tragically in Africa some years ago. His mother set up a charity in his memory and is based in N Wales near Pwilheli

Instagram

Anno — Anno's Africa

I appreciate that, and of course you're right that even if SW is providing a 'relatable' reason for her spotty CV and failure to find work even when they were back under a roof, those are real reasons for many women. (Which in some ways makes it more irritating in her specific case.)

Well, it was DEFINITELY UNFAIR AND EVERYONE WAS MEAN TO US is, I think, what we're meant to take from all that bluster about the government removing legal aid from the vulnerable, and their case being 'too complex', anyway.

As far as one can gather the case was 'We stole money, took out a loan to avoid being charged and defaulted on it, and now we're playing Delaying Tactics 101 for as long as we can.'

Another of SW's favourite books - The Draw of the Sea by Wyl Menmuir

The Draw of the Sea by Wyl Menmuir review – a personal homage to the coast | Autobiography and memoir | The Guardian

'The legal case was too complex'.

The legal case had her crime at the heart of it so she didn't want anyone picking over the facts to assess whether it was eligible for legal aid.

I'm reminded of the Krusty the Clown line in the Simpsons when he puts his name to a burger: 'Look, it doesn't matter who got rich off who, or who was exposed to poisonous what'. The case was COMPLEX...

It's an excellent piece and I agree with Aaronovitch that taking a sick man with balance issues on a 600 mile walk with very steep hills is irresponsible and it remains puzzling why the agent, PRH and reviewers didn't pick up on it. I have seen one comment saying it was almost criminal but that was just an individual reader not a professional reviewer.

On a trivial note, it really irritated me that when MothTim kept being mistaken for Simon Armitage, why didn't they just say: "No my name's Moth and who is this Simon?" It wasn't convincing that they weren't curious about this Simon and if it was one of the threads meant to hold the story together, it didn't work.

Ah, it seems MNHQ have questions about the link I posted to a blog with a poem by Anno Birkin. It's rather tangential to the thread anyway. I don't particularly like the poems, though Anno's story is horribly sad. Picking his poetry book as her favourite very much places Raynor Winn among the most romantic of the romantic... and in love with a wild and perfect and angsty and doomed man.

I'm not reading carefully enough, I only just spotted the Pwllheli connection you pointed out. Hmm, bit of a coincidence that "Raynor Winn" (per the Waterstone's video) just happened to pick up on a seat at a railway station a little-known book sold in aid of a little-known charity... that's based where she used to live? Presumably the railway-station-seat is another bit of storytelling, to distance "Raynor Winn" as far as possible from Sally Walker... while still (& fair play to her for this bit) using "Raynor Winn's" fame to promote the book.

@AzureStaffy It's an excellent piece and I agree with Aaronovitch that taking a sick man with balance issues on a 600 mile walk with very steep hills is irresponsible and it remains puzzling why the agent, PRH and reviewers didn't pick up on it.

In this Q&A session, from about 41mins, she is asked about the difficult walks, she has done, and she says: not that difficult

.Bing Videos

What it suggests to me is that SW is not a reader, and, now that she's found herself in a situation where she's been asked to write about books that matter to her/her favourite books etc on a number of occasions, she's just choosing things that fit her 'brand', have a connection to her part of Wales, or coastal Cornwall etc. (Because Anno Birkin's early death was terribly sad, but that one poem of his I read online is fairly standard teenage angst. Which is hardly surprising, as he was barely more when he died.) Or, like The Women's Room, are less valuable for themselves than because she bought a copy on her first day trip away with 'eco-warrior' Moth.

From the Q&A, I just shared above, there is another of these 'giving you some frank information' type comments, this time in person. She says that the Australians contacted them.

Of course, she doesn't say what they said. Brazen.

Thanks for that. I'm glad you gave the precise time of the difficult walk question because listening to all that gasping sounds like she needs oxygen. The brazen nerve of MrsWW travelling the country spouting this nonsense.

As I understand it the question was not whether the Walkers owed money or not but to whom. Did they owe money to Cooper's company which went bust or Cooper?

SW produced a letter from the liquidators of Cooper's company claiming that the loan came from the company (and thus the creditors whom Cooper had passed his personal debts on to couldn't reclaim the Walkers' house). However, Cooper produced a letter in court which he attested showed that the loan did not come from the company but was a personal loan from him. The judge accepted this and ruled against the Walkers in Feb 2013, giving them 4 months to vacate the property.

Catwith69lives · 20/08/2025 08:48

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?

Just to follow up on the above, although completely swerving away from the current conversation:

I think I might have found the location of the photograph, sandwiched between Swyre Head and the Durdle Door Holiday Park (which has a handy public car park and toilets next to it).

Confusingly, there are apparently two Swyre Heads in Dorset – this one is not the highest point in the Purbecks, with the hillfort on top, between Kimmeridge and Kingston, but the one further west, on the coast, just to the west of Durdle Door.

The Holiday Park very clearly marks out the eastern extent of the small hill / valley complex; the dry valleys form a distinctive shape as they run at right(ish) angles to each other (looking north on satellite imagery). The photograph is taken looking southwards out to sea, from another footpath running west to east on the top of a ridge and leading to Durdle Door Holiday Cottages.

Swyre Head is marked as being on the SWCP on the imagery I’m using (Google Earth Pro, available online to download for free, but which should come with some sort of official warning about the amount of time that will just disappear into thin air while you investigate timelines, measure things and fiddle about making 3-D images….).

Just off the path is the intriguingly named ‘Scratchy Bottom’ which (I’m literally finding out as I type this) is the best search term to investigate as it brings up a whole load of information – including a lot of useful images - about the dry valleys (used in the opening sequences of the 1967 film ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, apparently).

Swyre Head is mentioned in TSP in Part Six: Edgelanders, section 19, in the paragraph before the one about the girl taking her drysuit off etc. Sorry I can’t give a page number as I’m using the online version linked in these threads, but here’s what is said:

‘….We picked up a leaflet in the village and tried to discern if we were moving from the Cretaceous to the Jurassic period, but gave up and bought chocolate bars and hot water instead. We left the village in early evening and followed the coast of stacks and pinnacles to the vast rock arch of Durdle Door. Dusk was falling over the white rollercoaster when we finally pitched the tent beyond Swyre Head and I watched the last of the light transform the cliffs into blue and pink, warmed not just by the three-season bag, but by the sound of gulls and oystercatchers chattering through the night….’

I couldn’t manufacture a decent 3-D image to replicate the photo, but below is an aerial image.Also useful is which shows the terrain. Other images are available, it seems a very popular spot!

Well sorry about my above post, my efforts seem to have failed miserably in that neither the original quoted photograph or the new aerial image seem to have appeared!

The only thing that shows is the Youtube video which I included just as a link.

I'll try to figure it out & post again later....

Just listened to that bit. That's insane. She comes across as not really knowing much about anything. I'm also interested to hear that she says she started writing as soon as the walk finished.