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.

Can anybody remember what sort of therapist Julie was meant to be? A psychotherapist?

If you’re talking about me, I’ve been on all the other threads, under different user names! Don’t ask me to recite them, as I think I had a different one on each, because I NC roughly weekly. I think I was even ‘Correspondent for Something’ at some point.

I’m merely pointing out, as I have all along, that a non-fiction classification or a blurb/tagline are no guarantee of ‘truth’, and that regardless of what you may think of SW’s moral compass, she will, like other memoir writers, have signed a contract saying TSP is substantially true, putting the legal responsibility on her. PRH are not going to take legal action against her, though it’s possible they might pull the projected fourth book and require repayment of the advance, if they think her reputation is too damaged for it to sell. The book is still being sold with the same tagline because there’s still a print run out there with that on the cover. The time to change it will be when/if there’s another edition and they need to think about marketing a debunked memoir.

I don’t think we’re told. I think SW says ‘counsellor’?.

What I’m saying is that ‘unflinchingly honest’ on a book cover isn’t a food standards type guarantee, the way ‘farm fresh’ eggs aren’t free range, or a book marketed as ‘hilarious’ or ‘hard-hitting’ might leave a reader cold on either count. Books are marketed as a consumer product like any other.

Whatever the tag line on the book, I think SW is probably now flinching a fair bit.

Time for a light breakfast:

The Salted Snack Path: A Funny Parody of The Salt Path By Candy Wheatgrass eBook : Wheatgrass, Candy : Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Nothing to stop PRH changing the statements on its website at any time.

The whole controversy reminds me of Ffyona Campbell. In 1994 she was the first woman to walk around the world and wrote several engaging books about the journey. She did this to raise money for charity but it transpires walking across America she took lifts from strangers and when this was discovered it destroyed the veracity of her books.
The three books she wrote are out of print but I just remember what an incredible writer she was.

I imagine they’ll probably reconsider all marketing when/if they reissue TSP. At the moment they have a lot of physical books washing about with this tagline and blurb, so I doubt they would rethink their online stuff while those are still out there in significant numbers.

@Tryingtoeatcake Thanks. You reminded me of what she does now. It would have been helpful if the Walkers had gone on one of her courses:

Home

Yes I agree - I mentioned this too about 300,337 posts ago 😅. I avidly read all her books in the 90s. I remember when she confessed she hadn’t actually walked part of the first leg in the US and wrote a v compelling redemption book. I also recall going to see her promote her previous book at Waterstones before the scandal came out and remember her coming across as quite uptight and guarded when doing Q&A - may have been nervous about the real story coming out as it hadn’t broken then.

she lives a very low key life now conducting foraging weekends and doesn’t link herself publicly to her walks. It’s good to see that that element of living a simpler life off the land is something she fully embraces and was something she wrote about in her book walking across Africa. Although she didn’t have to endure the trial by social media I do feel that she never really presented herself as an unflawed character. I would still re read her books even now. It also helped that she never actually wrote a book about the walk across the US, just covered it in the warts and all version when she’d confessed about missing bits.

I’d forgotten all about her, and haven’t read the books. Interested to note her Wiki page makes only a single mention of possible lifts taken (apparently while ill, on a single stint of her US walk, to keep up with the publicity schedule), and she apparently runs foraging walks in Devon.

I thought I’d remembered that she drove for about 1000 miles, having got pregnant by one of her drivers, which, given how young she was, strikes me as much from a safeguarding perspective as anything.

They look desperate, don't they! Only the seagull is smiling. It's a sad reflection on the present day but I first thought that the whole thing was a spoof until I saw that I could sign-in to my Amazon account. Sure this is just the start of much more wry humour.

Yes, it could be much improved - but released 12th July. You can read a preview. This is my favourite bit:

"Right" Mothball said, "but only if I can bring the scarves". He packed five.

A Personal Reflection on the Raynor Winn Revelations | by Jennifer Bridge | Jul, 2025 | Medium

The dust jacket of the hardback edition of TSP makes it pretty clear that the terminal illness diagnosis is far from mild and indolent - they embark on the walk "with little time"...

Do you have a hardback, @WhoDaresWinns?

The difference, for me, is that advertising statements like these are subjective. KFC does make some people lick their fingers and some do regard it as 'good'. Claudia Winkelman only has to use H&S once and to then be able to say 'I use it, it's great' - regular use isn't necessary. These things don't imply a legal contract to say that every single person who eats KFC is going to be licking their fingers while smiling inanely and saying 'this is great!' The greatness is subjective. The shininess of one's hair after using H&S is subjective. You'll note that adverts like this purport to removed dandruff/germs/stains etc 'UP to 100%' which implies that, should they only remove the dandruff/germs/stains 0.05%, then they have still fulfilled their brief.

Honesty isn't subjective. You can't be 0.05% honest. If you lie even a little bit, then you are no longer honest (is anyone?). And this book is not honest.

No - just the paperback. The disclaimer in the hardback edition was the same as the pb. The disclaimer is the same as in the pb.

Place Matting

An article from the Irish Independent just before the film was released including a quote about the incident in Lynton: "Get up you drunken tramp. We don't want people like you here".

Slightly different from the quote in the book: " What's the matter with you? Are you drunk?" " You tramps should learn how to control yourself"

'If I could go back, I'd still walk out the door with my rucksack,' says writer of The Salt Path | Irish Independent

If you take out the awfulness of having their home snatched from them through no fault of their own and Moth’s terminal diagnosis, you simply have a pretty boring book about a couple in their early fifties going for a long walk.

i suspect that would not have sold so well.

I've been wonderering about one thing - sorry if it's been mentioned. On the day the son drives Moth to Bristol (17th September), I think I am right in saying that they had been surfing - I remember him saying it was a good day. The surfing beaches are in the north coast and yet they were walking towards Polruan (south coast) at that time. Of course, the son could have taken his dad to the north coast for the day, but odd as they had been walking around that side a few months before. Also, why Bristol???

And how was Moth surfing, given that he was supposedly suffering from a disease that affects his body and reflexes? I can't surf and I'm fully bodily enabled - just poorly co ordinated. So was Moth surfing?

The Salted Snack Path has just 1 review, and that's a 1/5 score. Can anyone see who gave the review and get an idea if they may have a vested interest? I'm not logged in on my phone.