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.

@AzureStaffy No Beds Nor Bucks

@AzureStaffy I suggested you call your book "The Finger (of Fudge) Lickin' Good Path". Please send me your house by return.

Ha ha!

Good one.

PRH certainly look to be standing by their author and planning to release book 4 next year. I suspect it will all revert to business as usual and SW will re-emerge sticking to her script and stressing that they were actually homeless etc etc. But there will always be an elephant in the room and she will know that we know what the elephant is.

Her script has been torpedoed. She can't revert to it.

Well yes I agree but I think she has enough arrogance to not just revert to it but to double down on it e.g. we WERE made homeless ,the exact underlying circumstances are not important. We know that they are important but I think her defence will be that they are not.

It feels as if their whole brand is besmirched.

I wouldn't want to treat myself to their wellness retreat.

Well, the consultant can't without breaking medical confidentiality, except in some very specific circumstances involving potential harm to others and/or if legally compelled. As I think @mauvishagain has said.

And I don't see why the others would want to invite scrutiny, even if the circumstances are roughly as described (which seems unlikely).

Is 'Polly', if she exists, at all likely to want to weigh in and support a former friend she presumably supposed she was doing a favour for, but who depicted her in her bestseller as Queen of the Meat Packing Shed (which has no residential planning permission), an insensitive exploiter of a seriously ill man and a duplicitous landlord, telling the Walkers to stay forever but showing paying tenants around when they're out?

Or even Anna, if she exists, whose Polruan flat is depicted as glum, small, dark and with a view of rats and a cliff face? It doesn't exactly sound inviting to potential tenants, if it's still being let...

And OK, Dave and Julie are pretty much the only two characters in the books outside of TW who escape any glumwashing from SW, but even then, would you really want to invite public scrutiny, or put yourself out there in the media as a supporter of someone who's been fingered as an embezzler at the very least, and as a writer of a significantly dishonest memoir?

It's an interesting point. She's definitely someone ill at ease in interviews and heavily script-dependent, so hard to know what version of SW you would get in a post-CH interview.

I suppose it's possible, given the glumwashing, grumpiness and hostility to other people demonstrated over and over again in TSP, that the Observer story would only give her further ammunition for 'everyone else is a meany, and is jerking their children and dogs away from us all over again.'

To be fair, there's one thing I still like about TSP and that's when the WWs/Penguin Random House point out that alcohol and drug problems can be a consequence of homelessness rather than a cause of it. It's an important issue which is often misunderstood.

Agree. I think that moment in Plymouth (maybe? Where do they meet two homeless men called Colin and Dean?) where SW contrasts urban homelessness with their own experience on the SWCP and says it must be exhausting and frightening being always on your guard against danger, is effective.

There's a tent on the riverbank I walk on most days where you have the security of other people around in daylight hours, but that also means a lot of people know where you are after dark. There's another tent I just saw the other day, on the verge of a dual carriageway. Pedestrians won't be passing, so you're safer in one sense, but you're only a few feet from cars going at high speeds.

@YarrowYarrow

I agree, it was surprising to read something so insightful amidst so much contrived melodrama and rather clunky dialogue. It might not have been SalRay's idea of course: it could have been Penguin RH's suggestion.

I don’t think she’ll risk appearing at any events as it would only take one person asking difficult questions. I’d happily be that person if she did anything in my area.

I understand, from people at a literature festival, that she was cold and distant. Of course, when she starts talking, from her script, I suppose it was lapped up. I assume that there was a lot of goodwill because of her husband's health and her homelessness. But this is all second-hand for me .......

you and many other Mumsnetters!

I've always said that if 'my' Raymoth was outed in the press I'd want to be nowhere near it. Realising that someone isn't what they told you they were, especially about people who present themselves as all round good 'uns, is a nasty experience. I didn't give them any money, thankfully, but I know people who did, and who lost a lot as a result. I just gave time, and for reasons I won't bore you with, allowed them to use my address for a couple of things. I broke contact with my RM a good number of years ago, and yet even only last month received a letter from yet another creditor. Thankfully there are clear records of my lack of connection during the time this debt was run up. But I can totally empathise with Maxine F's experience after she bought the Welsh house. And for the same experiential reasons, if I were Dave & Julie, or Polly, or any of the others, I would be staying v v quiet indeed.

@TonstantWeader I used to feel that people around might not be talking, thinking Raymoth might be helping people financially so they didn't talk, then I thought maybe she is doing as, someone who I can't remember said, that Salray would be crying and claiming to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Now, as more evidence seems to point to her abusing people's friendship and goodwill I can see how hurt and embarrassed the majority of them are. Also as @YarrowYarrow says she has implicated them with planning regulations and it seems more and more that being close to Raymoth is not a good thing.

Maybe they use a range of manipulations and then rely on the rest to keep quiet. I have a sick feeling in my stomach when I think about the health claims that have been made, the negative impact they have had on people, and I dread the thought that a fourth book is published and they just keep harming people.

I don't think she CAN appear in public again, not until after she's contacted Our Chloe and answered the points raised by The Observer. Because surely the FIRST question that anyone is going to ask her won't be about the book, it will be 'why didn't you reply to Chloe H's emails and give her the information she requested?' And there's not really a good answer to that other than 'I didn't want to because I didn't know what to say.'

Yes I think she will keep her head down for a few more months and then launch the new book.
Perhaps an interview on a pro mental health site where she can talk about internet / social media bullying, from the victim’s standpoint of course.
The only fly in her ointment is Moth. He just keeps on looking so darn healthy!

You simply have a book about a grumpy, misanthropic middle aged couple with a chip on their shoulder stealing fudge and having improbable exchanges with others, doing a pointless walk instead of getting a job.

I agree with you entirely.

At this point of time there is no real incentive for any of them to speak up and spill the beans on what really happened.

I hope I'm wrong but I suspect we won't see any more exposes from CH. Maybe a longer podcast and, in time, a book/docudrama. In the meantime, Raymoth will probably keep an exceedingly low profile, apart from an occasional foray, heavily disguised, along the SWCP!

We have previously shared the physical effect of the walk - as described by Oscar Burton, Any Porth in a Storm, and Mark Wallington, 500 Mile Walkies.

Here is an account of a sole woman hiker. This threw me, at first, as it looks like a catwalk model did the SWCP. The actual walker's photo is embedded in the text - well it is Vogue!

I Walked The Salt Path Solo. Here’s What I Learned Along The Way | British Vogue

Ha! Great summary - nails it

Another thing that really grates on my nerves is that “Raynor Winn” was gushingly asked to write a foreword for the re-issue of this book, which she had the pleasure of doing, signing as Raynor Winn. She has reaped so many little benefits from her half truths, has been honoured here there and everywhere. Her foreword on this book now does it a disservice, well it’s an embarrassment at the very least.
My local paper did a story on them this week. I won’t take a photo and attach it because of the digital information contained within them and for protection of my identity. The newspaper is the Falmouth Packet and the photo is of the mansion they are renting. It’s a Grade II listed stone farmhouse with a swimming pool and private beach which overlooks the Helford river. The property is worth in excess of £10 million. It’s set in 190 acres of farmland. It belongs to land and property owner James Lyall. The couple (Raymoth) moved there less than two years ago from the cider farm near Losteithiel. The article talks about the book and the Observer investigations and then sums up with a quote taken from SW’s personal statement which includes its first paragraph and last paragraph about the “complete despair to a place of hope” etc etc etc and my bullshit detector alarm is just going crazy. This woman is never ever going to shift from victim stance. Hell will freeze over before she takes responsibility or accountability for anything. The whole “mistakes were made” narrative says everything we need to know. She’s going to continue squaring up at and snarling into the faces of anybody who dares to suggest that she is fake. Then the waterworks start. When she has made a career from emotional manipulation, how can anybody be surprised at that statement?