Thread 17: 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)
Links to more Observer videos can be found in an early post of this new thread and here: Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube
Working timeline and references: can be found in early posts of this new Thread 17.
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?
Threads 13-14: Links in the OP of Thread 15
Thread 15:Thread 15: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Thread 16: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5395002-thread-16-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 are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer items above before posting.
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 sixteen 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 17. I'm as in need of smelling salts as the next person.

We seek them here, we seek them there, mumsnetters seek them everywhere: just where are the elusive How not to Dal dy Dir and On Winter Hill?

#handwavium #appropriation

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

My point was more that their apparent inability to hold down a job, communicate, be honest, do what you were hired for etc seems to get them every time. I wonder how SW agent finds her to work with? She’s had at least two if not three editors for the three books.

Yes I see. I can't imagine she'd be easy to work with, somebody who knew somebody in publishing said as much in the last few threads somewhere.
Sorry for grabbing hold of the luck thing.

Not long afterwards, I got a message to say Raynor Winn had written a memoir called The Salt Path, recounting her journey along the same route at a similar time, during which her husband, Moth, occasionally enjoyed the benefits of being mistaken for me. I gave it my blessing – if that’s what was being sought – because the couple sounded down on their luck. Millions of sales, a clutch of literary prizes and several years later, I got an email from a production company, seeking a similar blessing and sending pages of a script for The Salt Path movie. Once again I was the running gag, but this time Moth is confused with the poet laureate, because it’s funnier if the person he is mistaken for holds that office. When I pointed out to the producer that I wasn’t the poet laureate when I made the trek, she said, “It’s not real.” To which I replied, “But I am.”

Sorry for long quote from the New Statesman article, but it has occurred to me that the original "message" re TSP book was from PRH or someone associated with them. Now, SA is a public figure and was before he became PL, so was that why he was contacted when people who were talked of very badly in the book (guy running campsite, cafe owner) weren't, even though a couple of them have come forward after the scandal broke as they were able to identify themselves and spoke of the effect the book had had?

I think from the film makers POV they risked inviting the public wrath of someone with a voice and clearly thought better of it. The "It's not real" "but I am" is very, very telling in the context of what we now know and I greatly respect SA for saying it.

It was a really good piece @User14March I have taken a little while to catch up, so many interesting posts. We know you are a good egg @Vroomfondleswaistcoat and SA came across as a nice man, I think you are right @Uricon2 they had to ask SA, but the other people were probably not considered.

I do wonder what the winns will do next.
RW seems to me to base her whole self image on being an innocent child of nature...crushed like the butterfly on the wheel by cruel hard people. What happens to someone like this when they are exposed? I'm possibly in the minority, but I don't doubt Moth has a serious illness but still feel that doesn't erase his wife's actions.
I think they'll move abroad.

I was looking in Waterstones window today and realised that there would have been a big promotion now for OWH. I know the blurb has been shared on here previously and I was trying to find as much as I could about it.

It looks like it is going for a deeply symbolic theme. Since the first time they met they have planned to do this particular walk. He is this time too unwell so she does it alone.

She says that it was in -10 degrees conditions but it had to be in winter. We would find out why when we read the book.

I think this is about being in the dead of winter and then there will be new life in the spring - the creative wellness retreats.

May not move abroad because of the need for health care here - I too believe Moth to have a challenging illness but just not of the imminent death stage/type that SW was so keen to push in all 3 books. The consultant's letter indicates extremely mild, atypical. But that might change. I think they'll be keen to stay here for healthcare provision. But as for staying the darlings of the literary scene in Cornwall that must surely be impossible now.

And she will never shake off that pesky embezzlement thing!

As a 65 year old it would be hard for Mothtim not to have acquired some health issues. I still find it hard to believe he has a serious condition with all the strenuous walking he's done and the outdoor work.

It looks and feels as if how Tim is, at any particular time, depends on Sal's current narrative.

At first, he was made better by the walk. Then he was better because of the rewilding/then he wasn't so had to go on another long walk, etc.

In the Rick Stein programme he seemed energetic, physically and mentally, when it was just Tim and Rick. When Sal starts talking Tim looks down smiling but not saying anything.

Just for info for people interested in women's travel writing who are looking for SW alternatives, the short lists for the inaugural 2025 Ilse Schwepcke Prizes - for women writing in English or German - have been announced. https://www.ilseschwepckeprize.co.uk/

Absolutely she won't !

I wonder how Penguin's fact checking is going on OWH. I suspect there may be quite a few people with stories to tell about meeting SW on the way. In fact certain papers may already have them ready to print, if and when the book is released - so Penguin and SW may do well to guard against being made to look dishonest again from day 1 of publication.

Raynor Winn: "I’ve just finished a long walk: the Coast to Coast, which is east to west from Robin Hood’s Bay to Saint Bees, in January, in the snow, in minus ten degrees. Not my best decision!

It was absolutely remarkable though, being utterly alone in those wild, vast, open moors and for an entire long-distance walk, not passing another long-distance walker doing the same path. That was a surprise in itself. That was an incredible path. I’ve got a new book coming out in October, and you won’t be surprised to hear that walk is in it."

When I read the above, I thought - how convenient to not have met anyone else at all!

October 2026

That's a good point - quite a bit deleted especially if it's derogatory about people and businesses. Hope Penguin have learnt something from this.

Minus ten degrees…. I wonder how she prepared for that? A coat cobbled together out of bin liners and a diet of humbugs? Maybe she remembered a hat this time. Not my best decision! Errrr….. have any of them been?
This is the walk they were inspired to do by a book that hadn’t been printed yet.. when they first met. I bet the book is full of “Immfreezing my bloody tits off! Argh!!!” “I went to wee and it turned into an ice pole!!” Followed by something more poetic about a murmuration of swallows. There’ll be some bitching about the NT and lots of rage about Moth’s declining health mixed in with tears.

Penguin have their fingers in their ears and are saying Lalala!

Going back to How Not To Dal Dy Dir for a minute.

Americymru is a website that promotes Wales in the US. On 11 July 2012, its online bookstore custodian posted a message saying that he was doing an overhaul.

The Walkers might have known him from walking the Welsh coast path. The next day, a "Karen Smith" posted a gushing review of HNTDDD. The bookstore custodian responded a few hours later, saying that he would add HNTDDD to the bookstore but that it seemed to be out of stock.

"Karen Smith" eventually (six weeks later) replied, saying that hard copies and soft copies "can be ordered direct from our website, www.gangani.co uk. We're running a big presentation at the moment, but when that's over it should be on Amazon." (There was also a comment that the book was not currently on Amazon "to support local bookshops" - hmm).

I'm wondering:

• was "Karen Smith", of Gangani publishing, another alias? And

• as regards the statement that the book would be on Amazon once the big promotion had ended, might the Walkers have come up against Amazon's rule prohibiting the sale of lottery tickets etc on its platform?

Ha, that was funny. I think we've got the measure of Mrs WW by now.

Just realised that @disappointedreader and others have already noted the possibility that "Karen Smith" might be an alias. I deeply regret any mistakes I may have made.

I meant to write a “murmuration of starlings” 😝

@HatStickBoots I've got a vision of SalRay stumbling alone through the snow like the famous depiction of poor Captain Oates, desperately trying to read a map annotated in pencil in a raging blizzard and hoping the fudge holds out.

Nothing in their recorded walking history, a litany of poor planning and ill fitting boots makes me think it would be a pleasant experience.The enterprise sounds not so much "drawn north like a migratory bird (&c, &c) as "daft". I wonder if TimMoth didn't "see his decline as inevitable" but just decided to swerve it.

… decided to swerve it”
Stay in and play in the X-Box 🤑

@HatStickBoots And I had a memory of a scientist, ill-advisedly getting off his snowmobile, on an Arctic island going for a pee and his penis freezes to the zip. (Ian McEwan's comedy, Solar).

Love the basic pee/murmuration juxtaposition. You should write the fifth (sixth) one ....