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.

In which case, surely, the decent thing to do would be to refuse the cakes and pastries and say 'I'm not who you think I am, he's coming along behind us.' Not eat the fucking food that's meant for someone else, someone who is depending on 'the kindness of strangers', when it's not for you.

Edit because I was muddling up two books in my head.

IIRC, SW described the home-made gifts which had been lovingly made to bestow upon Simon Armitage, and then explained that she and Tim ate them (under false pretences) because "it would have been rude not to".

I think.... there she and I might differ....

Not for the first time.

I’m confused.
Reading the article in this weekend’s Weekend Australian Magazine the author, Ros Thomas, spends a large part of the article just talking about the Parsons life and their SWP walk experience. At the end she looks at possible discrepancies in the Winn’s story but it doesn’t seem she has full command of all the facts.
For example she talks of David and Joanna Parsons setting off on the SWP in 2015. She then states “ At the very same time, in the Welsh hills, farmers Raynor Winn and her husband Moth were facing an equally unpredictable future. Turfed out of their 17th-century cottage after a failed investment, they too were about to try their luck on England’s toughest trail.”

I was not aware of Ros Thomas’s background, but from her website
(rosthomas.com.au) she seems to have a background in investigative journalism
( although mostly a long time ago) which would have made me expect a much better constructed case
If you follow some of the links you will find her email address:
[email protected]

Functional neurological disorder( which is real) or he completely faked his symptoms for some unknown reason- to get out of something perhaps? Nothing would surprise me with these two. Especially after the sob story TW told Bill Cole.

Yes I just read that based on an up thread recommendation. Thought it was great - the author didn’t attempt to present herself as perfect and hard done by, just real and flawed like the rest of us. Also a very good writer.

Podcast about neurological conditions inc CBD by the BBC's correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones who suffers from such a condition.

(1) Movers and Shakers: Parkinsonism - by Rory Cellan-Jones

I agree. We have gone over, the information we have gleaned, with a fine toothcomb on these threads. Yet here we have a journalist that doesn't have the basic background on the Walkers but (as I highlighted, previously):

I am surprised that the Australian Weekend has so much more information. Maybe they think it is in the public interest? It is this: "obtained copies of doctors' letters" - it sounds more mysterious ....

The magazine can read all the content of these letters. Maybe they applied multi-spectral imaging! This is what they use to read the Herculaneum scrolls ....

I don’t think she’s setting out a case, though — I think her focus is ‘real people caught up in someone else’s literary scandal, aghast at their portrayal.”

I, also, agree with this! It is certainly what I, at first, extracted from the Weekend Australian magazine - and quoted Jo Parsons in my posts.

It is out of my experience to deal with the neurological condition but this magazine giving the exact department of the hospital and other extracts from the letters ... people on these threads were poring over the initials of the consultant, etc.

On the other hand, the journalist, Ros Thomas, should have definitely consulted our Timeline!

Well, the main thing I gleaned from the magazine article was an answer to my bafflement about who all the vast numbers of other people namechecked and photographed in their travel blog section about the SWCP were — the Parsons were always described as Australians, but they are both British, though they’d lived in Australia for years, so those people are presumably UK friends and family. I couldn’t figure out when I read the blog how two tourists kept posting photos of so many other people they clearly knew well.

They have had their own sudden and unexplained reverses of fortune. They’d bought an investment property and their daughter and left home when him hurting his back in his construction job meant they had two big mortgages and debts and no income. Hence them selling everything to clear debts and travelling in a camper van. Though it’s not explained how they funded their trip to the UK.

I just noticed that David Parsons says that when they met the Walkers at Fat Apples, he noticed they ‘looked rough’ and had only ‘a teabag each and some Pot Noodles” — but didn’t SW make a big deal in TSP of how they’d actually bought a full plate of food to share in FA? And surely, even if they didn’t, they weren’t sitting in a cafe using the extra pot of boiling water to make Pot Noodles?

Fat Apples

We didn’t mean to eat in the café, but it was too tempting and we gave in to two forks and a vast plate of vegetarian joy.

‘Owner says you’re walking. Where’re you heading?’ Two Australians sat down at our table, followed by two mounds of all-day breakfast. One each. I tried not to breathe too deeply, the smell was so good.

‘Not sure now, just going with the weather. What about you?’

‘We’ve camped and done hotels to here. Getting colder though, so B & B all the way for us now. Falmouth next, drop the tent in a charity shop, then I’m going to the hairdresser’s, got to get my roots done.’

‘Wow, luxury. Haven’t seen my hair for days.’

‘You know what, gal, best not to look. Ha, wow, look at all this food. If I ate this much at home I’d be as fat as a pig. On this path all I want to do is eat, eat, eat. It’ll have to stop when I get home though.’

Was I envious of their mass consumption of food and the prospect of a bed and a bath every night? The food undoubtedly, the constant background hunger was something I’d have happily exchanged for a regular meal, but we could survive without the bath and bed.

Yes SW says " we gave in to two forks and a vast plate of vegetarian joy"

It’s all just so chippy, mean and grudging. The writing, I mean. Almost every line manages somehow to be a little dig at someone else's expense. It really leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

I agree. It seemed she lacked full grasp of the facts. Maybe could have done with consulting the MN tome.

Pissenlit · Today 07:53
I don’t think she’s setting out a case, though — I think her focus is ‘real people caught up in someone else’s literary scandal, aghast at their portrayal.”

Yes, that’s what her article was largely about, except that in the begining she states
”A world away, in a wintry corner of the ­Antipodes, an unassuming pair of adventurers – WA’s David and Joanne Parsons – might well have the irrefutable evidence to prove much of The Salt Path is fabricated.”
I do t think she proved that. She just seems to have uncovered the names of the neurologist and the clinic from which he worked. The bits from the reports she quotes are already on Raynor Winn’s website.
i wonder whether she has communicated/shared info with CH?

In his book does SA mention receiving constant culinary goodies (cakes/pastries etc) prepared for him by fans who lived on the SWCP between Minehead and LE

Interesting article which I don’t think has been posted on here previously.

www.wssociety.co.uk/signet-post-articles/2025/8/28/the-salt-path-scandal

It's a good piece. In the list of 3 points as to whether TSP is fraud it doesn't mention the theft of £64,000, rather that failure to mention owning the land in France is an example of omitting important information. The money and how the house was lost is crucial in this.

Also interesting to read the term 'high risk memoir' - doesn't look like PRH saw TSP as risky and yet it contains very controversial issues like claims that walking helped a very serious illness and unintentional homelessness. Maybe it is, as we've said, the WWs didn't come across as scam artists.

evening all and thanks for the further articles, plus @Pissenlit's marvellous spoof of SW's writing style. That made me laugh along with the line in The Australian article about wild campers being people who like to 'shit in the woods and sleep with stoats' which was superbly Aussie.

DH and I, accompanied by the Wild Rovering Pooing Correspondent, went down to Plas yn Rhiw today as it was free entry thanks to Cadw's Open Doors month. It's absolutely beautiful, with a fab view, and the gardens are gorgeous. Obviously if I were being SW, I'd glumwash the lot, but the sun was shining, the sea was blue (can be seen from the site) and the staff/volunteers all v helpful. I chatted to a lady who had known TW, who said he was a v nice bloke, which doesn't at all surprise me given his personable effect on people like Jason Isaacs and Bill Cole. A couple of other volunteers elsewhere on the site were a bit more guarded when I mentioned TW, so I changed the subject as they clearly didn't want to talk about him. Fair enough, as they possibly had a few journos wandering about the place over the summer and want to forget the connection 😁The WRPC wasn't allowed in the gardens because of narrow paths so DH and I took it in turns to wander round while the other one sat with the WRPC and ate cake. [The cake was excellent and was the nearest we could come to fudge.]

The thing that did strike me was how isolated the place was. It's a fair old drive even from Pwllheli, down tiny roads for much of the time, and in high season getting around that neck of the woods is a nightmare because of the additional tourist traffic. It's only about 11 or so miles as the crow flies, but a good half hour minimum because of the roads. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the reason TW stopped working there was the petrol bills, or that tbh, the journey was just too much from their house.

Yes but that’s all explained later in the article.
We find out the facts when David and Joanna do, that the book is at odds with the truth, then later when the story breaks about the embezzlement.
Its a storytelling device.

I never bought the SA bit, to be honest. I presumed it was poetic (ha ha, see what I did there) licence, added after the fact on discovering he'd done the same walk. Thought it might have been a publisher's suggestion to add a bit of humour.

SA would have been unaware of the cakes & pastries intended for him if the Walkers had scoffed them all.

It occurs to me that unless everyone had gone down the rich fruitcake route many of the goodies would be a bit stale by the time SA arrived, if he was days behind Raymoth.

I am sure that SalWin will claim they were doing SA a favour by scoffing the bakery items before they went stale.