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.

@TonstantWeader i actually would, my MiL is in that vague area, but I have stuff on so I can’t . I would love to read your correspondence from it though. Maybe you could detour by their former house as well 🤔

I would have LOVED to come ---

--- until I saw the mention of "poet R S Thomas".

I have never really got over having to study R S Thomas for English Lit O level (in Wales). God I hated it. I have an abiding memory of a misery-fest poem about some poverty-stricken, embittered old farmer spitting into a fire.

Actually that seems quite prescient for this thread?!

(ETA: I've just googled. Iago Prytherch his name. It reads better now than it did when I was 15).

(The other two poets we had to "do" were Ted Hughes and ---- no idea. I've totally forgotten poet no.3. So R S Thomas can at least take comfort posthumously in the fact that he stuck in my mind!)

Going over old ground regarding the inaction by PRH, but how is it able to still have this nonsense, both false synopsis and false praise, on its website?

I volunteer to hide the shrubbery with a notebook (I can pretend to be ;making notes for the new book', which is what I am accused of every time I stop to write anything down, which is absolute cobblers because I don't need to make notes for the new book. I do, however, have to remind myself of where I parked the car, what day it is and the names of my children) to try to catch anyone out in noteworthy gossip.

Hope your notebook is waterproof! Because in LL I've come across yet more nonsense from RW's pen! Apparently Moth had sketched out their intended route in pencil on the OS map and poor Ray is having nightmares that heavy rain will wash off Moth's efforts. So the pencilled lines must be inked-in to avoid their getting lost en-route. Someone suggests downloading the OS map(s) but she is worried about losing the phone's battery power (again!)
In my experience pencil or ink markings actually don't wash off in heavy rain - it's the paper that becomes soggy, unless of course it's protected by a transparent plastic map protector.
("Right in Rain" notebooks are available and I can confirm that pencilled notes do not wash off.)

Was the book 9 Modern Poets? It feels like we did all of them for Eng Lit O Level!

A friend sat on some of the same committees as R S Thomas and said he was borderline terrifying but unexpectedly kind to her when she had a severe sinus infection and was suffering.

Can’t believe this….. really? Still? In the beginning there was “all due diligence” etc etc so I would have thought that afterwards they would have reviewed this claptrap, changed it and publicly apologised to their readers and customers. Are they contractually obliged to stay with the original selling points? Whatever the reason, they are endorsing this nonsense and new readers and those who have been cowed by Sally’s statement, will continue to buy….. ugh 😣

It's going to be mighty entertaining to see how OWH is reviewed pre publication in all the literary supplements etc. next year. How will the Observer review it?? 🤔

Welcome back @Fandango52 I was starting to get worried about you, out there walking, no phone signal, what if you ran out of fudge and cider :)

Thank you @SimoArmo for drawing attention to the continued publicity by the publisher, I agree @HatStickBoots it will make readers think they are endorsing it. None of these agencies for Raymoth seem to think they need to publicly distance themselves to restore faith in themselves. I too would like to see some public retractions, especially in view of the portrayal of illness.

I know @AncientHarpy thinks that getting published statements from those complicit distancing themselves from the claims made is wishful thinking, and that is a conclusion very easily reached when we live in a world of corruption, full of man's inhumanity to man where true horror exists. But this boils down to profit and we all know that the money involved from Salray in potential earnings is vast. If they keep quiet and let it all die down then perhaps they believe the Salray cash cow can be milked again, the CEO of PRH calls himself a gambler and I think he is trying to hedge his bets, but forgetting those negatively affected, or more likely not caring.

I don't care now what Raymoth do as long as it is not continuing down the health route, that path should be closed down for the safety of others. It is so simple for all involved, CH is there like a conduit already in place, statements could be issued, no reason why the awards people could not say they have been receiving emails from the public drawing attention to a suspected first book (they have received 2 that I know of :) Salray is not going to take any action, I don't want a witch hunt, or anyone to face legal action, simply some clear statements so that lies are not perpetuated, it would be good to be able to refer people to a clear medical statement for instance, when they recommended walking for your cure based on what they have read about Moth.

It really is sole destroying to have people who know nothing about your illness or that of your loved one think that they have the answer/cure because someone has written falsehoods in a book, very frustrating to deal with on a regular basis and hard to refute when it is seemingly supported by the publisher and others involved.

this makes no sense at all. Ink might run or smudge, pencil won't. The only problem I can see with using pencil to mark your route is that it'll be harder to read in the rain/fog/semi-dark.

Considering the experience gained on the SWCP and the fact that by this time they had £££, there seems a level of cluelessness ill preparedness that transcends the unpredictable stuff that can go wrong for anyone.

Also, anyone else a bit dubious about following a route laid out by Mothtim, even if drawn utterly indelibly?

Thanks for your kind thoughts and concern, @Freshsocks!

I can’t deny it - mistakes were made which led to the phone loss!

But fear not, everyone - all will be revealed about this sorry tale in my upcoming ‘unflinchingly honest’ book. I’m planning to call it ‘The Great Disconnect: How I Lost My Phone But Found Myself’. I’m currently in talks with a few publishing houses about next steps - stay tuned 😉

Honestly, you could almost certainly find a publishing deal for a story where you lose your phone ;or, more dramatically, have it stolen?) and decide to do without it, leading to a full ‘digital detox’ and reawakening to the joys of nature and living fully in the world. It would probably end up alongside TSP in bookshops under a vague nature/wellness rubric.

I apologise for my typo, sole destroying instead of soul, I now have visions of ruined walking boots :) Do you think they will still publish @MistMountain how on earth would the publicity take form for that I wonder.

Just seen your post @Fandango52 yes a book, good idea, make sure you put in plenty of nature @Pissenlit I think you are so right :)

I would expect walkers as experienced as the Walkers to own at least one plastic map wallet. Even average walkers know to put an OS map into one to keep it dry and from getting yoghurt dropped on the vital part of the map thus obscuring the route home.. ahem. So I call utter cobblers to this 'sketched out in pencil but gone over in pen' nonsense.

Hwaet! (Did I do that right?) I'm back and catching up.

As someone who had an interest only mortgage in the 90s, and switched to a repayment some years later, this was my first thought when @Witharelle mentioned the mortgage question. I'm not a mortgage expert though. The idea was with interest only mortgages that the bank turned up after 25 years and said 'right, we'll have our 140K now please' and it was totally on you to make sure you had that sum ready to hand over. I can very much see the WWs thinking they'd be able to win at this game and would find some way to amass the balance without having to work for it in the conventional way. However, can't see why it's higher than the amount originally borrowed unless they somehow added another sum to the mortgage. Perhaps in the name of 'improvements to the property' and they thought they'd do those themselves, invest that money instead and make more that way?

I do also wonder how they got the mortgage in the first place. If TW was working for his family when they bought their first house, that income ought to have come under greater scrutiny. But then again, if that's when they initially took a mortgage out, it was probably easier to move and then to shift out of full time employment since the loan was already agreed. (Could be wrong: did I mention I'm not a mortgage expert? 😃)

@PullTheBricksDown the rules for interest only mortgages weren’t tightened till 2014, until then the onus was on the individuals taking out the mortgage to have a plan in place to repay the amount borrowed, without as much scrutiny as nowadays

The mind boggles!! 😅
Also, did anyone find evidence of the “livelihood” which they “lost” (according to Penguin)? Were there adverts for holidays or bed and breakfasts at their little small holding? Did anyone come forward and say they had a holiday there?
Ive been thinking about Penguin’s ridiculous promotional statement and how it should be revised.
Ahem
A few years into the future just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years is might be terminally ill, the couple lose their home and their livelihood. With nothing left everything they own (except a very well chosen copy of Beowulf that apparently travels everywhere Moth goes) stored carefully in a barn or stashed at their son’s house, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk some of the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path because that’s exactly what you do when you have a terminal illness and your doctor has allegedly advised you to be careful on the stairs.
A real life science fiction/fantasy story about triumph over adversity stealing, bitching and total brass-neckery with some copy paste excerpts from better books and a bold attempt to ride on the coat tails of the poet laureate Simon Armitage.

I wonder if one explanation for such a high mortgage with such a low income was they persuaded someone to be a guarantor for it. Ooh, a wealthy family member say.

Back in the late 80s as a new graduate on only a modest salary I was able to get a large (for me) endowment mortgage (then very popular and much missold) to buy a London flat with my father as guarantor if I defaulted on the payments. But that never happened as I had a lodger and a year or two later, as planned, I got my post-grad professional qualification and my salary shot up.

But maybe the WWs talked a 'trusted friend/family member' into a guarantee with tall tales of money making and assurances they would never find themselves on the hook.

The whole thing is so murky I wonder if that features in there somewhere.

Actually, that's true, now I come to think of it, I could have got a mortgage on my salary alone as a PA. It was for a tiny little cottage with not much garden in the wilds of Somerset. I remember going to look at it and thinking 'well, it's small, but it would be all mine...'

I didn't buy it in the end but I was only earning a fairly minor salary yet it would have been enough to buy alone. So perhaps the Walkers could borrow lavishly at the time?

I’m still hopeful someone who holidayed at the Walkers’ barn might pop up. If we believe the book (!) and the film there were guests booked in who had to be cancelled when the house was repossessed, so we’re talking about relatively recent times

And going back to Angela Harding for a moment, I was in my local independent bookshop today. Her hardback of illustrations 'Falling Into Autumn' was No 5 in their top ten bestsellers. I had a browse through it. It is beautiful and the front cover is particularly gorgeous printed with small copper accents. I'm going to ask for it for my birthday.

Anyway, in the blurb about her in the back there is very noticeably zero mention of TSP or any of the other RW books. Other books she's done are named. The omission is deafening. And, just to make an even more pointed point, Simon Armitage gets a special mention. It's delicious.

It was Angela Harding’s beautiful cover art that made me interested in TSP to begin with. I never did get the book, but recently got Angela’s book Still Waters & Wild Waves. I haven’t read it properly but this is the only mention I can see.

I'm intrigued by the sale process of Pen-y-Maes. It was eventually sold in 2016 for £280k. So how was it listed in 2010 for £395k and on ETTC at £435k? Did the Walkers tell the estate agent what they wsnted for Pen y maes? How did they get it onto to ETTC in 2011?