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.

But then you'd miss the frankly hilarious scene where GA and JI sit at their tent entrance surrounded by gambolling, obviously non-wild bunnies who look as if they have just been shampooed and blow-dried for whatever the lapine equivalent of Crufts is.

I think I can live with my decision.

Even though I do love bunnies.

I think that it was once again written to make it look like she was a victim, done out of the tenancy for the family farm.

But I have never gotten my head around why this made her stop writing any "more stories about the wild things." Surely if you are a child of nature then the wild things are always there, and she lived on the farm for another dozen or so years. So, shock, her writing doesn't make sense!

If you ask Google what 'unflinchingly honest ' means it becomes abundantly clear that PRH are selling us a pup.

In this interview re: her mother's death (which I have shared on a previous Thread). She talks of going back to her childhood home, but seems to then use it to talk about nature in the way she wants to now.

From about 11.00

Brain injuries sound pretty severe to me. Are we talking about concussion, bleeding on the brain? I can’t remember offhand what happened to Tim except for shoulder pain. I’d better refresh my memory and read the doctor letters again because really those are the only facts we have, can’t trust what’s in the books.

editing to say that this post should have had a quote in it from the previous page but it’s disappeared.

I think if you confused CBD with a different brain issue, you’d have realised your error before having the book published or representing the CBD charity.

I don't know, SW seems to stick to her guns pretty firmly. It could be that she'd convinced herself that it was CBD regardless of what anyone else said. I mean, I can almost hear the doctor saying 'well, yes, I supposed a CBD-like condition is just possible,' and her seizing it as a positive diagnosis and saying 'the doctor says he has CBD' as a definite.

She seems to have quite rigid thought patterns. After all, she managed to convince millions that they lost their house because of other people's greed. I'm sure she almost believes that herself.

I think the reports of TimMoth being at death’s door (France-The English brother with incurable cancer/Bill Cider Farm-he said he was told not to make any plans past 2 months) suggest it wasn’t just a one-off error.
Rather like the missing £600 wasn’t a one-off and turned out to be £9,000, then £64,000.
Or Sally is Raynor or Ray but also Tim is Ray and Moth and the surname is Walker or Winn.
There’s rigid thought patterns then there’s pathological lying.

I think it's less rigid thought patterns (I mean, insofar as you can judge from three books, a statement, a few articles and a bunch of interviews) than an ingrained sense of self-righteousness which means there's only one way of viewing things and a single perspective on events. She's clearly most comfortable with her and Tim as the perennial victims of circumstance, trusting, free-spirited children of nature who are mistreated by a traitorous, indifferent world.

Anything that, like CH's story, positions them as conniving, criminal, or actively manipulating circumstances to their advantage, is perceived as 'vitriol' and 'a threat' because it attacks her worldview and her view of herself as a lone free spirit among the grey office-based drones who don't hand-dig their beloved ancient sheep a grave or who tamely go into emergency council accommodation and get jobs when they become homeless. Tim is key to her worldview, too, obviously, as someone she can depict as a fellow free spirit. (Whereas what they appear to have in common is being grifters and a disinclination to work for a living in any longterm way.)

If this were a novel, I'd make Moth have an affair now. Possibly with someone in the publishing world. Or a deep undercover journalist who appears sympathetic?😀

And feel free not to post on them? Or did you think it was compulsory?

Admittedly I haven't read many memoirs, travel or otherwise, but was struck with both TWS and TSP, that there are so few mentions (other than Liverpool and Cornwall) of actual places linked to their normal everyday life. Even the farmhouse is just mentioned as being in Wales. Is this normal?

I have decided I wouldn't mind being 'homeless' if I could do it the Moth man and Ray bird way. Go for a nice walk, get to stay with a mate when the cold weather starts, go on another nice walk when it warms up a bit and then meet a total stranger who happens to have a flat I could afford on a student loan whilst my other half sits on their arse moping.

Then I could go on to become an 'advocate' for homeless people, some of whom I apparently met, who recognised me as a kindred spirit despite the fact that my 'homeless' experience was nothing like the reality for the majority.

Of course I would meet lovely, friendly people. I could pass as a tourist (which is, in fact, what I would be). The brutal reality of life living rough isn't what I'd go through. I'd have this sanitised, middle-class experience filled with people who just stepped out of Enid Blyton's England, rather than being constantly moved on, beaten up, freezing cold in winter, etc.

Oh to be homeless if I could be like Moth man and Ray bird.

Utterly brilliant! Yes, that will be the fifth book. Incidentally, “how many sheep do ya have to “kill” to get a book published around here??”

I don't know how much longer she could possibly portray herself as a free spirit being mistreated by a traitorous and indifferent world when, according to her books, she's been given a flat in a prime coastal location for a nominal rent without having to undergo any background checks by a total stranger, and another total stranger handed her a cider farm on a plate.

Wish I met people like that randomly.

@chocolatemademefat , so you had to read them all to check that each was as boring as the previous one?

All 16 000 plus posts of course! Honestly, you look at some of what's on here at the moment and they choose this one to come on and criticise.

Bonkers, innit? Could be a member of the Raymoth fan club I suppose. I'm actually surprised there hasn't been more of a vocal defence of those two considering the popularity of TSP. That may say something.

@ObelixtheGaul

"The brutal reality of life living rough isn't what I'd go through. I'd have this sanitised, middle-class experience filled with people who just stepped out of Enid Blyton's England, rather than being constantly moved on, beaten up, freezing cold in winter, etc."

Quite right; it's just playing at being poor and homeless. Isn't there an expression - 'poverty porn' - for this kind of theatrics?

Hi, I just popped up again to see if my post, from last night, had been reinstated.

I then got concerned because a series were deleted. Mine was just a mainstream link and comment (honest!). I see mine is just 'hidden' and not deleted.

I wonder how long it takes to check? - I can't think of any problem with it.

Hello everyone, have been keeping up but we've been off walking for the past few days (in the Lakes, not the SWCP) so haven't had time to post. One thing that struck me was the age of the majority of the people we met on the various paths; most of those out and about were v firmly in their 60s and upwards by my reckoning, so this made me ponder again the references to being 'old' in TSP. Maybe all the gilded youth are in the South........or maybe, just maybe, it's <whispers> Embellished Bollox again? And of those walkers, who were all v friendly and smiley, lots looked like the WWs tbh, so I'm not entirely convinced their encounters were as described, let's just say <strokes beard>. And all the local people working in pubs, cafes and shops were friendly too - who'dathunk it?

I think its worth taking pretty much every sentence in TSP with a significant pinch of salt. 'Unflinchingly honest' is the antonym of what TSP actually is.

Their nephew described his uncle and aunt as 'pathological liars'. Nothing that has been unearthed in the last 8 weeks since CH's article first appeared gives any reason to doubt his judgement.

Penguin or even the author herself (ha! Not holding out much hope for the latter) should add a disclaimer now to the front page where the print and copyright details are. Something along the lines of:
“The journey portrayed in The Salt Path took place over X years between 20XX and 20XX.”
I also think that would be the only true admission. Everything else (SWCP excepted) is basically a lie or gross exaggeration.