Thread 18: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

Hello all. I've simplified the opening post as I don't think we need to keep reposting all the links, timelines and so on at this stage of proceedings.

The Observer's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
First thread: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Links to threads 2-16, the other 20 Observer articles and videos to date, Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement, our timeline and sources can all be accessed in the OP and first few posts of Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5403285-thread-17-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 exposé items 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 drive-by scolders 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 17 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.

Now three months in, if these threads could wear slogan t-shirts they would be Mark Twain's often misquoted 'The report of my death was an exaggeration'. Applications in writing from correspondents seeking supply parcels of fudge and cider will be tolerated.

Here we are again
Disappointed as can be
All good pals and jolly good company
Strolling round the path
Happy on a spree
All good pals and jolly good company

Never mind the weather, never mind the rain
Now that we're together, whoops we go again!
Whoops, we go again
La-di-da-di-da, la-di-da-di-dee
All good pals and jolly good company

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

I'm an apeman
I'm an ape, apeman
Oh, I'm an apeman
I'm a king-kong man
I'm a voodoo man
Oh, I'm an apeman

Oh why did they take away our laugh reaction 😂

Tim, having convinced Sal that she will have to go on and do the coast to coast walk without him 😏

I haven’t read this book but the similarities that have been drawn by all of you who have, are astounding. I’d be very surprised if SW has not read it and borrowed the tone. She may not have copied the scenes but she certainly integrated that sort of (literal in her case) cliff hanging peril with her prelude to one of her follow ups.. I forget which now. She’s hanging on a narrow ledge apparently 🥱

Moth "It's a real shame we didn't bring a poo shovel, this feels like a big one...."

And re the Boot Agony - I thought Sal and Tim were supposed to be experienced walkers, having walked such a lot earlier in their lives (that being why they decided to go off and walk the Salt Path in extremis)? No experienced walker would go off in unbroken boots for a long walk.

Just read this as I catch up. Seems like a smoking gun. From what reading I have done around this, it’s a fairly new lit agency. Salray must have really boosted their fortunes. I think there are some writers on here. For those of us not familiar with publishing, how likely is it that the agent worked on the raw material with Salray in order to come up
with a book that ticked all the boxes? She would have had a sense of what was zeitgeisty and would also know how to use dramatic jeopardy etc to craft a good read. Misery Lit was a HUGE a while back and if she ghost wrote those then she would be able to shape a text that really pressed at the buttons. BUT she would have known the timings were all wrong etc. and wasn’t there an early draft which was a bit different but still had some similarities? A bit of a ‘cut and shut’ job?
If this was the case, would Penguin have a case against the lit agency as the publisher could claim they bought the book in good faith. And also the film company ? They must have lost money after our Chloe’s expose.

It was the other partner in the literary agency who was the main agent for TSP - but SalRay thanks both of them. Here's one I posted earlier, with the link to the relevant Observer article:

BeguiledBrandy · 15/10/2025 20:08
@FishwivesSalute I can also see why they thought the attention-grabbing 'Homeless, terminally-ill, devotedly in love, walking the SWCP' tagline was worth investing in...
I'm sure they were urging her to think up a sequel from the moment TSP started selling, and once they realised that the book was almost incidental to the hard-luck story, and how much interest there was among readers and journalists in what happened next.
And the same again when even the comparatively less satisfactory TWS sold.

She had put even more eggs in the original basket - so Penguin knew there was more material if TSP took off:
"in 2013, when Raynor Winn first learned that her husband, Moth, had a terminal neurological condition, she was reminded of her mother’s death."

https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/so-what-did-the-publisher-actually-know

A puzzling part in Landlines p160-161: The pair cycle from Glasgow to Edinburgh, arriving at nearly 11pm, ‘in the twilight of midsummer’s eve’. They then go into an outdoor shop to find a sleeping bag. The sales assistant says she is a world sleeping bag champion stufffer; Sal wonders if she’s ’having a particularly boring afternoon and has just made it up’. They then go back to their room (presumably a hotel, though it isn’t mentioned where they are staying) and pack ready to leave the next morning. So is it afternoon or 11pm? If it really is 11pm, would outdoor shops be open? It feels like this bit slipped through the proof read.

I just hopped to their website. Salray’s agent has been a ghost writer too …

Just looked at this now myself. Hate to defend the glum duo but the shop visit is the next day. There's a break after the paragraph where they reach Edinburgh at 11pm and the next one with the shop visit in. And later in that section (p162) is 'We go back to the room and pack the panniers ready to leave the next morning' (my emphasis: so they've checked in before the shop visit) and then a reference to 'two days of hot and cold baths' as they leave Edinburgh. So, arrival at 11pm, presumably check in at wherever they've booked (I'm sure it was very 'umble) then next day, shop for new sleeping bags and stay one more night.

I do think the proofreading was probably abysmal though.

wherever they've booked (I'm sure it was very 'umble)

If I had the sort of money they did at that point @PullTheBricksDown it'd have been a suite at the Witchery with hot and cold running champagne, but I doubt that would fit with the poverty cosplay!

Some really interesting points about the misery memoir ghostwriter agents and 2016 appearing on the cover of TWS. An unfortunate mistake, indeed.

@PullTheBricksDown I see, thanks. I don’t find that part very clear at all!

I agree, very interesting points about the “misery memoir ghostwriters”! This is new to me.

Do you mean to suggest that SalRay really is a Ray of Sunshine, and it’s the agents who have glumwashed her…?

Joanna and David from Down Under wee written true to character, but the agents convinced poor SalRay to do them dirty?

It would be entirely normal for an agent to have significant input into a book while prepping it for submission to publishers. With my first book, my agent didn't like one particular profession for one of the characters and asked me to change it, which I did, although not to her suggested profession but another one.

So the agent might ask for changes, but they don't usually specify what those changes should be. More in the line of tweaking certain aspects and talking them up and playing down others. The author is, of course, entirely free not to take up all requests for change, and to put in only what they feel they want to. So ultimately the responsibility lies with the author, not the agent.

So….. is this why the books seem as though they’ve been written by a variety of personalities? Tim writes the sexy stuff with the women, Sal writes the melodrama, the misery memoirist writes the the underdog tropes and everything else is patched in from Paddy Dillon and Wikipedia?

It's certainly making me think about the extent of input that did not flow from Salray's erm... creative genius. I know there is always guidance, advice etc for authors and I imagine especially new ones, but the CV of the agent(s) is interesting, to say the least.

That would be harder work than just getting one person to write it all! Tbh, I think it's just that Sal is not a very good writer.

My 60p (andIwasprobablyrobbed) copy of TSP is due tomorrow. Now, I've been given a list of do's and don'ts while waiting to find out what's going on with me (no driving, no swimming and the possibility of calling 999 feature, they didn't mention coastal hikes) but should I ring the surgery and ask if reading a very annoying book should be added? 😂

Don't give her ideas, comrades. Before we know it, the next rebuttal will be that the evil agent made her do it all, and poor oppressed RaySal felt they had no choice but to go along with it for the mere chance of saving poor old poorly Moth, or at least making his final days/months/years/decades more comfortable with some meagre royalties..

You're a medical experiment in waiting @Uricon2 . Just get them to take your blood pressure before and after reading 😉 💐

If they take it after reading, you'll probably be labelled a Medical Marvel. You can join Moth on the list...

Or she could have, you know, got a job and earned money to ease his cold, miserable last decades months.

If low BP is a problem for you, @Uricon2, it might actually be medicinally helpful..?

Why work when you can steal, con, manipulate people to get what you want in life?