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.

Perhaps the True Crime section would be more appropriate?

I do remember seeing that their son had a different electoral roll address from both his parents and grandfather just before Salray had to depart North Wales - and we do know that Salray were in the habit of making gifts to him (the holiday in Rome) around this time.

@HatStickBoots .. and bitching about her peeling nose ..

That definitely is one of the running gags throughout 500 Mile Walkies. Near the beginning:

My nose in particular was suffering. Everywhere I went I left bits of it behind. My original one had shed itself in a couple of days. A new model had burst through red and throbbing, but now that too had dropped off and a third one was blooming ...

Someone near the end asks:

"What's happened to your nose?"
"It's peeled ... a lot."

And, on the last page:

I'd done it to see how many noses I had (twelve).

Part the First: Prepare To Salray Forth.

I think I've already mentioned that the court case/losing the house (and their land, let us not forget their land)/Timoth's diagnosis and the demise of the ancient Smotyn all happens in the first 19 pages. I think this level of concertina-ing so much sad drama has the useful effect of piling on the angst while glossing over inconvenient detail, such as err, the truth. All very broad brush really, although the death of the ovine one and subsequent burial gets a fair amount of coverage.

One thing that struck is how very much Salray makes everything about her. After the 'diagnosis', amongst more in the same vein, there is this

It wasn't Moth's life; it was our life. We were one, fused, enmeshed [agree there] molecular (&c, &c)

So far, so Cathy and Heathcliff but she goes on to mention quite graphically what his death would be like, as if it would happen to both of them. Very odd and in my (relevant) experience rather "off". When your DH (or anyone close) is facing a bad diagnosis and potentially difficult death, one's first thoughts are not about how awful it is for you, even though it can turn out to be pretty dreadful later, but concern for the actually ill person.

Then there's all the stuff about how difficult it was to prepare for the walk given Timoth's physical problems and sourcing rucksacks and the frankly exploitative chapter on homelessness which reads to me as if it was lifted from a sociology essay and plonked in.

Just my thoughts!

To add, I can understand how anyone reading it PSE (Pre Scandal Era) would overlook any shortcomings in the writing and feel very sorry for them. I'm sure I would have but it isn't possible to unknow stuff, is it.

If this was the case, I do wonder what lifestyle they were living to require such funding. They don't strike me as being overtly lavish. Maybe they had a penchant for high quality groceries, meals out, holidays and fine wines? One thing that does strike me, however, is how RW says the path changed her...how she realised material things don't matter. If this is to be believed, maybe she genuinely had an epiphany and became a different person. I know how time in nature and walking can bring about such perspective shifts towards simplicity and minimalism. Though one may poke a hole in that conjecture with the big fancy estate house they are currently renting.

That is interesting @DreamyHiker the thing with Raymoth is nothing would surprise me, I agree@SimoArmo I don't think their lifestyle was particularly lavish, but they were over extended and couldn't really afford the lifestyle they had, a second home in France as an ambition is pretty expensive, let alone renovating the barn to make a holiday rental, how many people can do that and work on a part time basis (unless you are borrowing or embezzling)

I don't believe Salray changed, the whole book is written to gain maximum sympathy, exploiting the homelessness and Moths illness. After all what did Salray need to be changed from, she was supposed to have always been a child of nature, she and Moth were people with a social conscience, protesting when young, not materialistic bread heads like everyone else.

What surprised me @SimoArmo is how big an industry is building up around the walking in nature thing, I was looking for Julie and Dave, I found that since COVID and before, many talking therapies are offered outside, walking in nature. There are so many therapists offering it, I was unaware that it has been a thing since at least 2011.

W O W 😯
Could that be any more blatent?! If we were going to comb through this shitty book and make a compendium of all the incidents of brass-neckery within, we’d have a thicker book than the original. Just complete unabashed plagiarism. But why??
Thank you for pointing that out @BeguiledBrandy I have never read that book. I’ve looked for copies in the charity and secondhand bookshops and not been in luck yet. I do want to read all the source books and compare them to her writing. TSP falls under nature writing and long distance walking, yet nobody at Penguin RH seems to be very well read on either.

I completely agree with you. It was this tone throughout which did unsettle me. I believed it to be a very selfish voice and I made excuses for it in my own mind, justified it somehow. I can’t remember how or why I did that, except that I treated the words on the page as a sort of open heart surgery.. the sort of things a woman character in a book might say for dramatic effect but they were supposedly real here. “Raw emotions” are often cited as being something very brave when exhibited in real life, because they’re not always nice. There’s a difference between confiding things on a page and out loud in public, so when I read these very personal things, it had the feel of seeing inside her head. The thoughts may have been in her head but were chosen by her to be put out in print, unashamedly, raw. Originally we are told this book was for her husband…. ? It seems strange to write it that way.. but then this reveals so much about her character and it just adds to the catalogue of personality disorders that have accumulated so far.

@BeguiledBrandy thanks for the 500 Mile Walkies quotes. Too amusing to be from the Tomes of Doom and it's on my to read list now.

@HatStickBoots an annotated version of TSP would be like one of those awful uni textbooks with a short para at the top of the page and the rest devoted to references and explanation thereof.

@HatStickBoots Agree. It struck me that even if you felt like that in the moment (I was too stunned when late DH got his diagnosis to think very much at all) you might at least put it in context in a book written years later, 'this was my first reaction in shock' etc)

I can't account for it other than to think she doesn't look much beyond her own feelings at all easily.

She really does keep reinforcing the idea of being enmeshed as though it’s a healthy thing as though the reader ought to envy that and find shortcomings in their own relationships. As others have said, it’s a very immature outlook.
At the point when they were preparing for the walk, he hadn’t been diagnosed but she writes as though he has been of course. Basically you could extract all that “raw emotional” nonsense out if it because it’s written purely to manipulate the reader and exploit them.

@HatStickBoots having read Part 1 and dipped in elsewhere, 'manipulative' and 'exploitative' are my main feelings ATM. Hindsight is brilliant though and all the people who read it PSE didn't have the benefit of it, although I know there was the odd rumble about the improbability around the loss of the house, as described.

That's exactly it @HatStickBoots manipulating and exploiting the reader in a most cynical way, there was no diagnosis, people might have thought the way they lost their house didn't quite add up as @Uricon2 says, but people took the illness and diagnosis as truthful. I just don't like Salray, she reminds me too much of people I have met, she can claim to be changed and is not materialistic, now that she has substantial funds. But she wrote this book, or as @HatStickBoots so eloquent puts it, shitty book :) in the full knowledge that she was lying.

@HatStickBoots

'I treated the words on the page as a sort of open heart surgery.. '

That's a unique way of reading and very descriptive.

I was reminded reading of the words of an old Scottish song (wonderfully performed by the great June Tabor, if you like Gigspinner you'll like her)

'You lie! You lie! Your lie is loud!

So loud I hear you lie!'

('Sir Patrick Spens', Child Ballads)

Thank you so much for sharing how you felt about TSP. I was a detached cynic and had not read any of it or heard an interview with the author.

It's influence was getting quite strong in some ways. I heard that the SWCP Association was thinking of changing the name to The Salt Path. SalRay was the 'go to' for a journalist doing an article on part of the path.

What did it for me was when a relative, this Spring, told me that another relative was calling the coast path The Salt Path. They then asked me what it was ... I said that it was a book by a woman about how her husband is terminally ill and they had lost their farm, walked the coast path, and that they had moved to Polruan (this is all I knew). I then said: "He's still with us".

But, I felt really bad.

@BeguiledBrandy the tentacles of this book spread very, very far. It angers me that more truthful accounts of similar journeys may be overlooked because they don't have a concoted backstory and thus so much "appeal".

Our threads are a small counterpoint to the nonsense, I hope.

I meant, like she was pouring her heart out to the reader… and the reader has to assume that it’s gushing from her, unedited, due to circumstances, as though she’s suddenly ‘broken’ and can’t take any more. However, it wasn’t like that. That is just her way of writing as we have seen in HNTDDD. All the events leading up to TSP were instigated by their own idiocy and criminality not to mention selfishness and Tim’s disabilities were just dismissed as soon as she decided they should walk.

wrote in the full knowledge that she was lying Indeed @Freshsocks

Sorry if this seems like an interruption

I was on the first thread as I really enjoyed the book

I see we are on thread 18 so this may have been answered way back and there's no way I can find it

Did they actually walk the path? Has that been confirmed? Or is it still a case of not knowing?

Thank you

The short answer is: No. Not the whole 630 miles of the SWCP.

In TSP, SalRay doesn't say that they did, she doesn't in earlier interviews - but she does in the later interviews.

There is only evidence of them doing some of the north coast, photos, their son's contemporary post.

The south coast is very patchy, both in TSP and there are only a few photos. There are some glaring inaccuracies re: ferries, and when they are supposed to have walked (the Australians, the Parsons put it 2 years later).

I do feel like a total and utter idiot for having the wool pulled so skilfully over my eyes, but I remind myself that I was not the only one. It’s the sort of book that would have attracted my attention if I’d seen it first on a table in the bookshop, because of the cover and definitely the premise. Over the years I’ve enjoyed various autobiographies, nature books and local history. I was in my late teens when I read Castaway by Lucy Irvine and then her second book called Runaway. Since then I’ve enjoyed other true stories in adventurous or dangerous situations. I’d read the magazine interviews before any of Walker’s books and the story was sold to me like that.
It upsets me that her influence could have changed the name of TSWCP. The very idea of that is sacrilege. It’s even worse that she thinks she carries “a beacon of hope” for sufferers of CBD. 😡

@BeguiledBrandy thank you

That book got me through a difficult time. I suppose fiction will do that!

Well, I was reading this thread because it was called: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?
Because it had @DisappointedReader

I wanted to learn from it ... and I have. To have been 'taken in' by it but to be reviewing it is very honest and strong.