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.

Somewhat at variance with the 3 consultant letters.

My point of reference with pretty much anything that SW says in her books is her nephew's comments on LI: my uncle and aunt are pathological liars who leave a train of destruction in their wake.

Maybe the others didn't fit her narrative. Given the fact that we don't think the letters fit TSP's timelines and diagnosis anyway, the other must have been even more vague.

You may well be right. The 2025 letter talks of an annual follow up which is presumably regular.

I've never understood why if Timoth had such an atypical presentation/progress of an already (thankfully rare) disease, which seems to have been miraculously improved by long distance walks, why every neurologist on the planet isn't clamouring to study him. I'm fairly certain that if they were, Salray might have mentioned such doings in one of the books.

We have a very rare factor deficiency pop up in our family, 2 aunts had it (can't remember which one it is) but they were studied by the Radcliffe in Oxford in the 50s in the embryonic unit that was looking at such things and the wider family were all tested without a conclusion as to the carrier, other than advice against any cousin marriage,ever, because they didn't know what the outcome would be for children born of it.

I don't know why Timoth isn't more fascinating to the medical community if all that has been put forward is actually true (we know it's not)

Some of the articles that are shared have the trailer for the film embedded. I noticed there is a scene where the Walkers are portrayed camped on the coast path. A dog walker is going past and tells them off and they make a sarcastic comment about the locals being friendly. How thoroughly irresponsible of the film makers. Good on that local!

Part of the Wild Camping Code:
Leave No Trace: Preserve the wild camping site exactly as found.
Stay Duration: Limit to one night; avoid altering landscape such as moving rocks or flattening plants.
Water Sources: Camp a minimum of 200 feet away to avoid disturbance to wildlife and contamination.
Waste Management: Bury toilet waste 200 feet from water or better still, take it home; don’t bury sanitary products

Please do not tell me the Walkers are nature-loving eco-warriors if this is their behaviour in the book.

This leads me onto more slice of the pie-ism.

The SWCP Association made her an Ambassador.

Could it be that 99% of them have never heard of him and the remaining 1% think he is a grifter?

A while back, someone questioned why Gigspanner wanted Salray, I had a look then and I remember, there was the usual quote about Peter Knight's wife reading the book and wanting Salray, because she had loved the book. Looking further and reading a past article interviewing Peter knight, he talked of wanting to collaborate with Terry Pratchett, which he and Steeleye Span did in 2013/14.

I read a later piece where Peter said he would like to work again with a writer, I think Salray was a good proposition for them as you say @BeguiledBrandy, but did she add anything to their performance? :) they were given so much more publicity having Salray involved and the reality of that is more tickets sold.

That is very interesting @RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays, you would expect an appointment every six months to monitor his condition, did he have these consultations or not? If he did, it is usual for a follow up letter every time, Tim should have a stack of letters by now. I have just read your last post @izzywizzyletsgetbizzywynthomas, once a year check, can be the regular contact, especially if the condition is stable, or progressing slowly.

World of difference between collaborating with Terry Pratchett (Discworld et al) and Sal?

The Salt Road/The Salt Path similarities seem uncannily similar....

SW's statement about Moth's health in her rebuttal statement:

Moth’s health

Firstly, let me address Moth’s health. With Moth’s permission, and on the advice of his neurologist, I am releasing excerpts from two clinic letters, showing he is treated for CBD/S and has been for many years. This is deeply personal information that no-one should ever be forced to share. The redacted sections are for the personal privacy of Moth and the doctors involved.

Among the Observer’s many accusations, the most heart breaking is the suggestion that Moth has made up his illness. This utterly vile, unfair, and false suggestion has emotionally devasted Moth, who has fought so hard against the insidious condition of Corticobasal Syndrome.

CBS is a rare condition, about which we still know very little. But to clarify how the condition is discussed - Corticobasal Degeneration, CBD (as I’ve described this condition in my previous books) is now more commonly referred to by neurologists as Corticobasal Syndrome, CBS. CBS being the clinical diagnosis which describes the symptoms observed during life, while reserving CBD for the disease observed at post-mortem. From here on I’ll refer to the condition as CBS.

I have charted Moth’s condition with such a level of honesty, that this is the most unbearable of the allegations. My books have become a record of his health, from the mornings when I need to physically help him from the bed and into the physio routine that makes his days possible. Through the movement issues, the bowel problems, the memory slips, the stiffness, the pain, the fatigue, the obsessions, and the despair. To the times, on our very long walks, when those symptoms have improved.

I have never sought to offer medical advice in my books or suggest that walking might be some sort of miracle cure for CBS, I am simply charting Moth’s own personal journey and battle with his illness, and what has helped him.
The diagnosis doesn’t come from a simple test, but rather from a long and complex route of observation, where sufferers may have symptoms for many years before they finally reach a diagnosis. Even then, many sufferers’ symptoms present in an atypical way. They might not present with the same symptoms, occurring in the same order, or with the same severity. As I’ve explained many times in my books, we will always be grateful that Moth’s version of CBS is indolent, its slow progression (P15 The Salt Path) has allowed us time to discover how walking helps him. Others aren’t so lucky.

The effect of the suggestion that Moth has made up this condition has been absolutely traumatising for him. Suggestions made by people, who do not know him, have never met him, and have never seen his medical records. But even worse, is the effect on those sufferers who have looked to Moth as a beacon of hope. The hope that, maybe not now, maybe not for them, but at some point in the future, we might find some answers to this condition that has no treatment, and no cure.

Debate and discuss!

I think now@Uricon2 that Raymoth are an embarrassment, as @BeguiledBrandy says lots of people got on board and made a lot of money, they just want this to go away. I think it was @AzureStaffy who said they know about these letters relating to appointments, it doesn't seem straightforward to me, because sometimes a patient can be being seen every six months or more often, for a short time or a number of years. Then if a condition is progressing slowly, or in remission, possibly once a year. Eventually in lots of cases the consultant can release the patient to the care of their GP.

You have given us a lot to debate and discuss @izzywizzyletsgetbizzywynthomas :)

All very well quoting p15 of TSP but omit from quoting other sections of TSP which imply the imminence of CBD related death:

p 51: 'Other than that we were homeless and Moth was dying'
p 74: "What if this is it then,what if I'm dying?"
p 75: 'knowing the blackness was coming, waiting in the background, had put him in constant alert'
p 243: "we had space to think clearly when death wasn't hanging around the tent like a malevolent stalker. When it does come, the end, I want you to have me cremated... keep me in a box somewhere, then when you die the kids can put you in, give us a shake and send us on our way... They can let us go on the coast, in the wind, and we'll find the horizon together'

I think the fact that OWH is still on Amazon showing a publication date of Oct 2026 means that it's not going to be pulled. They have removed the bit in the blurb about " Moth facing his inevitable decline". The Sherlock in me thinks that the book will have now been edited to play down/remove the "inevitable decline." Why else would PRH have removed this bit from the blurb I ask myself?

I'm not so sure. Suspect PRH will be keeping their options open depending on what revelations emerge from Chloe and the BBC's follow ups in the months to come.

Interesting observation!

But, since the walking part of the book was a lone walk because he wasn't well enough, that would take a lot of editing
EDIT: should have been attached to @Gingerbread100 post

Different write ups on the Amazon and Penguin websites?

Hopefully they have removed it @Gingerbread100, because they know it cannot be substantiated. I feel like Salray is going to write another book, maybe this one rewritten, she will try to explain why she did what she did, it will be someone else's fault. She will have been pushed to it and then there will be the trauma of how awful it has been for her, I don't think she will mention Tim.

Or I could be wrong, she could make it all about Tim, that he is still a sick man, even if she manipulated timelines, which she will acknowledge and give an explanation for. And how damaging it has been to him and her children. It could be a combination or something completely different, but it will probably start with her out in nature, throwing herself to the ground, curling herself up into a ball and crying full of pain and remorse.

Yes but maybe she could get around that by saying it was a temporary setback?

Summer 2013
She has Moth describing to the surfers how he's going to die:

'.. lost our house, business, everything we’ve ever worked for all our lives, penniless, and I’m dying ...'

‘So, what’s wrong with you, man, why’re you dying?’

‘My legs are going to stop working, then all the other bits that matter, then I’ll choke.’

She will still have the device of the walk @RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays , she can use it flashback style, remembering the walk, how she found the resilience from her lone walk to endure what was to come. It probably reads a lot like that now anyway, lots of nature, lots of resilience.

Oh my goodness @BeguiledBrandy I wonder how many more references there are @izzywizzyletsgetbizzywynthomas has already shared a number of them, I wrote a few down when I was reading parts of TSP in solidarity with @Uricon2, I will have a look at them, see if they have not been mentioned.

Page 82 "You remember the film about walking from lands end to John O'Groats. But they lived with carers and a house not actually on the path. I don't want to die in a tent' "you're not going to die in the tent. Do you think he actually walked much at all or was it just for the film?"

beyond Westward Ho!
'..somewhere on the coast, with a dying man falling into withdrawal from a central nervous system depressant, a Class 5 controlled substance in America but still uncategorized in the UK.'

It's called emotional manipulation.....

I think there may be more in medical letters and notes than we could have seen. Having a poorly understood illness myself, the medics couldn’t be less interested. They also fought among themselves, not saying explicitly that the previous consultant was wrong, but that they had found different conclusions. I can completely believe that 1. TimMoth has some neurological issue, which was thought to maybe be indolent CBS 2. since the passage of time that probably isn’t the current thinking - in part because it hasn’t progressed as would be expected. 3 nobody thinks he’s a medical miracle because the only person who thought he was fatally ill with CBD was his wife, whereas the medical staff think he’s got something a bit like CBS but probably isn’t.