Thread 19: 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 ...

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?

Thread 18: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5422393-thread-18-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. Over four months we have done amazingly well together for 18 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.

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

"I'll fight anyone who says I'll make it to Christmas 2021!"

Also, in TWS regarding their elopement to Skye. She says they took a train. But the closest one can get a train to Skye is on the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh. And that train route is very long having to go via Inverness. Then it's a ferry (no Skye bridge till 1995) then an hour's bus ride (or taxi) to Portree.

While it's not impossible they did this - I've done it myself - I just wonder how realistic this was with them coming all the way from Burton. Of course, we know they did marry in Portree, but how they got there seems fabricated, indeed, romanticised.

Maybe SW bought up all the tickets.

Maybe SW bought up all the tickets.

She could certainly afford to.

Turns out her "research" is all in TWS! While Moth is busy at uni, Ray decides to spend her days googling and looking for answers. It really is quite incredible. Excerpt below.

I went back to the beginning, to understand the very start of the disease, to build a picture of it from the base up. So little information; so little knowledge. And I was back down the rabbit hole reading about connected diseases, other lives changed by tau proteins that have lost their form and function. And there, tucked away in research undertaken into a better-known, more widespread disease, I found something, a small nugget, but something. Small data sets, in one or two random pieces of work. They proved very little, but I was grasping for tiny, almost untouchable straws, so I seized the possibility the results represented and leapt around the chapel...

... I made tea, sat at the table and explained [to Moth] about an obscure piece of research that had been undertaken with Alzheimer’s patients.
‘But that’s not CBD, so why is it relevant?’
‘Because Alzheimer’s is a tauopathy – different to CBD, yes, but it’s still about the tau protein, so there could just be a similarity.’ I showed him the research and made him read about patients with Alzheimer’s who had undergone endurance training and had miraculously regained some cognitive abilities which doctors had believed were lost forever.
‘Don’t you see, that’s what the path was for us: extreme endurance training. We were walking miles every day, carrying heavy weights on a really restricted diet. It’s the same thing.’
‘Well, maybe …’
‘Think about it, really think about it.’
‘But I’m already doing physio exercises every day, and I walk a couple of miles most days. What are you suggesting?
I give up my degree, find another trail and keep walking?
Just walk indefinitely? I don’t know if I can do that.’
‘I know, I know. But that’s not the end of it, there’s more.’
‘Oh …’
‘I’ve read pages and pages of science papers that show the importance of being in nature for our physical and mental health.’
‘Everyone knows that.’
‘Yes, but it made me think why. Why exactly is it good for us? It’s not just because it’s relaxing. There is that, but there’s more. Look at this – read this one research paper. It’s the only one I can find, but …’ I turned the screen of the laptop towards him; it showed the summary of an obscure piece of research. ‘Isn’t this what you’ve just been studying at uni? The chemicals that plants emit from their leaves – I can’t remember what you call them?’
‘Secondary metabolites. Plants emit them to protect themselves from the environment and pests and stuff.’
‘Oh, okay, but you can’t remember what you had for breakfast.’
‘Weetabix.’
‘That’s too easy. You always have Weetabix. Anyway, this paper shows humans interact with those chemicals from plants too. There’s an actual chemical reaction between our bodies and plant emissions. I mean just read it.’
‘I was going to eat, but okay.’
I put the kettle back on and watched Moth as he focused on the computer screen, a light of realization beginning to cross his face. I poured the water in the cups. Yes. Maybe this wasn’t just my wishful thinking.
‘It’s a small study. My science lecturer at uni would say there’d have to be a lot more research done to say this was conclusive proof, but you can’t doubt his findings. He did actually record a chemical change in the patients when they exercised in the natural environment.’
‘Exactly. Surely this proves it – proves what I’ve always believed. We need the plants, the land, the natural world; we actually physically need it. I’m convinced it’s part of the answer to why your health was so much better while we were walking. It has to be.’

SalRay has a “Daily Mail Health Supplement” level understanding of Biochemistry.

And by ‘research’, she means ‘I Googled’.

SW is big on telling people who know much more than she does about something they’re ‘wrong’, so I suppose it’s not surprising she thinks her googling and half-baked theories are more valid than a law degree or peer-reviewed medical research.

She says ‘I stood in front of a judge and told him he’d got it wrong’ : ‘You’ve made a complete mistake, this is all wrong.’

Moth tells ‘Cooper’s barrister ‘It was the wrong decision, you do know that, don’t you?’

SW tells the consultant twice at that first appointment that he’s ’got it wrong’: ‘That must mean you’ve got it wrong, then. It’s something else.’

Then ‘The judge had got it wrong, so why not the doctor?’

It’s interesting to look at the rare places she doesn’t use it about a medical or legal authority but about themselves — ‘getting court procedure wrong’ (yeah, right), going to Polly’s for the winter being the ‘wrong decision’ (as distinct from what? Staying in a tent all winter?).

And this is sold as non-fiction? Oh deary me.

Isn't it a marker of narcissism? The 'always knowing better than authority figures'? Particularly knowing better simply on the strength of using Google, as opposed to, say, having a good doctorate in the subject...

i'm waiting for SW's crackpot cure from the long covid from which she claims to suffer, together with her observations on contrails on OWH. All bound to be of interest to her superfans.

Before the bridge at Kyle was opened in 1995, I think the most used route was the train to Mallaig via Fort William and then the ferry to Armadale.

Look! Timoth!

(Sorry, I simply cannot post pics)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/AdamandEveJump.jpg/500px-AdamandEveJump.jpg

@SimoArmo , thanks for posting that gem. It is utterly boggling and

We need the plants, the land, the natural world; we actually physically need it

Makes me think they have a close relationship with at least one plant that they're having a chemical reaction to.

humans interact with those chemicals from plants

Indeed they do.

...extreme endurance training. We were walking miles every day, carrying heavy weights on a really restricted diet....

And this. Show me any endurance athlete or doctor who would endorse this on a diet of instant noodles, misappropriated fudge and the occasional bag of chips.

I'm sure the Walkers are aware that there is lots of money to be made in promoting CBD (the other one!)

Does anyone know between which of her long distance walks, that would challenge the much younger and very fit, she's meant to have developed long Covid? This had completely passed me by.

Must stress that I'm not doubting people have significant health problems because of it, just Salray.

Interesting. I didn't think of that. Still, a long way to go on public transport to elope to somewhere they don't know.

I also noticed that in TWS she writes about visiting Mull and Iona in their mid twenties (which was their age when they actually married, not younger as written in TWS). So I wonder if it was actually the same trip.

But the nature and plant chemicals remember? 😂

I have no doubt nature, walking and being outdoors is better for us all. But appropriating this idea to explain a miraculous healing of an irreversible illness is what I take real issue with - she's simply pedalling pseudoscientific nonsense by trying to use real scientific studies and it's really quite distasteful IMO.

We need the plants, the land, the natural world; we actually physically need it

I think this is one of those statements that Sal seems to specialise in. Sounds profound, but when you actually read it you think "no shit Sherlock."

Without plants, the land and the natural world, we're pretty much floating unsupported in space.

News to me also. Do we have a source?

All i know is she did her recent coast to coast walk and came back with a bad chest infection, according to her IG posts.

It really is and part of the bigger picture that could (sadly, has) mislead people with serious conditions.

Like the so called anniversary stroll (up Tryfan! the Tryfan the 1953 Everest expedition trained on) she writes without even any personal analysis of whether it hangs together and makes sense. Other books, like Our Simon's do because there are no overblown claims, half assed theories and most importantly, no intent to deceive.

I can't find anything about the long Covid but came across this which is interesting, sorry if it has been posted before

https://bjgplife.com/what-does-the-fallout-from-the-salt-path-saga-tell-us-about-our-societys-ideas-about-chronic-illness-and-exercise/

I also noticed that in TWS she writes about visiting Mull and Iona in their mid twenties (which was their age when they actually married, not younger as written in TWS). So I wonder if it was actually the same trip.

I haven’t checked, but I thought when I read it that the islands were part of the same trip they got married. I love Mull and Iona so I paid attention to that bit!

Maybe she’s tired of being the healthy one, and wants to muscle in on a bit of the sympathy garnered by TW.😀

My reading of it has 3 specific trips to Scotland.

1: when RW is aged 20, they go to Ullapool and surrounding region and survive in a bag on the side of a mountain.

2: when they've just bought a house together but not moved in because of them not being married so decide to elope to Skye. They climb Bruach na Frìthe and then return to the house they bought near Dunstall. There is no mention of anything else here about travelling.

3: when they have been married 2 years, in their mid-twenties they go to Mull and Iona.

Oh Mumsnet! How could you!?

Well worth a read if you haven't read this article from 2020

Homeless, bankrupt and fighting a deadly disease: the couple who never gave up hope

Gems include

• A bad business investment years earlier in a company belonging to a friend (not a friend, as it turns out) had come back to haunt them and no amount of fighting in court could prevent Raynor and Moth, then aged 50 and 53, being held liable for huge debts:
• At the very moment when life should have been getting easier, they were made bankrupt, with just £115 in the bank.
• That very week, Moth was diagnosed with a rare brain disease, corticobasal degeneration. Death, they learnt, usually follows six to eight years after onset. ‘You’ve had it for about six years already,’ the consultant told them."
• They were not only trying to cope with the overnight loss of their comfortable life but also with the looming fact that Moth was going to die.
• Moth’s doctors are now supportive of his unconventional approach to holding back his illness. ‘Although they did say, “Erm… the Himalayas, that we can’t support,”’ Raynor says, laughing at the memory of one overly ambitious plan.
• Moth is very much alive, though not quite as well as before, but nevertheless out shopping for provisions. He has confounded his prognosis, and the couple believes it is because he draws strength and restoration from the land around them.