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!"

Yes it’s true, they had the brainwave of putting the terminal diagnosis into the book because in 2013 they didn’t actually have one (and still don’t). In 2013 they were a couple who’d lost their home not through “no fault of their own” etc and then went on the run to escape their debts and angry people they’d pissed off.

Her decision, when she suddenly decided to cast Moth as a man without much time to live and then to be healed by the gruelling walk, is pre meditated surely? She knew that hook would sell.
I’m sure the farms where she worked with the shearers would remember her. That part seems true to me. I agree that Polly was offering work that seemed obvious Tim could do at that point and that Sally twists it all for the purposes of her narrative.

What makes you sure that Sal worked for months bagging fleeces? There is no other evidence in her work history that she either liked or was suited to long hours of repetitive physical labour.

Her decision, when she suddenly decided to cast Moth as a man without much time to live and then to be healed by the gruelling walk, is pre meditated surely? She knew that hook would sell.

I very much agree with this @HatStickBoots . Broke (for whatever reason, move along, move along nothing to see here) couple do the SWCP, maybe not saleable. Add in vague symptoms in one of them, ditto. Appalling, terminal diagnosis the very week they lost/mislaid/had taken back for good reason (delete as applicable) their home, that's a hook.

The more you break it apart, the more contrived and manipulative it seems.

If she was writing a book which was largely fictional, why would she need to go to the effort of engineering a neurologist's diagnosis of CBD in June 2015 and retrofitting it to a walk that occurred in 2013/4? Why not just invent the diagnosis and leave it at that?

I don't think it was that Tim wasn't ill at all, it's more that she talked up all his symptoms and his diagnosis. Doctors seem to be saying that he had CBD-like symptoms but very untypical and slow progressing. She took it as a definite diagnosis of CBD and that he would be dead within a few years. She also seems to have taken every single ache, pain, naturally occurring weakness or infirmity as proof that he was going downhill, when a lot of it seems to be normal, age-related problems from which he would recover anyway. And she's talked it all up into 'walking long distances without enough food cures CBD. Gavel.'

I know it sounds silly but I think some of it might actually be about the 'hilarious' mistaken identity with Simon A. When he did the SWCP walk is a matter of record and to give any semblance of credibility to the recurring gag, it couldn't be set at any other time.

A lot of their 'brand' relied on stuff that could be described as 'searing honesty' (&c) by various reviewers and in some ways, anchoring it to that specific period might have given added credibility.

Don't know, speculation, but she needed to retrofit the diagnosis for dramatic purposes. Man with a few odd symptoms doesn't work.

And if she retrofitted the diagnosis then she can claim that the walking was the cure. If he was (as seems likely) diagnosed AFTER the walk - well, it's not nearly as poignant because she can't conclude that the walk 'saved him'.

I’m not 100% sure… but she seems to know enough about it to have done it in her past, maybe when young. Having embezzled money from one employer and who knows for what reason she lost the job prior to that, it makes me think she could only do cash in hand and perhaps she was asked to do it at that time. I don’t know. I do think that her description of it is accurate. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it was invented for the book, just to show the reader once again that she was a hard working, decent woman able to pull her weight amongst men, doing something she could humble brag about and score points with when scoffing about the city farmer and his soft hands later on.

All fraudsters and confidence tricksters, think of all the computer scams that are now so prevalent, work by creating an alternative version of reality that actually isn't. The Walkers will have done this when defrauding the Hemmings, and possibly others, so the messing around with reality in the books is entirely to be expected and just a continuation of the same theme. The books claim to be truthful are up there with all those emails offering you riches if you just go a little way and accept their version of the facts.

No they haven't been saved. Not by 'The Path', not by 'Nature'. They are completely unredeemed. In a Slough of Despond of their own making. 😨

The irony being that nothing softens your hands like doing anything with fleeces. All the lanolin makes your skin REALLY soft!

.

"Croaking" in the frog sense?

Polly's farm had sheep and a large barn for lambing and shearing (as written in TSP) so she could have simply observed what happened. Or done a day of work and realised it was too much hard graft. I personally don't buy the story of her working all summer as part of a crew going to different farms.

TBH wrapping fleeces isn’t difficult. I helped one of my DD’s with her sheep, and whilst it’s dirty, smelly, hot work it’s not especially arduous. I would have been late 50’s early 60’s, not especially strong and managed it perfectly well. So should have been no problem for a fit early 50’s woman apparently used to farm work.

IMO dirty, smelly, hot work is exactly why I think Sally unlikely did it for any great length of time. I imagine the moaning was intolerable with the seasoned workers.

We know that TSP is supposed to be set in 2013, bearing in mind this is not supposed to be fiction, but a true story. This timeframe is reinforced by the running joke of Moth being mistaken for SA, and we know SA did walk in 2013. Salray has published the diagnosis consultation in her rebuttal and we can see the date is 2015. Salray could have set their story in 2015 when Moth got the diagnosis, but that wouldn't have tied in with the property being repossessed and the homelessness wouldn't be the reason for walking.

For whatever reason Salray decided to retrofit the diagnosis for her story, I can only imagine that she decided the homelessness had to figure to make it work. I think SA's book is the one that Salray has used as inspiration, not 500 miles walkies. I have only just started reading SA's Walking Away, already there is mention of a tortoise and I'm only on page 39 :)

It’s that obvious mistake which might just prove she hasn’t got a clue what she’s talking about after all! I hope the documentary digs into all these stories.

I am hoping the documentary will enlighten us about so many questions@HatStickBoots, it feels like there are so many possible answers, I'm open to all sorts of things being true or false, I've formed opinions and have theories that change and could be completely wrong, we are speculating about so many things on these threads. The problem with TSP and Salray, is that she has written a story and presented it to the reader as truth, some is truth, a lot is fiction, or fiction based on truth.

Polly’s farm was too comfortable and kind, of course they weren’t provided with a place to stay, they were forced into hard labour, practically modern slavery in fact.

SalRay has a really odd sense of humour. The “he must be Simon Armitage” running “gag”. I keep thinking of the Chicken Shop tale, too.

One thing that is interesting is that it seems Moth did write some notes in the margin of PD's SWCP guidebook. The notes on the Porthcurno to Mousehole section match his handwriting on the signature to the Cooper loan document.

But that begs more questions:

• did he write notes on all the pages of PD's guide to the SWCP as described in TSP or did Sal just get him to write notes on this particular page which she dictated to him?

• why is the PD guidebook conveniently open at the Porthcurno section where they finished up in Sept 2013?

• why are the pages on the l-h of the guidebook weathered and thumbed while on the right hand side they appear pristine?

• why are the notes in the margin so enigmatic? (Treen, what an experience....) These aren't what you would expect somebody to write if they were writing up each day's events at the end of each day's walk.

• why is there no mention in the margin comments of the Iolanthe performance at the Minack? Does the enigmatic comment "Great Expectation..." refer to a performance of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations at the Minack by the Theatre in the Square Company from 8-12 Sept 2014? If so, why is there no mention of it in TSP?

• there is reference in the margin notes to a mackerel salad being eaten (presumably at the cafe at Lamorna Cove). These items currently cost around £10.95! So were Raymoth really surviving on 10p packets of noodles or shelling out on more expensive food? if so, was this because they had substantial savings or that they were getting far more than the £48pw working tax credits?

• the margin comments refer to an American lady (Betsy) whom they met pretty much adjacent to John Le Carre's house as described in TSP with the enigmatic comment "Mr John's house - who would of thought it?" In TSP the meeting with an elderly American lady looking for the house of her English friend, the author John Le Carre/David Cornwell, is described, but there is no mention that the path runs next to the house he owned (Tregiffian Cottages). So did this unlikely incident really take place? As his house isn't signposted and in TSP neither the American lady or Raymoth know where Le Carre's house actually is, then the comment "Mr John's house ... who would have thought it?" with a circle on the map to the exact location of Le Carre's house must refer to research done subsequently which helped Raymoth locate his house. This in turn suggests that the margin notes (at least on the Porthcurno to Mousehole section) weren't written at the end of each day!

• the way the margin comments are phrased implies that they were walking from west to east. They meet Betsy again at the Lamorna Cafe. So when did they walk this stretch? In 2014 perhaps? Did they re-walk the stretch in 2015 and was this when they went to the Lamorna Cove cafe? The margin comments mention camping at the rocky headland of Carn Du before Lamorna Cove which doesn't suggest they had lunch at the cafe in 2014. So perhaps they walked this stretch twice. If so, when did they (if indeed they did) walk the stretch from Poole to Polruan, (nearly 300 miles)?

• did SW really use the margin notes as the basis for TSP or had she been taking her own notes and contemplating writing a 2nd book for some time? She claims in one interview that she decided to write the notes up into a book because the margin notes were fading away (along with Moth's memory of the walk). But the notes that Moth was taking were in pencil, which wouldn't fade away that quickly (2 years after the walk finished) and the notes in the margins of the Porthcurno - Mousehole section look pretty clear....

As you say, let's hope the docudrama answers some of these questions. My concern that there are simply so many outstanding questions surrounding TSP that it's going to be difficult to answer them all in the docudrama!

Probably should have clarified under the circumstances ! Yeah, frog. Possible toad, only they don't so much hop.

@NaughtyNoodler : thanks for that forensic post - it was fascinating.

@Uricon2 : rrrrivet!

The sense of humour is almost juvenile and not very well-developed. It feels to me (and I write humour) more as though she was told to go through it and put more 'funny bits' in , as they don't feel organic (or, indeed, very funny). it reads more as though we are supposed to be laughing at the rude, ignorant 'townies' and their attitudes rather than amusing asides or the couple laughing at themselves for how ridiculously unprepared they were for all this.

It certainly seems clear that her representation of having been ‘farmers’ in Wales is substantially untrue — unless they rented lots more land that she never mentions, they had a one-acre plot of land and kept chickens and a few sheep who were essentially pets. You could call it a smallholding at a stretch, except there’s no mention of raising other food on it. Not a commercial business. The income came from the barn let.

And it’s certainly not the kind of large scale commercial enterprise SW gives TW apparently impressive familiarity with in TWS when they’re discussing what they want to do with the cider farm, and TW starts reeling off figures about livestock and machinery, and how they don’t want to stock the farm themselves. (Which we know was never an option, anyway because Bill Cole had only given them a tenancy for the house and orchards, and the rest of the farm was entirely separately handled.)

It seems to me that all SW’s farming knowledge is likely to have come from her childhood, and in the books is just used to give the impression of her and TW being proper farmers/back to the land types rather than people with spotty work histories and a powder blue Aga.

Wouldn’t be terribly surprising if the fleece bagging was equally borrowed from childhood observation.