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!"

Anyone going to CH's talk this afternoon in Dulverton?

Scandal comes to the Dulverton Exmoor Literary Festival! - Visit Dulverton

If she used "Walking Away" as her inspiration, that might explain why she wanted the walk to take place in 2013. If she'd set it in 2015, but not done the walk, things might have changed!

I hope someone is. I know someone said it was sold out a while back, and I’d be fascinated to know whether the crowd is mostly people who want to know more about the Observer story and any subsequent discoveries or leads, or aggrieved diehard Raynor Winn fans throwing fruit and hissing!

Or a mixture of both, leading to a fistfight at the back.😀

I'd like someone to test Chloe's knowledge of TSP Scandal issues, like a Mastermind special subject. Eg "On page 73 of Moth's annotated guidebook, a note in the left margin it refers to Great Expectations. What was the date of that production?

Even better if she went head to head with Vroom, Uricon2, Noodler or brandy/catposters from Mumsnet.

PS: Not to forget @SimoArmo and many other great posters!

Maybe we should set up a special MN Mastermind on TSP via Zoom wearing masks so we could preserve our alter egos! Not sure what the prize for the winner would be though. Noodles, fudge bars and a copy of Beowulf perhaps?

I hope someone is too @WellSurely or how else will we know what gets discussed :)

It is interesting @MargaretThursday, Salray made decisions about when she would set the book, 2013 and she can claim homelessness, even if it didn't happen in the way she says. Or she could have lied about the date of the eviction, I wonder what thought process she went through in order to come to that decision, she didn't know Moth was going to be diagnosed in 2015, and we know that some walking happened in 2013.

Was her first idea to write the book as a story of their homelessness and when the diagnosis came in 2015, Salray decided to go with her terminal diagnosis in 2013 idea, to add another compelling hook to the story, she might have felt the diagnosis and Moths illness would go unquestioned and would it really be a problem to backdate his diagnosis by a couple of years. If it was fiction then that's not a problem, but the truth, especially things like diagnosis date can be corroborated by consultation letter, the eviction date can be checked as well, the two things can't both be true in the same timeframe.

Or did the real writing start in 2015, after the diagnosis and the publication of Walking Away, what seems certain is that this book was not a spontaneous one that just happened using notes written in margins as @NaughtyNoodler has shown, that explanation doesn't add up. There are so many questions, Salray's rebuttal makes as much sense to me as Dominic Cummings eye test explanation :)

Curious to know, what does it say about a tortoise?

He metaphorically compares his suitcase to a Galapagos tortoise because of its battered leather exterior..

It's not a real tortoise, SA is lugging a green back pack that is stuffed full, making the lid dome and at first SA thinks it resembles a giant sea turtle laying on the ground, but then decides that Galapagos tortoise is a more poetic comparison and this is what he calls it, so SA definitely walked with a tortoise :)

I think the tortoise was too heavy for SA to carry when walking, so technically it made a parallel journey to his, being transported for him, so he didn't definitely walk the path with his tortoise, just lugged it in and out of lodgings, mistakes were made.

I'm afraid we're situated a bit too far away now to make the journey! But I'm hoping for some feedback also. Since the Observer story broke I've concluded that Chloe H is not only good at her job but 100% fair in her dealings with other people.(meaning that no way would she be interested in conducting a "witch hunt" against the Walkers).
Also will be looking out for feedback when the documentary airs.

I didn’t get tickets to dulverton sorry. By the time I remembered it was sold out.

mistakes were made. Mea culpa.

@Peladon , I'm not worthy, there has been so much in depth and really clever analysis on these threads, including from you! I do wish we could all be there. Not as much as I'd like us to have a Q&A with Salray though of course.

I'll keep an eye on Youtube, all sorts of random stuff goes on there and Dulverton Literary Festival is hardly too 'out there'.

I'd really appreciate it if anyone does spot a link to Chloe's talk.

There seems to be general evidence that readers are passing their Winn books to charity. The Oxfam online now has 81 copies. Again, I'm not judging people for trying to get the max for charity - but there is a fair amount of slice-of-the-pie-ism here too. The shops hoped the notoriety would sell them for £25-£50 but only the £2.99 ones seem to move!

These threads continue to entertain and the analysis and writing has been amazing - I've been reading them all since the revelations and am now looking forward to the documentary next month. Hopefully more will be revealed and additional parties will be contributing to the story - I particularly hope that Bill Cole is involved.

I'm not sure if this has been covered, but I have been particularly puzzled by the second part of the walk in TSP. Tim decided he would go into teaching as he's "spent most of my life in the environment and got so many skills to pass on - perhaps I could go to Uni, get a degree then train to be a teacher". He then made an application in July, had a skype interview and was accepted on his degree course with Student Loan also quickly approved. Would it happen that smoothly? And why would he need another degree to do this if he already supposedly had a Botany Degree (as mentioned when he was a volunteer at National Trust Plas yn Rhiw garden around 2004).

Then when they abruptly left Polly's shed (with no mention of being thankful to Polly for providing them with free accommodation for months) they packed up, taxed and insured the van and handed back the keys.

So they drove away homeless to Poole to re-start the walk. What did they do with the van? Did they just dump it in Poole whilst they walked from late July to Sept/Oct - I wonder if they used the van to sleep in and drove around to various points on the walk. There's no mention of the van again when they move into the flat in Polruan - I assume they would have had to go back to Poole to collect it. (Sorry if this has been covered already in a previous posts).

Then towards the end of their walk they bump into a complete stranger (Anna) who offers them a flat because she is mesmerized by Timoth's story of two people 'living wild in nature.' There is no discussion or negotiation on the amount of rent because 'the student loan should be enough to cover'. Is that likely?

Finally, there is the ridiculous story of the guy 'walking with a tortoise' and the Peregrine falcon that returned from the previous year 'bringing them back'. This sounds like a GCSE level attempt to provide a feelgood ending to the story.

On another note, I went into our local Waterstones today and moved the copies of TSP to the criminal section, and TWS to the fantasy shelf.

Hopefully there will be a link to Chloe's Dulverton talk shortly.

@Gingefringe I agree it is all very unlikely.

On another note, I went into our local Waterstones today and moved the copies of TSP to the criminal section, and TWS to the fantasy shelf.
😂 You are braver than me!

They were still in the Nature Writing/Natural History section when I visited my local Waterstones branch earlier in the week. I was heartened though to see Mark Wallington's Travels with Boogie in the UK travel writing section!

Copied and pasted from the Facebook page for Exmoor magazine.

I’d like say a huge thank you and well done to Ali Pegrum from Stockham Farm Exmoor and Visit Dulverton for yet another brilliant Dulverton Exmoor Literary Festival. It’s an enormous undertaking. This is now firmly established as a gem in Exmoor’s crown. It gets better every year.

Today I had the pleasure of attending two events. Jane Austen is and always will be my favourite writer so that was of course my first pick, in the Town Hall - a conversation between writers @jessicabullnovelist and Helena Kelly. It did not disappoint!

Next, it was up to the church for the sell-out interview with investigative journalist @chloehadj Chloe Hadjimatheou. Chloe was interviewed by @racheljohnsonpublic Rachel Johnson and gave us a detailed insight into how she discovered the truth behind certain aspects of the ‘memoir’, The Salt Path. An hour disappeared in what felt like five minutes. While great things were happening on the pitch at Twickenham (congrats England! 🌹) we were completely enthralled, so were not missing out! I’m not entirely sure if I’m allowed to share the clips I filmed because there’s a documentary being made as we speak (the story is far from over!) and the crew from Sky were filming for that during the talk. I’ll just stick to a clip of the applause and urge you - if you did miss it - to let this be a testament to the quality of the festival and to become a festival friend. You’ll be supporting an important cultural fixture and being a friend will also help you secure your seats early for any events you don’t want to miss next time. I’m looking forward to enjoying more interviews tomorrow. There may even be a few spots left. Check the website in case! visitdulverton.com/dulverton-exmoor-literary-festival-2025/

Once again, well done to Ali and to Dulverton. Bravo! I wish I could have attended every talk all weekend and I’m sure they all gave great pleasure.

See our Winter issue, out now, for a big feature on Ali and the Festival. 😊

PS: thank you to Exmoor Deli for the delicious and life-saving Scotch egg with salad cream (litfest snack of choice; no judgement on my condiment choice please). X

@AgitatedGoose : was the applause in the clip polite or rapturous?

Just seen a Facebook ad for a showing of the TSP film which starts "The Salt Path is the fictional story of" (followed by all the usual blurb). Thought that those of you with dangeorously-higb blood pressure might want to know.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/barmouthnet/posts/24055064674173579/

Polruan is a perplexing element of TSP.

We know they did start living there at some point but that its very unlikely that the mechanism whereby they ended up living there is as described in TSP.

We know that in all likelihood they finished the 2013 stretch of the walk in mid Sept 2013 at or around LE. We also know that they were walking west when they encountered the Parsons at the FAC on 8 Aug 2015. So when did they first reach Polruan? Was this sometime in 2014? If so why were they walking back towards LE the following year? Wouldn't it have made more sense to continue walking towards Poole in 2015 if their aim was to complete the 630 mile SCP? In TSP they claim that they left Poole to walk back towards Polruan "where our path had abruptly ended almost a year ago".. Except that it hadn't - it had probably ended at or near LE!

So did they start walking back from Poole towards Polruan in 2015? It's unlikely. They left Poole in July and reached Weymouth in the first week of the summer school hols (ie 23 July). Its pretty unlikely that they could have reached Porthallow/FAC by 8 Aug and even if they had, they wouldn't have ended up at Polruan! According to the timeline in TSP they ended up at West Bay where they parted ways with D&J. This would have been around the 28 July. Even if they skipped the section between Dawlish and Brixham, I doubt very much they could have covered 210 miles in 10 days!

So what about 2016? There might be rationale for them to walk west at this point. Moth had started at Plymouth Uni in Sept 2015 and his course would have recommenced in Sept 2016. Perhaps they had found some accommodation in Polruan by this stage. Perhaps they still had their van and did small stretches on the path between Poole and Polruan at weekends. Who knows!

Whatever actually transpired, nothing seems to indicate that they miraculously met somebody in Polruan called Anna in 2014 (there would have been no student loan to pay the rent for any accommodation) or 2015 (they were walking west towards LE). All very mysterious.

One thing is for sure though.The reappearing peregrine at Pencarrow Head and the encounter with the man in a 1950s safari suit walking a tortoise called Lettuce on a leash are about as likely to have happened as I am to be the next winner of the RSL Christopher Bland prize for literature!

I've often wondered what is the point of Dave and Julie from 'up north'.

They don't really seem to add much to the narrative. They aren't homeless. They aren't particularly humorous or interesting. In fact, they seem, to all intents and purposes, to be as dull as ditch water compared to others who feature in TSP like Grant, the blind mystic at Culbone or the tortoise man of Pencarrow Head.

They clearly do exist. They feature in TWS and LL and they accompanied Raymoth in April 2024 when they walked the 120 mile Thames Path to raise awareness of CBD for the PSPA. So they are clearly friends and they are one of the few people who are depicted in TSP in a generous light.

Maybe they feature because they are real people and its easier for SW to depict them as they are rather than invent yet another fictional character. Maybe as she ends the narrative of the walk, she has simply exhausted her creative juice and reverted to something simpler and more truthful.

The problem is, that it is all fairly humdrum stuff. Julie remains mute while Dave comes across as a fairly loud mouthed but simple sort with a penchant for gargantuan fry ups: "We're off round Portland today. Quite like Weymouth, me, we've done some shopping, tried to do some washing but it won't dry so we've bought new socks and T-shirts, went to a museum, even got me into an art gallery, didn't you, Ju? Not for long though. So we're round Portland. Two days for us, I think, so we won't see you again after this".

It's hardly the stuff to set the pulses racing! I shudder to think what TSP would have been like if SW had stuck to the truth throughout. Akin to watching paint dry! Of course she probably realised this and decided to make 95% of it up. D&J are perhaps part of the small amount of (rather tedious) truth that remains in TSP.

I'm wondering if publishers of this kind of book are now frantically going through current subs that are up for publication soon. Hopefully, if nothing else, it serves as a salutary lesson to all publishing houses not to just accept an author's word for events having happened as depicted, unless a disclaimer is printed somewhere in the book.

I suspect thus far publishers have just been shrugging - there have been so many 'true stories' proved to be faked - but this one had such mass appeal that maybe due diligence will be a little more diligent in future?