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!"

I think the solution to your understandable puzzlement is that it's largely made up. We know Tim started his studies a year later for starters.

Good points this morning from everyone, there are so many twists and turns in the timelines, Salray has created a tangle of lies rather than a web, I wonder what snippets of new information came to light yesterday at Dulverton if any. I thought it was interesting that Sky were filming for the documentary, as mentioned in the piece @AgitatedGoose posted last night, presumably they haven't finished and are adding new material.

I’m wondering if it would be worth copying and pasting some of the more forensic pieces of research on here and emailing them to CH. There’s so much material on this thread.

I’ve certainly always assumed she’d be aware of it? Especially if some other journalists were contacting posters via PM.

@Gingefringe 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.

Yes, she doesn't even try to be authentic on this whole stretch. (I have to do things from memory at the mo - I have a broken hand as well as head).

If they were there much at all, your suggestion seems apt: bumping into D & J about 4 times; scooping up ammonites and walking with them; homeless person taxiing them around; walking in the wrong direction without realising in a printed factual book. Getting train and bus to miss out another 30 miles or so ....

Again, I wouldn't expect the ordinary reader to glean all of this - but editors, director, screenwriter? Where were you all?

I wish I could do more justice to the excellent setting out of yourself and @NaughtyNoodler - appreciate it. One plus is that my. very regularly taken, blood pressure is brilliant!

I think CH is aware of what has been posted on these threads @AgitatedGoose, when searching for different information, CH has posted requests for people to give her information, and as @SimoArmo says some posters have been contacted by journalists, these Mumsnet threads have likely been very interesting and helpful to CH.
A broken hand as well @BecalmedBrandy, you really have been in the wars, I agree where were all the people who should have checked facts? glad your blood pressure is good 👍💐

Without going into the mind numbing detail, I've looked at account of what they claim they walked in TSP, the dates and the actual mileages. I can't prove it, but including the sections they admit they skipped and some that they didn't, I reckon they may only have walked around 2/3 of the path (430/630 miles). I don't think they ever walked more than 200 miles in one go, which torpedoes the claim made by SW in several interviews that it was only when the 20 mile mark was passed at Portheras Cove, that Moth began to see the health benefits of arduous long distance walking. We know that is b-s because the tentative CBD diagnosis didn't come until 2015 and in the second part of TSP, SW contradicts herself about the health benefits for Moth when she says (p241) at the end of the walk from Poole to the trig point at Golden Cap that:

" His face was clear, he wasn't even hiding pain, and he was laughing. In the fog-bound heather we hugged and jumped, laughing, kissing,shouting. Was this possible? From the point of not being able to get out of bed, back to strong and in control of his limbs in just under two weeks. This shouldn't be possible. but it was. I should have noticed that I was no longer seeing the drag in his footprints, but it hadn't registered."

This is all very odd as by this stage they had only walked for around a week (exc 3 days resting up in Weymouth). So a week's easy walking and Moth miraculously recovers from all his physical ailments and enjoys a bit of trig planking at Golden Cap! Hmmm. Something doesn't add up.....

Obviously the big things CH discovered (TW’s diagnosis and the real reason they lost their home) are, and should have been checkable, as there will have been a substantial paper trail in both cases, but it’s less clear to me how someone at PRH could have checked that the second stint on the path was roughly as claimed in TSP, short of someone going into full-on private detective mode.

There’s an alibi for them having a single, crappy old phone they seldom charge, so no date-stamped photos, there’s no indication they had contact details for Dave and Julie, and the homeless wood dwellers, the homeless men they meet in Plymouth etc weren’t going to be contactable, and people carrying all their belongings aren’t going to hang onto hotel receipts, bus tickets etc. ‘Anna’, who doesn’t care how much rent they pay her, for a flat in a tourist area where she could make a small fortune from tourist lets? Tortoise man?

I agree that where they left the van is an excellent question, but PRH wouldn’t have known about the Parsons having encountered them walking in the wrong direction at the wrong time and documenting it on their blog.

Even if PRH had had a far high expectations of evidence than the vast majority of memoir publishers, the Walkers would have looked perfectly plausible if they’d said they couldn’t produce a single piece of evidence that they’d done the second part of the path as claimed, other than some notes on the guidebook.

(Does a bank statement show which ATM you withdrew cash from?)

I agree @WellSurely checking all of those things would be nigh on impossible, unless you got all the posters that have contributed to these threads working on it for a few months :)

They could have asked to see the medical evidence, a very simple thing, that would have blown the CBD/terminal diagnosis claim and sounded alarm bells, maybe?

I think they absolutely should have — though it’s of course possible they did, and SW pulled out the same medical letters she attached to her statement, and said, looking terribly sad and wounded to have been asked for proof of her husband’s terminal diagnosis, ‘Sorry — you’ll understand that, having been made homeless, we’ve mislaid the earlier paperwork. I can write to the consultant if you really, really need it…’

And, unless some editorial assistant at PRH was on ‘investigative journalist smelling a rat’ mode, they’d probably feel embarrassed, see that CBD was written on NHS headed paper and say ‘Oh, no, that’s fine’ and not look further.

I have thought about that possibility @WellSurely but well surely, they couldn't have read that letter dated 2015 and believed her? The letter doesn't corroborate her timeline, if nothing else, If someone looked at that letter, then they must have colluded with her in the deception.

@WellSurely it’s less clear to me how someone at PRH could have checked that the second stint on the path was roughly as claimed in TSP, short of someone going into full-on private detective mode.

Please allow my cynicism but I hardly feel it would be that full-on to question a few things. This is directed at the 'professionals' not my fellow posters.

Look on the map: Sally has messed up big time - got Abbotsbury and Moonfleet in the wrong order.

Think: ammonites are very heavy ... how did you carry them?

You may remember that some of us instantly saw through the stranded ferry at Plymouth.

They spell out on this section that they make no attempt to do any of the Isle of Portland or Dawlish to Berry Head. This does not curtail PRH's constant 630 mile marketing.

Again, from memory - not to protect myself from error but because I am frustratingly clunky!
😣

The phone wasn't crappy, it was newly bought for them by the daughter in TSP. They used it to take photos so there should be timestamp evidence in the photos they took. Releasing the photos with time metadata could clear this whole thing up regarding the walk timeline if they wanted to prove it. Except they can't because it is certain such evidence would only confirm the TSP timeline is untrue.

I think they wouldn’t necessarily have been looking to construct a timeline, though, or for corroboration of the book timeline. They would have been doing a boxticking exercise that involved seeing some form of external proof that TW had the condition the book centres on him having. Letters from NHS consultant, check. Name of condition mentioned, check.

If the person looking at the document did go further and say ‘Don’t you have anything earlier, like anything from the actual consult the week you lost your home?’ it would be easy for SW to look sad and say ‘We lost a lot of stuff that got left behind when the bailiffs arrived…’ And offer, with a grieved sigh, to write to the consultant to see if he can provide more documentation, if it’s really, really needed that they provide evidence they’re not lying about the worst trauma of their lives.

I find the medical letters hard to read, Salray has confused the issue by photographing them badly and arranging them out of order, I'm sure that what you are saying could be right @WellSurely if someone junior was assigned to look at the medical info, she would have bamboozled them. If it was someone more senior, she could have cried and as you say, pass off the lack of medical letters, that still wouldn't explain them not recognizing the information about Tim's medical history was incorrect. If the person didn't care because they were just thinking of the money they would make, they could have justified it to themselves by believing Tim had been suffering after all even if not diagnosed.

No, she says she’s going to buy them one, but it’s not clear she does. There are references to the cold draining the battery (which certainly happens more with older phones, notably mine!), and either way, when they plug it in in the Geevor cafe, it’s been drenched and won’t turn on. Also references to having no phone credit and not turning it on for days at a time.

My point isn’t that they couldn’t take photos, because they clearly took some, but that there are a lot of reasons given in TSP to provide a perfectly natural explanation as to why they could say they couldn’t provide corroborating photos of the second period on the path.

When Penguin eventually put out its comment, it was that "all necessary due diligence" had been done. My eye was caught by the (no doubt carefully-inserted) qualifier "necessary".

I agree that a close reading would throw up doubts about the diagnosis even if you disregarded the dates, but bear in mind that PRH aren’t suspicious of this hard luck story — they’re not mounting a legal case or being investigative journalists smelling a rat. A legal department is satisfied there’s nothing actionable in the health claims or libellous in references to identifiable people. You’re just some junior editorial staff who got the embarrassing job of having to ask an author for evidence her husband is really dying.

IIRC, photo metadats would also include the model of camera or phone.

That's interesting @Peladon I wonder just what legal definition necessary has in this case?
I keep clinging on to this diagnosis letter of 2015 @WellSurely because it seems to me to be the most tangible thing to disprove a number of Salray's claims and she has shared it publicly. It proves that the consultation as described by Salray in TSP and it's diagnosis are a fabrication, there is no mention of walking in the medical history given in 2015 and the letter is dated 2015, so anything written about the consultation and diagnosis happening before the walk in 2013 is not true. Would the checking of medical documents have been carried out by someone junior?

But again, we’re on investigative journalist mode here, to be thinking about that!

Obviously we’re approaching events in the full knowledge that a bestselling ‘true story’ is a tissue of lies, rejigged timelines, exaggerations and outright fiction. PRH were approaching a MS in good faith and their ‘due diligence’ will almost certainly have consisted of a glance at some NHS paperwork that seems, roughly, to corroborate the diagnosis. They might even have seen a repossession order, or parts of one, that shows the Walkers had their home repossessed. Job (probably) done.

I am looking forward to the documentary because well surly,@WellSurely this issue with be explored :) it is an intriguing tale, to me anyway, and still so many questions to be answered :)

You have reminded me though that Penguin Australia had only been fined in the court for not checking a medical condition a couple of years before. Given that this was a cook book and not a factual memoir like SalRay.

Another non-medical googler who exhorted the 'natural':

Belle Gibson : "false hope" to many people and she too was exposed by investigative journalism.
"No, none of it's true," she said, but refusing to take further responsibility, she added, opaquely: "I am still jumping between what I think I know and what is reality. I have lived it and I'm not really there yet."
The author has admitted to fraud as she never had cancer. The subject of her book was that she beat a brain tumour by eating healthy food and using natural therapies.

Are you calling me surly, @Freshsocks?😀

(That should be my next username. I am capable of vast amounts of surliness. And dourness.)😀

I don’t know whether the PRH due diligence is likely to be covered in the documentary. If PRH are still planning to publish OWH in some form, they have an ongoing relationship with her as an author, and wouldn’t want to jeopardise that, even if they’re quite sure they’ll never buy another book of hers. A journalist might get a former employee to talk anonymously/off the record, I suppose, but I doubt it on a documentary? Fiona Crosby, who was the editor of TSP, has long since moved on, too, and isn’t going to want to tarnish her own reputation.