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 wouldn't argue that PRH should have checked out the whole story in the same forensic detail as we have done on these threads. But I DO think that they shouuld have asked some more probing questions on the whole 'homelessness' thing. I think someone said earlier that it ought to be easy to look up details of house repossessions etc, and with some of the big claims that were being made ('CBD miraculously cured by walking!'), then it behooved PRH to do more in depth checking on these very big details.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is what they say. You can't make life-changing claims in print and not expect people to want actual, full details.

So sorry @WellSurely too late to edit 💐 my late husband used Mr Surly as his email, so sorry I was trying to be funny and made a rude typo:) mistakes were made again!

I agree @Vroomfondleswaistcoat the homelessness and health claims could and should have been checked properly, without great difficulty (probably not by me:) Would the publishers have taken Jennifer Christie's word for the Walker's validity, could she have presented them as already vetted by herself?

The implication is she does. Either way, we and the publisher know that photos were taken as evidenced by all those used in PR. And we know the phone was used to take them (as described in TSP at LE and golden cap, and shown directly in the photo TW took of them in a roadside mirror). These photo files will show when they were taken. The point is, the publisher (and agent) probably never thought to query the veracity of the walk.

Yes and the Tim trigging photo was used to supplement Sal's narrative on the TV programmes. It was used as if it was Golden Cap in the compilation when our clever contributor shared it was:
Yr Wyddfa, Snowdon, trig point

Just checked, and yes: metadata would usually show the make and model of camera/phone as well as when and where the photo was taken. Photos including metadata (unless edited) would easily clear up the walking timeline. Not expecting those to be provided though!

That's a good point (and an explanation for why they could have fobbed off the fact checkers at PRH who aren't paid up employees of New Scotland Yard!).

Of course we now know that we aren't talking about the second period on the path, so much as the second (2014?), third (2015) and possibly fourth (2016) period on the path.

There are photos of the Poole to Polruan (or maybe Plymouth) stretch including one near Scratchy Bottom, some on Chesil Beach and one at Adelaide's Chapel, Penlee Point. What's more, the specs of those photos suggest a phone upgrade after the 2013 leg had been completed.

It should be perfectly straightforward to check the metadata of those photos to time stamp them.

Here's a conundrum.

The photo of Sal and Tim at South Haven Point near Poole purports to be from July 2014 according to TSP and articles where it has featured. The photo of Sal outside her tent purports to come from near the half way point near Porthallow, by implication in late Sept 2013, according to the narrative in TSP. Yet in the 2014 photo Sal looks considerably younger than the photo taken a year earlier! Has she discovered the secret of eternal youth or is there a more sinister explanation?

Thanks for these. Confused as to why tent (insensitively pitched again) would be at Porthallow - this is where they stayed at Fat Apples, which is inland?

Probably slightly beyond FAC and beyond Gillan Creek.

Never mind that, look at the gurn! Would it kill her to smile?

This is such an unfortunate advert on Mumsnet. It only comes up on the relationship board 😬😂🤣

Does that mean Penguin is still
paying to promote the book even after
all of CH’s findings?

must be!

That’s very disappointing. Suggests that profit comes above truth if so.

I have just been re-reading parts of The Salt Path that I first read many months ago. I can’t believe how unbelievable the whole thing is, especially the Polly story. So they spent nine or ten moths living with Polly, working on restoring “the shed” for at least four hours every day and chopping trees into logs so they could stay warm, in return for a roof over their heads ( although they paid for the electricity). Salray also worked for free “ in the laundry” and “ cleaning the holiday lets” ( not mentioned but implied that they belonged to Polly and Salray says she was unable to get any outside work ) except for the two and a half months she worked with the shearers from 8.00am until 7.00pm with only rainy days off in this “early dry summer” For this minimum ten weeks work she received the princely sum of £1500, which works out as, at most, £150 per week. I know it was 2013 or 2015 but really, when a pot of tea in a cafe was £4?
Are they the world’s greatest morons or was Polly the most evil woman who ever walked the earth, “in control” as Salray says? It is presented as akin to modern day slavery, but then in the acknowledgments at the end she thanks Polly!

@Aussiebornandbred : don't forget that their financial needs were minimal because they don't need to eat like other people.

To be fair (I KEEP playing Devil's Advocate on these threads, I should buy myself some horns) - I don't think we can say too much based on assumed age in a photograph. I have some truly horrific ones of me where I look about eighty and others where I'm an absolute stripling in comparison, all taken within days of each other. A lot depends on lighting, clothing, expression, illness, etc etc.

Good point. Although it's also worth making the point that the clothes they are wearing at South Haven Point don't appear in any other photos inc the one of Moth near Swyre Head just down the Dorset coast which would have been taken within 10 days of the South Haven Point photo if the TSP itinerary is accurate. That's another reason I suspect that the photo at South Haven Point was taken much earlier.

Many of the advertising and promotional bits will just have been block-booked and paid for in advance. I doubt there's anyone sitting at PRHs advertising department thinking 'hey, that lot at Mumsnet are still talking about this, I bet they will be interested in buying the book!'.

They will have bought and paid for x amount of time on each website and x number of ads in magazines, and these will still be running.

In which case, and for the sake of integrity, surely they ought to have pulled them?

Nobody will be overseeing, it will all be automatic and, as PRH is still showing OWH as available for pre order to be published next October, they aren't going to go to all the effort of tracking where and when adverts are scheduled to run just in order to pull them. After all, no laws have been broken, as others have pointed out. SalRay has behaved abominably, obviously, and there's no doubt that much of TSP and other books aren't as 'painfully true' as they are supposed to be, but nothing illegal. And the books are still selling - not in the numbers they were, but people are still buying. So why wouldn't they keep advertising?

Although, if I were PRH, I'd remove any references to any of the books being true or factual.

It's also worth saying that PRH will have loads of other books on the go, being considered and bought, being edited, being copy-edited, having covers designed, going to the printers, being marketed, being sent out for review etc etc etc. At the moment there's nothing to 'do' with SW's past oeuvre which is out there in the world and still selling, but presumably not in need of any immediate decisions or actions by PRH.

It's impossible to know what stage OWH is at, given that we don't know what, if anything, SW is doing/being required to do to alter it. Maybe her editor already has a new MS to edit, and that may be a considerable job -- or maybe getting the MS is still some time away, so thinking about marketing it etc is in the future.

I do find myself speculating about SW's state of mind while writing/revising OWH. The two existing sequels to TSP benefited from a huge groundswell of the reading public's interest in what happened next and its goodwill (though it's also true that TWS has very obviously the signs of Difficult Second Album Syndrome, which you'd expect in trying to follow up a once-off).

But this will be the first time she's writing a book, if she's indeed writing/rewriting it, with a knowledge of a potentially actively hostile readership, or at least one containing previous fans who feel outraged and betrayed, and the likelihood of negative reviews, and that all reviews in newspapers, even positive ones, will reference the CH investigation.

I still think OWH will have a very soft launch, possibly e-book first, and with minimal advertising. After all, those who are really looking forward to it will have pre-ordered anyway so no need for a big, trumpeting launch, and those who aren't bothered either way aren't the audience they want.

And I suspect there will be minimal re-writing. Sal is going to stick to her guns, she is right, the mean girls are wrong and her books are perfect as they are.

So I think the book will slide out to the faithful very quietly.

You may be right. One for the diehard fans, no fanfare etc.

And absolutely, I can imagine trying to get SW to rewrite OWH could be like one of the labours of Hercules, especially if she's now casting her editor as one of the mean girls if she's asked for rewrites, the big old meanie.

The only thing I wonder about is whether SW might view the rewrite/additional chapter or whatever as a chance to 'stick to her guns' and Tell Her Side of the Story and Have the Last Word.

That gush of self-righteousness that fuelled the ill-advised rebuttal statement (that in fact gave considerably more fodder to CH's allegations than it removed) might come into play again? She does love a chance to look like a victim, and in fact all three existing books are studies in victimhood, even though the second and third were written by a very comfortably-off woman with an enviable life.