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!"

This is just one of many news stories about it...I just shared the BBC one. I don't think BBC has anything to do with the Coast to Coast path.

As mentioned previously Wainwright's book about the Coast to Coast Walk was first published in 1973 when Sal was 10!

But which she cunningly blurs into that first ‘Mars bar across a crowded cafeteria’ moment. Because Destiny, right?

Something like that:

When I first met Moth, I was a teenager. It was a long time ago, and I even now I can remember sitting in the college canteen having our very first conversation. The Coast to Coast walk had just been designated as a walk, you know, and Wainwright's book had just appeared, and I can remember Moth talking about it. He was so excited, saying this will be a fantastic thing to do. I really want to do this thing. So our very first conversation was straight into this. We really wanted to do it throughout our life together; it was something we were always going to do together, but then a downturn in his health meant we didn’t do it. So I ended up doing it alone.

Surely they had a lot of years between 'I want to do this' and having a house and children and a downturn in his health? I mean, there was all that 'stuff' on Skye when they got married - if Moth was so dead set on walking the coast path, then why not do THAT for a honeymoon?

Or, as I suspect is more likely, is Moth very prone to 'I want to do this!' 'No, now I want to do THIS?' 'What do you mean, I said I wanted to do that? I never did, I have always wanted to do THIS!'

Mind you her recollection of her first conversation with Moth seems to vary according to the interviewer. Here is another version:

I was 17 and in the busy sixth-form college canteen when I spotted a young man dipping a Mars bar into a cup of tea. I thought, “What a very strange thing to do,” and then he looked up and I saw his incredible blue eyes. As I left the room his gaze on me was one of those heart-stopping moments in life. I was besotted.
My first conversation with Moth was about religion, moved on to politics and has continued ever since.

Seems like the Sky documentary is going to air on Dec 15

What's Showing On Sky And NOW Next Week: Get Ready To Walk The Salt Path: A Very British Scandal - Future of the Force

I don't know that I'd call the film a 'runaway hit success' though. Is it? I thought that all the scandal breaking as the film came out really put the brakes on.

If it had been based on a fictional book or truth, then the film could have been a stand alone success. The weak points were all due to the vague parts in the book.

Thinking about it, her 'first meeting' with Moth over the Wainright book is the kind of 'truth' that I can - almost - forgive, memory being what it is, although I would have expected her to skim over the exact title and simply have him brandishing a book about a long distance walk yelling 'I want to do this!'. The precise walk doesn't really matter for the purposes of the anecdote; ending up doing it much much later is more believable if you don't think it was the very book he was reading and ask awkward questions about why they didn't do it while they were young and childfree.

So I can - almost- understand a little memory-elusion making her believe that was the book he had been reading, we all make memory mistakes like this all the time. I say 'almost' because she was too sure of herself and her impeccable memory to actually double check. Because if she'd looked up the dates, thought 'oh, I must have been mistaken,' and left the title out, we'd be none the wiser. BUT SHE DIDN'T.

The points that you made yesterday, @Vroomfondleswaistcoat about the films success being halted by the revelations about the book, seem to be true, it was certainly successful until the scandal broke, I've tried searching for recent articles about the film, all the articles are month's old and talk about the damage done to the film and how there is little chance that it will be nominated for any awards. I agree @HatStickBootsthe film has a difficulty to stand alone, it is entangled with the book, it's not a true story or a fictional one.

I don't understand why Salray wrote TSP, in the way that she did @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, so many untruths that when looked at, you think why? we can all make memory slips but telling big whoppers is calculated. The people who have stayed faithful, the ones who say they don't care about the facts and it's the resilience and triumph they enjoyed, that the book was inspirational because of the adversity suffered, not it's truth, are smaller in number, than those who do care. Why didn't she just write the truth? they had the adversity of the fall out from the embezzlement and how her actions led them to repossession, then a few years later Tim getting diagnosed with something neurological, I don't suppose it would have sold as well :)

I think I did a comment earlier about this @Freshsocks that if she'd written an actual, true account of how she lost them their house (with proper grovelling apologies to anyone harmed by her actions); how she'd seen the error of her ways and how she and Tim decided to go on a long walk to try to clear their heads and sort their marriage out - it could have been a success. Not, most likely, to the extent of TSP with its misery heaped on misery backstory and its triumphant healing in the face of all odds. But she could have written a nice little 'redemption in nature' book, with all the observances that they made during the walk (perhaps minus one or two of the over the top 'homeless' stuff).

But she didn't. She ladled on the disadvantages, probably to make a better narrative. Some of the story may well be correct. It's the bits that aren't that are truly harmful.

Oh, I agree. we all misremember, and/or produce our own mythologies about our distant pasts.

I think it’s just that she has similar ‘lapses of memory’ about far more recent things that supposedly happened, like the amount of money they had weekly in tax credits when they started the SWCP, which shifts about in interviews compared to what she says in TSP. Or when/if Moth fell off a barn roof.

Or how, despite him being a ‘townie’ and never having any farming experience outside of their hobbyfarming a few sheep and chickens on an acre in Wales, SW specifically shows him ‘remembering’ a farming experience he never had when he says ‘Do you remember how much equipment and livestock it took to farm a place this size?’ (To which she says ‘Not really, I think I’ve blocked it out. When we were walking I tried not to remember because thinking about home hurt too much…’ So she’s explicitly misrepresenting their repossessed home as a commercially-viable farm that had livestock and farm machinery, not an acre plot with a few sheep.)

To the point where one does find oneself wondering if the ‘memory lapses’ even of minor things like what she and TW talked about when they first met are a joint result of her having thoroughly rejigged timelines and invented cover stories, so that when she is asked an interview question, she’s not trying to cast her mind back to what really happened, but what she has said happened one or more times, which may bear no resemblance at all to reality.

Much harder to keep your story straight that way, because it’s easy to forget what you said previously. That’s why, if you need to lie, you’re advised to keep as close as possible to the facts. If you’re asked to account for your movements on the night of Saturday (when you shot your next door neighbour), use the real events of Friday night, when you went home, made dinner, and spent the whole evening watching films with your family, and just transpose them.

That's right @Vroomfondleswaistcoat I do remember the discussion around this, also your analysis about the level of success the book might have achieved, probably not as successful as TSP but it could still have been very popular. People are forgiving, but as you point out, aspects of the story as written by Salray are damaging, it's not just a bit of harmless creativity.

Very good piece @WellSurely especially the bit about the lying, and shooting the neighbour :)
Salray has mangled the truth to fit her narrative, she writes like a fantasist, maybe that is what she is, a fantasist writing a brutally honest book.

I’ve had to make a rule now that all conversations that are written down in TSP and it’s two follow ups are fictional. Truth would be a recording of a conversation in real time and then transposed and even then you’d get the recipients feeling somewhat self conscious which could alter the outcome. The example above of the supposed conversations between the pair at Haye farm can’t be true at all and the pretence at “blocking” things out is just cheating the reader yet again.
The documentary will present evidence to prove to the few remaining fans that the author didn’t care about them before and still doesn’t now. She set out to deceive people and take their money and she will put on any disguise in the process of doing so. This is one of those examples of expectation and reality. The reality is there in the facts but these are being ignored because the expectation is that this lovely, cuddly, earth mother-type who is highly emotional, fiercely protective of her dh and a little scatty, would never tell such lies. The more outrage that’s expressed, the more these followers seem to believe her. They will even feel sympathy for the fact that “vitriol” is being “poured” on her, rather than sympathy for those who have been genuinely hurt and affected by the actions of these two before the books were written. It makes me despair. Well, I can only hope that they will watch the documentary and see the truth. As said before, there are many authors to be enlightened by or inspired by but not these two. Any “awareness” these two brought about was a lucky by product of their greed.

If you were an audience member at one of Sal's litfest talks, what would be the one question you would ask her?

For me it would be:

"Your first book sold around 20 copies, your second over 2 million. What do you think made the difference?"

My worry is that those who are firm fans of the 'Raynor Winn' brand won't watch the documentary. They'll think 'here they go again, muck racking over stuff that doesn't matter, why won't they leave her alone?'

They are the people it should be aimed at. Us watching it from the back of the charabanc is just preaching to the converted, we already know it's all a big fraud. Aim it at the fans, those who still think she's been picked on for insubstantial avoidances where 'she probably couldn't remember....'

Absolutely brilliant @NaughtyNoodler
Completely agree with you @Vroomfondleswaistcoat and that is something else, the film depiction. The film, the brand, they are products of lies and exist in their own sphere of perfection. People can be diverted by that and every time Sally poses in front of a lovely poster it distracts them away from the ugly truth. They can get their ‘feels’ from the fiction, so who cares.

As we've discussed before there are so many aspects of TSP which made it a global best seller. I think the love story angle with Sal striding out of the door trying to rage against the dying of the light with her terminally ill husband, embarking on a final long distance walk on borrowed time, played a huge part in its success.

If Sal had divulged the truth that they just went off on a short walk on the SWCP and Moth had an undiagnosed muscle problem which made walking a bit difficult, I'm not sure it would have sold as well.

Seems that the penny is still dropping with some people that TSP isn't 100% true!

The DM article SW wrote in Jan 2023 is worth re reading!

RAYNOR WINN relives the incredible coastal walk from The Salt Path | Daily Mail Online

More memories of Rowena Cade, the creator of the Minack Theatre, including comments by those who knew her. Quite a contrast from the insulting description of her in TSP as a feckless toff who pootled around while her gardeners did all the work.

www.facebook.com/share/1ADood9yb4/

In the hands of a good writer, it could have worked. Played more to the 'this could be me and my husband' end of the market rather than those who secretly like to read about people in extremis. In fact, throw in some humour (like Mark Wallington did) and make the central characters appealing and it would be a hit. A bumbling couple, him struggling with muscle weakness and her trying to escape from having been a total tit, set off on a disastrous and ill-equipped long distance walk, where they shout at each other a lot and try to pretend that they are somehow superior to everyone they meet?

I'd give it a go.

“Mrs k enjoyed the story and dared to believe”
It amazes me that after several years of the hype and all of the reverence shown to this couple, that fans of them weren’t aware of the revelations which made news headlines at the time.