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!"

So glad to see you @DisappointedReader :) I'm a bit behind the others today, just catching up before daybreak. Thank you for keeping the charabanc running, I hope your own repairs are holding good. I'll haul all the empty cider bottles to the bottle bank tomorrow, I have a feeling we are going to be getting through a lot more :)

Thread 20 : To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

As always, please fill up this thread before boarding the charabanc in a disorderly fashion to Thread 20. A repost of this link very close to the end of this thread would be the naked rambler's noodles and the jam and cream/cream and jam on the scone.

I guess The Salt Path film was never released and is unlikely to be released in the US? If so, I guess that must have been a blow to the producers although I'm not sure how many low budget UK films ever go on general release in the US.

Box office receipts by country for The Salt Path film.

Date for the diary Thurs 8 January 2026!

The Real Salt Path Story | The Observer

In the UK it seems to be very popular in village halls etc. Sold to potential customers as a life-affirming true story etc (except for one place which broke the mould and advertised it as "the fictional story of...").

I honestly don’t know how they can live with themselves. They allow the book to go alllll the way into a film production without once thinking “should it?” being that it’s whole premise is a LIE. Reading her first person narrative and passively accepting that the content of TSP must be true because it says so on the tin is one thing, but seeing it played out on the big screen makes its plot holes far more glaring. The director decided to use flashbacks to explain why they were on the path and the diagnosis of Moth’s CBD, which was probably the best way to handle that material but if you hadn’t read the book you’d be utterly clueless and that does not work. The flashback material looks like fiction which has been embarrassingly under researched, but the story has been sold to the film company as truth, so why would they write and film it differently? The Walkers allowed this travesty to happen. What idiots!

Hubris or perhaps just plain greed? Maybe they got carried away with their success and never asked themselves the rather fundamental question, what could possibly go wrong. Isn't this often the undoing of pathological liars?

Wow, that just about sums them up @NaughtyNoodler . Text book.

I suppose that nobody ever really thought about it. The books were successful, nobody had raised any issues over the years that TSP and sequels were in print - why would the film be any different? People have been glossing over the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the books, why would someone suddenly stand up and say 'hang on a minute...'?

It took Our Chloe being approached by someone (who must, presumably, have been sitting on their hands quietly fuming for a fair few years) to blow it open. If they hadn't come forward, no doubt the film would be a 'must see' even now and raking in more money for the Walkers.

Oh, and thanks to @DisappointedReader for readying the charabanc for the onward journey and I hope life improves for you. We'll save you a seat.

Now, who's got the fudge?

What Sal perhaps didn't understand is what impact the film would have on the residents of Pwilheli with the town cinema situated just feet away from the former offices of Martin Hemmings. Clearly this tipped Ros Hemmings over the edge and made her more willing to speak out. It's one thing making your books available in bookstores and going to publicise them at small scale literary festivals but its a far bigger risk exposing your story to a wider audience on the silver screen.

I think Ros said in one of her interviews that she'd been wanting to speak out for ages but she didn't know who would listen. And perhaps Sal thought that the NDA (WHO thinks to take out an NDA? Particularly over an event that all the locals know all about anyway...) would save her from just this kind of event

Thank you @DisappointedReader and hoping that you're recovering well. We've improvised a sick bay on the charabanc (conveniently close to the fudge, cider, sloe gin and Headless Simon) and there's a space there for you!

From the blurb for the Observer talk (thanks @NaughtyNoodler ) I surmise Timoth's health will feature.

Re: the state of Haye farm. 2 people, one ill, must have had incredible skills and worked non stop to turn the spongy, "borderline ruin" old house into something "bright and beautiful" in the space of 18 months, at the same time as rewilding the orchard, all "largely by themselves". A Herculean task (if it had actually happened that way)

Yes, it would be interesting to know how the Hemmings realised that the increasingly popular Raynor Winn was their former employee Sally Walker. It must have truly added insult to injury.

Just listened to the Sal's interview on Fearne Cotton's Happy Place podcast.

A couple of things struck me. At 21.00 Sal makes some pretty radical statements linking exercise to improvements in CBD (muscle memory helping rebuild the neural pathways destroyed by Tau protein) and at 44.00 she mentions meeting the man who takes Lettuce, his pet tortoise for a daily walk on a dog lead!

If small town Wales is anything like small town Yorkshire, everybody will have known almost from the second the first book hit the shops. Someone will have seen the author picture and read some of the online interviews and word will get round like wildfire. I suspect there will have been a lot of angry people who could see Sal benefiting from what they knew to be lies - but who just didn't know what to do about it.

I mean if I saw that someone I had reason to profoundly dislike and who had lied to me and stolen from me had written a book fudging their past, apart from contacting the publisher (who wouldn't care), what could I do? Actually, I'd probably contact their agent (who wouldn't care either) and get fobbed off. It would take someone who had clout and who could get the word out (like Chloe H) to see any action.

If Chloe had just shrugged and thought there was no story there, people would still be buying the books and watching the film in their droves. In fact, they might still well be but I'm hoping not.

It seems to have gone down a storm at The Plymouth Arts Cinema with enthusiastic opening remarks by the president of the SWCP....

Film review: The Salt Path - "immersed in panoramic shots of the gorgeous coastline" | Plymouth Arts Cinema | Independent Cinema for Everyone | located at Arts University Plymouth.

Wondering whether this was before or after her Big Issue interview, where she said that she was not a doctor or a scientist, would hate to give people false hope, and therefore could only speak about Moth's own actual experience.

I have never thought people were mugs for believing the story of TSP - why would someone lie, to that extent, about such serious issues?

However, there were always plenty of us who were sceptics - but nobody cared and there were enough fans to keep the stone rolling. Fortunately, this one did gather moss.. Mumsnet had its fair share of TSP detractors:

Did anyone else think that The Salt Path was seriously overrated?
57 replies
Gone2far · 14/01/2020 20:18

I'm ploughing through it for my bookgroup, but, my God, it's tedious. Like sharing a long car journey with an embittered aging hippy. I know that most people loved it, so I'm obviously missing something, but did anyone else just not get it?

Technically both Sally & Tim are baby boomers as they were born in the early sixties.

noun: baby boomer; plural noun: baby boomers; noun: babyboomer; plural noun: babyboomers
a person born between the end of the Second World War and the early 1960s, when there was a temporary marked increase in the birth rate.

The phrase "making a fist of it” has positive connotations as it means to do (something) reasonably successfully.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_a_fist_of#:~:text=(informal%2C%20idiomatic)%20To%20do,fairly%20decent%20fist%20of%20it.

I've been gradually recovering from my multiple-headland-induced-huffing-and-puffing, but then @NaughtyNoodler shared this ghastly chunk of HNTDDD which had been fading nicely from my mind. Arrggghhhhhh!

If in any doubt that this had been written by SalRay, the fact that the dreaded H word is mentioned only adds to the evidence (though no blackthorn, peregrines or gorse, for which I am thankful; there is only so much that I can cope with, you know).
But thank you @NaughtyNoodler for advertising the Observer event which I've now signed up for - and I'm counting down the days till the documentary!

Thank you. I’ve been interpreting that phrase wrongly all my life.

\I've always understood 'making a fist of it' was bad, and 'making a good fist of it' was positive. The 'fist' part being related to 'hamfisted'...

Not that it matters at all really....

One would think that very soon SW would be planning out her writing/ promotional activities for 2026. Festivals etc are planned months in advance. 2026 is going to become quite interesting because soon we will have more of a feeling for how visible she is going to be on the literary landscape.