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!"

No. it’s always positive. It means that someone is doing a competent or adequate job. It doesn’t mean that they are excelling.
e.g. Timoth went surfing for the first time and made a decent fist of it.

I don't know if it's just me but I get an error message when trying to book this. Tried on different devices and browsers.
I have sent an email to them.
Really hoping I can go and maybe those on here who go can wear some sort of secret badge to indicate so!

Yes and 12 years ago they'd only have been early 50s. They weren't old (we know they were probably younger than many walking the SWCP) and it makes their distaste for actual older people even more egregious. A lot of it is sheer envy and it isn't an attractive trait, considering these people had done no wrong to them, even if they could afford cream teas.

I believe the odd few years in the early 60s that are at the end of the Boom just before Gen X are referred to as 'Generation Jones' in the US, because they are 'Jonesing' ie craving something they can't have and are considered very pessimistic. Well, I'm that exact cohort and I hope it doesn't fit me as well as it does the dynamic duo.

I'm afraid I fell off the thread some time ago but I've just rushed back over here after seeing the upcoming documentary listed in Radio Times!

Raynor Winn rarely reveals the real Sally Walker in TSP. One exception could be on p192 when they reach a place called Place just past Falmouth/St Mawes.

She doesn't say much about it in TSP (p192) apart from the following paragraph: "St Mawes swarmed with cream teas and wasps and the wait for the connecting ferry to Place Creek seemed unending. Dropped on the opposite shore we disappeared into the trees, like rabbits into the brambles, feeling more at home now in the undergrowth than on the street."

In the Fearne Cotton interview (42.45) she is far more forthcoming saying that this was the moment when she found her true self: "I almost felt like a rabbit disappearing into the undergrowth and the sense of here is the real person. Ever since that moment I've held on to the real me."

Could this be the real Sal emerging or just more b-s?

@Uricon2

"I'd speculate have been lying low (instead of their customary low lying)"

Brilliant!

Life in the past 5 months must have been so boring for them. Just holing up on their rented estate? Do they even dare show their faces in their nearby villages, or just have all their days to day needs delivered?
I wonder whether Chloe has had any reported sightings?

In spite of the allegations against them I'm glad that the paps haven't been pursuing them and that no photos have emerged of them since the scandal broke. If they wish to keep a low profile, that is their right.

As to what they have been doing. Well they could be walking around the estate or (heavily disguised?) bits of the SWCP. In this day and age it's pretty easy to amuse yourself at home reading books, surfing the net, watching Netflix or maybe having The Salt Path film on constant rewind.

Maybe Sal has been busy revising OWH. Or maybe the truth is more prosaic and she has been spending endless hours on MN watching the latest developments in the saga unroll.

I noticed Gigspanner Big Band's Spring dates for April and their Gallery do not have a trace of SalRay. Just the legal statement when the controversy first aired.

The spring gigs and the wellness retreats was what she was most promising .... The estate, where they were last heard of living, is bordered by the SWCP on one side - the path divides the woods from the beach. The beach is technically private but much-frequented by boat owners. I have been there/been swimming many times.

😡 that is such rubbish!!!

I hate her constant comparisons of themselves to wildlife. Her feelings of paranoia and hatred of other people are probably because she is anti social and selfish. Wildlife has its own perfectly rational reasons to be afraid of humans. You get the impression that Raynor Winn would like to live simply and basically, in a rural setting, self sufficient and quietly, but we know from evidence that Sally Walker has to be materialistic and greedy and constructing ways in which she can exploit people in order to gain financially from them.
She shows such contempt with her choice of language and imagery. A normal summer day on the Cornish coast becomes hostile and threatening.
”swarmed with cream teas and wasps”
”Held onto the real me”
Who is that? I think we know the answer. Newsflash! The “real” you, Sally, is a tiresome, lying, thieving con artist.

"Its a love story."

Is Mark Kermode right? Is all the other stuff (overcoming CBD, homelessness, communing with nature on the SWCP etc) irrelevant? Is the real reason why TSP was so successful the fact that, at it's core, it purports to be a love story for the ages?

It’s not a big enough story for paps to have been hanging around for a shot since the Observer story broke (and I say this as someone who once knew a photographer who’d been assigned to spend three weeks outside the Beckhams’ front gate in Holland Park to snap them arriving or leaving). What would probably be more likely would be someone local who is hostile to them selling photos snapped on their phone — but perhaps locals aren’t hostile? Or not to the point of selling photos to a tabloid?

I mean, it seems unlikely they’ve stayed at home all these months, or only left covered in a blanket in the back of a car…?

I bet they have everything delivered and stay within their estate.

It is quite difficult to be a born and bred local in that area! Very exclusive, second home ... which is how they get these places to live.

Plus, the chances of coming across confident women in sailing jackets would be huge! SalRay's worst nightmare ....

It doesn’t have to be a born and bred local, though, just anyone in the vicinity with a phone camera to hand, regardless of whether they’re second home owners or just on holiday in a rental or whatever.

But I suppose if it’s an area dominated by second homes, there are long periods when these are uninhabited, so it may make a sighting less likely.

"I almost felt like a rabbit disappearing into the undergrowth and the sense of here is the real person.

Is Shy Woodland Creature an extension of the 'Child of Nature Wild and Free' schtick?

we disappeared into the trees, like rabbits into the brambles, feeling more at home now in the undergrowth

We are accused of hiding

I almost felt like a rabbit disappearing into the undergrowth

there is nothing hiding

From one of her interviews:

If you could be an animal, what kind of animal would you be and why?
[laughs] I would be a crow because there`s something really independent and resilient about crows. They just make their mark and then they go. And there’s something so positive about them. Yes, I would be a crow.

I love corvids, but I would have said the Raynor Winn brand would have been better served by choosing some kind of gull or other sea or coastal bird.

Perhaps the famously attack-prone gulls of St Ives, which are so given to swooping down and stealing the food of anyone unwary enough to try to eat a pasty of a bag of chips while not under cover? (I still have a scar on my forefinger!)

I'm assuming that photo she posted on Instagram recently isn't a newly-taken one. Maybe someone who knows more about the local climate, wildflowers etc than I do would know whether it was taken at a different time of year, rather than a sign they are regularly walking the SWCP and snapped it on a recent walk?

Bear with me dear gang. Just performing a last minute charabanc oil change, radiator top up and tyre pressure check. Anybody need the loo before we depart?

Oh the St Ive's seagulls @HumoursofBandon ! Icecream in my case, I still had my hand in the 'holding' position while it was disappearing down Salgulls throat! The look of mystification I wore was apparently v funny, but avoided scarring, you poor thing!

Better make sure we protect the fudge from the gulls! @Uricon2, I see that @DisappointedReader is getting the charabanc ready for the off, it took me an age to get all the empty cider bottles to the bottle bank, can we start getting it by the barrel?

Good thinking @Freshsocks ! I know somewhere that does sloe gin by the magnum (and larger) which may also be an idea for the 15th.

No cider for me yet, sadly, and definitely not brandy and lovage. My favourites, for now -
Luscombe Hot Ginger Beer and Bottle Green Spicy Berry cordial

I see the next Pen rising out of the mist....