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!"

Is it agreed that the consultation that takes place in TSP, was a fictional account?

So, I read about pathological lying. The article goes quite deep and with various links to explore also. The epidemiology section states that
Thirty percent of subjects had a chaotic home environment, where a parent or other family member had a mental disturbance.
and
Forty percent of cases reported central nervous system abnormality such as epilepsy, abnormal EEG findings, ADHD, head trauma or CNS (central nervous system) infection.

I also read about manipulation. These things appear to belong to a cluster B personality type.
It’s an interesting read but I’m not sure what applies here because it gets very complicated. The problem for me is that she/they is/are so enmeshed with the characters in the books that you can’t differentiate between the sort of lies a writer of fiction would create for entertainment purposes and the lies of a person who is falsely representing themselves. The evidence for the latter is how others have perceived them in real life and the evidence of their wrong doings. How far back does this go? The article states that onset is usually from adolescence.

I think that’s all part of the Raynor Winn Myth. A whole projection of fantasy created by SW to appeal to the audience.

I could never understand the reasoning and timing behind writing the memoir for Moth.

So a man who had just enrolled on a supposed degree course didn't have the capacity to remember a strenuous and life changing trip undertaken only a couple of years beforehand. How on earth would he be able to cope with a challenging degree course?

I think there is also possibly a third explanation.

• the decision to start walking the SWCP didn't involve a spur of the moment decision after miraculously seeing 500 Mile Walkies illuminated by a shaft of sunlight in a packing crate as they were being evicted from Pen-y-maes by the bailiffs but was formulated earlier. SW mentions in TSP, and in a subsequent interview, having read Phoebe Smith's book about Wild Camping (Extreme Sleeps) which was first published on 1 April 2013, before they set off on the walk. In an article in the Gaurdian Phoebe Smith writes:In a strange twist of fate, Raynor Winn had read my book just before she and her husband, Moth, lost their family farm in 2013

• SW did take an A5 exercise book with her on the walk (as mentioned in the packing list described in TSP p28 but subsequently denied by SW in at least one interview) and wrote notes about the walk in 2013 and possible ideas for a work of autofiction. On p62 of TSP SW writes "the tent was pitched low amongst the gorse and heather where Moth scribbled in a notebook". Moth may have made pencil notes in the margins of Paddy Dillon's guide to the SWCP but by the time they resumed the walk in 2014/15 SW was making margin comments in pen and those margin comments suggest narrative notes for a book rather than daily observations of the walk as it happened.

• they walked from Minehead-LE from early Aug - 16 Sept 2013 as described in TSP. There is a host of evidence (photographic, anecdotal and witnesses to suggest they did walk this stretch in 2013 although of course large amounts of what happened were either heavily embellished or entirely made up.

• they visited the neurologist in June 2015 and didn't mention that they had walked the Minehead-LE section in 2013 and possibly other sections of SWCP in 2014. Could this suggest that this crucial omission contributed to the diagnosis of mild atypical CBS because the neurologist might have been less inclined to make that tentative diagnosis if he had known the full extent of their walking activities in 2013 and possibly 2014? ( CBD and the SWCP are not natural bedfellows!)

• it seems pretty unlikely they walked from LE to Minehead in 2014 and completed all of the SWCP by the time they saw the neurologist in June 2015 for a variety of reasons (lack of photos and being seen at the FAC in Aug 2015 walking in the opposite direction) as well as quite a bit of evidence that they didn't walk the Dorset/Devon sections until 2016.

• the PD guide to the SWCP which appears open at the same page ( Porthcurno/Minack) in photos on the Penguin website and a talk SW did for Cicerone with Paddy Dillon in Nov 2020. Close inspection of the photo suggests that there is a bookmark protruding from the previous page which is likely a post card of the Minack Theatre bought from the gift shop there. Also the pages on the left hand of the guidebook appear thumbed and weathered (carried in Moth's camo trouser pocket and exposed to the elements on the walk from Aug-Sept 2013?) while those on the right hand side look pristine. Did the guidebook's function change from being simply a guidebook in 2013 to an aide memoire in 2014/2015 for a book which became TSP?

• could they have exaggerated the hopeless inept and inexperienced at long distance walking theme (forgotten sunhat etc) to emphasise the hapless victim aspect of the narrative and the incredible feat of completing the 630 mile SWCP against all odds? In at least one of the photos, SW is wearing a hat and their kit seems to have been pretty decent and well researched (Karrimor rucksacks and Vango lighweight tent with cooking equipment in the tent at Portheras Cove which looks pretty new). There is no mention of blisters or muscle sprains/injuries in TSP so walking boots and other kit such as waterproofs seems to have been well chosen rather than thrown together at the last minute.

So it's possible that the idea of TSP gradually emerged between 2013-2015 and mixed fact with fiction in terms of the walk but also was hugely embellished in terms of other aspects (the severity of Moth's neurological condition and the degree that they were homeless and the background to their losing their house in Wales).

If (as seems likely) SW did indeed write HNTDDD in 2012, and was planning a follow up for 2013 (Three Mountains and a Ceilidh - "a cross country romp through the UK" ), could it be that this second book morphed into TSP?

Of course there is still a lot we don't know.

• when was the photo taken of Raymoth at the SWCP finish point at South Haven Point at Poole? They look much younger than in other photos and aren't wearing the same clothes as on any of the other stretches of SWCP.

• what sections of the SWCP between LE- Poole did they actually walk and when?

• when did SW find an agent and how much input did that agent have in "beefing up" the narrative and creating a marketing plan for TSP inc changing the name from LSB to TSP?

• was the original letter to the Big Issue in May 2017 part of this marketing plan?

The publication of SA's book in June 2015 may also have given SW inspiration for TSP.

defining characteristics include stories which are presented in a way that portrays the liar favorably, by telling stories that present them as the hero or the victim.

You see that tendency on a smaller scale on Mn threads all the time, often in AIBU.

Some stories ('WIBU to say/do this to the awful man on the bus?') combine both, by making the OP initially blameless victim of some awful behaviour by another person, or sometimes defending someone else who is the blameless victim of another person's bad behaviour, and then effortlessly turning this into an Underdog Victory by some witty or audacious action or retort to the bad behavior.

To which more sceptical Mners reply with the age-old retort 'And then the whole bus clapped.'

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/and-then-the-whole-bus-clapped

There's a strong feeling of 'And then the whole bus clapped' to SW's Underdog Hero complex, and to many of her accounts of things that supposedly happened in TSP and its sequels. And of course to the entire narrative arc of 'Cooper betrayed us, we lost everything, but we still overcame both him and death by our doughty, loveably eccentric behaviour and attunement to nature, and then compounded our moral victory by making a big wodge of cash by writing it up and it becoming a bestseller and a film!' is very much the same.

She certainly does give us a lot of 'everyone being awed by their daring walk' while most people would actually have thought 'utterly bananas taking an 'ill' man on a very long walk.' As though she's got it set in her head that everyone must be admiring them and thinking how great they are, regardless of what people are actually thinking.

The high volume sales of the books will have fed into this too, of course.

So it's possible that the idea of TSP gradually emerged between 2013-2015 and mixed fact with fiction in terms of the walk but also was hugely embellished in terms of other aspects (the severity of Moth's neurological condition and the degree that they were homeless and the background to their losing their house in Wales).

That seems to me the most likely explanation, @NaughtyNoodler. I don't buy the 'SW the Machiavellian Mastermind' theory. and I think that TSP is essentially a retrospective pulling together of unrelated events, a complete revision of RL timelines, lies of omission, and complete fiction.

I think she saw that by exaggerating the extent to which they were 'homeless', shifting TW's diagnosis to before the walk, and creating a fictional cover story for why they lost the farm, she saw a way of making an ordinary enough walking/camping holiday by two comparatively experienced middle-aged hikers exponentially more compelling as a narrative.

There's something to the idea of it possibly starting out as fiction, too. SW's desire was clearly to write novels, rather than memoir, otherwise she could easily have capitalised on the vogue for 'So we moved to the country and restored a mouldering pile of stones' memoirs much earlier.

But in fiction you couldn't get away with the double-whammy of 'the day after Ray and Moth were made homeless, Moth got a terminal diagnosis'. It's (just about) plausible in RL.

In creative writing classes about plotting a novel, you're told to focus on the 'inciting incident'. The thing that kicks the protagonist's life out of its normal mould, disrupts the status quo, forces a choice, and sets them out on a journey. It needs to be urgent, attention-grabbing etc. Unless there's a murder on the Orient Express, Poirot will just go on having a nice train journey.

SW invented her inciting incident by conflating a fictionalised account of a house repossession that made her and TW out to be innocent and moving a later diagnosis back in time. Immediately all the previously low stakes are heightened.

Ditto that in creative writing you always have to avoid coincidence. The ENORMOUS coincidences that stack up during TSP (diagnosis, house loss coming almost simultaneously) are the first thing that a decent editor would ask you to amend in fiction.

An editor would also have words to say about the constant Simon Armitage mistake, unless it have been previously well established that Tim looked like SA. This book can only work as non fiction because of the implausibility of it, which, oddly is more often overlooked in factual books!

A great example of this is the encounter with the two old men in the coastguard hut at NCI St Alban's Head where Raymoth are allegedly asked for £1 a bottle to refill their water bottles and then given a talking to about the dangers of subsiding cliffs and the fact that a man recently fell to his death while taking a selfie.

It turns out that this almost certainly never happened:

• the NCI at St Alban's Head don't have access to mains running water. They are a charity with no public funding and entirely reliant on donations and have to buy in bottled water which comes out of charity funds
• walkers are asked for a small donation to cover the cost of refilling water bottles but it has never been anything like £1 a bottle
• there aren't nor have there been any incidents of crumbling cliffs at St Alban's Head
• there is no record of anybody having fallen to their death at St Alban's Head while taking a selfie

@NaughtyNoodler - these facts are just SO easy to check that either SW was over egging the pudding to the extent that egg was beginning to leak out OR she was being fed a line by bored locals trying to frighten a pair of wannabe walkers.

I don't believe the £1 bottle thing though, unless she had been insufferable to them already and they decided to get rid of the pair (which would not surprise me at all), sending them on their way with a nice side order of terror.

Apparently there is a noticebard there which says: “NCI St Alban’s Head has no mains water. However, we buy in 500ml bottles of water which we are happy to give you. If you are able to make a donation, that would be appreciated”.

Could still be explained by two locals saying that the minimum donation was £1. You're right though, I don't believe a word of it, I'm just trying to get to the 'origin story' that Sal used to springboard off into her world of 'I'm an oppressed mass, everyone else is evil'.

One of the reasons I think that whatever its literary merits OWH will get published by PRH in Oct 2026 is that, notwithstanding any new revelations in the Sky docudrama, there are still a hell of a lot of people out there who basically don't seem to care whether TSP is fact or fiction ("it's a good read") , don't seem to care about SW's backstory or whether she is a thief and a liar ("nobody's perfect") and believe that the Observer investigation is an envy driven witch hunt ("leave the poor woman alone").

SW still has 80.4k IG followers (barely down since the Observer story broke in July) and a significant number of them appear fixated on reading the next chapter in Moth's journey as if it is a soap opera or the next instalment of the Harry Potter books..

Depressing!

Oh, in response to @NaughtyNoodler 's question about the role an agent possibly had in 'beefing up' the narrative and changing the title -- in TWS, SW says that the first thing that the commissioning editor at PRH says when they meet is 'We want to publish your book, but you'll have to change that title!'

So by her account, it's presumably still called Lightly Salted Blackberries at the point when it's bought by PRH, and was not changed by Jennifer Christie before being sent out. (Or so SW says. Which does not, of course, necessarily make it true...)

What role JC may have had in rewrites before the MS was sent out is impossible to know, other than that it's unlikely to have turned from a novel to a memoir under her guidance, as they're a non-fiction agency (though with some authors on the books who have gone on subsequently to write novels after signing with them for a non-fiction book or books.)

And I remember what I wanted to say about the varying weekly amounts of money, and varying accounts of whether or not they bought boot laces in Boscastle, and other variant anecdotes. I think it's evidence (if any were needed!) of the way in which SW's memory fails her repeatedly on the supposed detail of her own recent life, because she's not remembering things that actually happened, but the fictional use she made of something that possibly happened, but entirely differently.

One assumes they genuinely passed through Boscastle, and one of them possibly had a broken bootlace around then, but this occurs in a big 'focusing on our victimhood' bit of the book (soon after the Grant episode, in case we think it's all too easy), so in the same chapter there's the two of them hungrily watching two women eat a cream tea at 10.30 in the morning, the encounter with the unfriendly 'yompers' who describe the Walkers as 'blindly irresponsible', unfriendly, closed Boscastle etc.

Though I have always wondered, given that this is just after the bit where they discover they forgot to cancel their house insurance so have only £11 to live on for a week, how they expected to afford a pair of walking boot laces when they couldn't afford a bag of Boscastle chips? Laces are £5 or so as a minimum...?

This ties in with how she gets around the "mad" idea in interviews by saying "it just made perfect sense in the moment. It gave us something to look to, a future, a line on a map to follow, and we so desperately needed a direction to go having lost everything. To find hope...etc etc."

This is how she turns it from being mad and illogical, to tragic and inspirational.

TW's comments in an interview in The Times in Nov 2022 about what must have been the most traumatic week of his life according to the events in TSP, always crack me up:

I don’t remember much about the week when our home was taken away and I was diagnosed with CBD. Maybe I was in shock because for once in my life I was totally lost.

I've always found that shock, particularly about awful life events, means those events carve themselves deep into the memory and, in some cases, cause dreadful flashbacks for years afterwards.

I suppose some people can suppress awful memories, but I would have thought that was hard for Tim to do, what with them being carefully detailed in the books.

I don't think the house insurance payment story is true. I previously suggested many threads ago why not: because they'd have noticed a payment going out the previous month given they were already on their uppers, scraping together money for tent etc. For them to still have £11 left after payment, it could only be a monthly DD payment as opposed to a full whack annual payment. So, IMO, it didn't happen. Was just a device to create drama for the fictional non-fiction.

I see it as code for 'My wife needs me to keep schtum in case I inadvertently contradict one of her fictions, because I haven't actually read The Salt Path, I just skimmed it, and barely remember large parts of it. Also, she prefers me to pretend to go for a healing walk or be too ill to be interviewed, in case I look too hale and hearty. So I'm going with 'Be vague, or be elsewhere!'

And even if it did, by SW's own account, they'd spent all the £11 they had left on noodles in Bude, so wouldn't have been able to afford bootlaces in Boscastle anyway, even if the Evil Shopkeeper hasn't prised Moth's foot out of the door at five to five.

She does seem to keep him out of sight a lot, or only let him be interviewed with her by his side. ARE there many interviews with Tim, alone and away from Sal's influence? I am just remembering one lady who was going to interview them both in their home and the entire interview got relocated to a local coffee shop - no Tim in evidence.

I don't think there are any interviews with just Tim.

He doesn't seem to have had any presence on social media (his own FB/Twitter/IG account). Nobody remembers bumping into him in a pub in Polruan say or on his own out for a walk. At times he seems to be almost like a ventriloquist's dummy, as observed by a Polruan resident called Boots Coffey who bumped into them on numerous occasions while they lived there. He did attend the HND course at Plymouth Uni but this was before TSP was published in April 2018..... Since then, he seems to have been kept/kept himself firmly under wraps.

The encounters in Polruan were after the acquisition of Monty their dog, so after 2017

To clarify - after March 2017.