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 think that the subsequent books were a way of shoe horning in answers to various questions that were raised after TSP’s publication. They’re carefully crafted and can easily be referred back to in interviews. I’m now having thoughts of Tim falling backwards and forwards through various roofs on various timelines. I ought to re-read the books and take notes. I don’t know if there is a record of Tim falling through a roof and being treated for it. Could it have been in France?

Yes @HumoursofBandon the GA portrayal probably would have been as you’ve described. That’s definitely not the Raynor Winn personality in her performance. The decision for the walk seemed (to me) to be a last ditch, bucket list, YOLO decision put to Moth by her and his immediate response to say yes, showing that he’s the sort of bloke who’d rather die doing something he loves, something brave that he thinks he’ll never be able to do but let’s do it anyway. It’s a very British concept, I think. A bit bonkers but so what. Let’s do it. I can do it, I’ll push myself beyond the pain. There’s nothing for us here.

When I first heard about the story of TSP, this is what I assumed. That they 'knew' Moth was dying and decided to do a 'bucket list' walk. Only I presumed that it was him being the driving force because he knew it might be his last chance, and that losing their home (which I never took entirely seriously, because I thought that surely they had friends/relations who could accommodate them and they weren't actually homeless homeless, just had lost their house) was the inciting incident that decided them to do it.

This was my initial impression when TSP came out. And I probably might have gone for that, except that I was hearing various things and just decided it wasn't my kind of book.

Indeed! I did notice the alignment with 2011. This is also the year TW had MRI and other investigations according to the 2015 letter.

Yet, in TSP she writes: "the endless trips to doctors’ waiting rooms had begun six years previously (i.e. 2007). A debilitating pain in his shoulder and arm, and then a tremor beginning in his hand, had led to doctors believing he had Parkinson’s disease, but when that was proved not to be the case, they felt maybe it was nerve damage."

Meanwhile, in the 2015 letter, the Dr reports that TW's symptoms started 9 or 10 years ago "with discomfort and a strange sensation in his left around the left shoulder, spreading to the left hand. It was not until 2009 that he first attended surgery for an assessment." (i.e 6 years earlier).

It's a total mess.

Strikes me as somewhat strange that the previous diagnosis of Parkinsons was not referred to in the 2015 consultant's letter.

Just to add to this, I think this text from RW in a 2021 piece in Waitrose magazine (formerly posted by someone here) shows just how far she was willing to go with the whole nature cure idea...something I think she also touches upon in interviews.

"During the walk, Moth’s health improved in ways we were told wouldn’t be possible. Research I have done since shows that we are connected to the natural world in a way we don’t realise - we physically interact with the chemicals emitted by plants in a positive way."

So it wasn't just the physicality of strenuous walking that RW was saying could improve TW's health, it was being in nature. Here she pretty much makes a direct link, in her belief and "research", between an improvement in Moth and chemicals from plants.

It does seem strange @DreamyHiker if this Parkinson's diagnosis had happened, it is usual for a GP to refer a patient to a neurologist or other clinical specialist to diagnose Parkinson's. There is no mention of Tim having a referral, or previously seeing a consultant. So again, why didn't they mention it, if it was true and missing from the medical history.

It is so terrible@SimoArmo that Salray could make these claims and many people believed Moth was reversing symptoms. We are discovering more and more that this 2015 diagnosis is highly suspect, the motivation on Salray's part doesn't seem to be to genuinely find out what was wrong with Tim. Who put Tim on the medication he was supposed to be withdrawing from in TSP and when, would it have been a GP?

They’re carefully crafted and can easily be referred back to in interviews. I’m now having thoughts of Tim falling backwards and forwards through various roofs on various timelines. I ought to re-read the books and take notes. I don’t know if there is a record of Tim falling through a roof and being treated for it. Could it have been in France?

That suddenly struck me as hilarious, @HatStickBoots. Imagining SW coaching TW in what to say in interviews.

'No, Tim, you didn't fall backwards off a pigeonnier in France! You fell forwards off a barn roof in Wales!'

'Oh, OK. Did I fall off it in 2005 or 2012, though?'

@HumoursofBandon, I think you are right, Salray had a bit of a loose cannon in Tim, not that she has been totally consistent in her accounts of events. I can see that the medication he withdrew from is prescribed for nerve pain amongst other things, so presumably the GP was prescribing it for the shoulder pain Tim was suffering, after falling through a roof somewhere at some time.

You don't just go for a walk up Tryfan. It's a challenging scamble where you'll be on your hands and knees much of the time. SW and TW didn't seem to do much walking or camping after having children so they wouldn't have had the skill of fitness levels to do something like this.
The Bald Scrambler
https://thebaldscrambler.co.uk › ... › Glyderau Routes

I agree @SimoArmo it is a total mess. It’s a good thing it’s not a drinking game, taking a swig or downing a pint every time something doesn’t add up.

I would like to read her research. Wonder where I can find it.

PS: Does Penguin have a scientofic journal?

Moth’s health improved in ways we were told wouldn’t be possible
It didn’t occur to her that it wouldn’t have been possible if Moth had actually had the illness she is portraying him as having.

Thank you, @AgitatedGoose - I was thinking the same! You wouldn't casually say 'fancy Tryfan today?' to your OH on a whim, pack up your sarnies and off you wander. Worraloadofembellishedbollox.

I think second to Crib Goch, Tryfan has the most accidents every year in Eryri/Snowdonia. It's not a random day trip destination.

I know i said this a few threads back, but I'm pretty convinced SW was leading up to her new book containing 'Moth is cured!', as a way of getting out of the fabricated chronic illness he clearly doesn't have.

Either that, or we were going to get a lot of faux outrage along the lines of "we were TOLD Moth had CBD, so we lived our lives accordingly. Now they are saying he DOESN'T have CBD? Who can I sue? How can they get it so wrong - our lives are ruined!"

And the whole debacle becomes the fault of medical professionals, because they didn't tell her Moth DIDN'T have CBD and let her write books accordingly. She was wronged, I tell you, wronged...

Because of course she was.

Bear in mind that these were the people who nearly died on a mountain in Scotland on their first trip away together, as recounted in TWS, hopelessly underprepared and under-equipped, having decided to climb an entirely different mountain to the one they’d planned after someone mentioned it to them in a campsite. So no research, no prep etc.

They lost their tent and most of their equipment camping on the mountain overnight during a storm. On the same trip SW had such an ill -fitting, heavy, borrowed rucksack that her shoulders were destroyed.

And the first time they went climbing together, SW dropped a rope to take a photo and let TW fall off a rockface and be hurt badly enough to have to go to A and E.

I mean, I know they were much younger at the time, but there’s a fairly extensive history of reckless ness and/or stupidity in the great outdoors!

Sounds like an episode of “Some mothers do ‘Ave’em”!

I agree with you about the next book(s) @Ilovehighlandcows and @Vroomfondleswaistcoat ! Very fitting.

Presumably if he’d fallen through a client’s roof whilst working, he could have made a claim on insurance?

If you haven't booked your tickets to go and see Chloe at next weekend's Dulverton Exmoor Literary Festival then the bad news it that it's too late.

IT'S SOLD OUT!

Shows that people (other than certain mumsnetters) are still interested, did you manage to get a ticket?

Unfortunately not.

Maybe it will be full of superfans holding banners that say #BEKIND and TEAM RAYNOR and WE LOVE YOU, MOTH!!! and DOWN WITH NASTY OBSERVER JOURNALISTS!

Interesting to see this in TWS. Kind of undermines any potential argument that RW's overreaction to the diagnosis in TSP was simply all in her mind.

Did I really want to go back to that week, to feel the horror again? Too late: it was already with me. No escaping the memory of Moth’s body clenched tight as he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease that had neither treatment or cure. No escaping the sense of fear that returned whenever I remembered being told that the pain in Moth’s shoulder, a numbness in his left side and dark fog of mental paralysis slowly taking his thoughts wasn’t just old age, but actually corticobasal degeneration, CBD, a creeping unstoppable disease with only a short time left to run its course to the end. And as the doctor painted a picture of Moth’s body forgetting how to swallow and pneumonia making him choke on his own saliva, we realised how wrong we’d been: far worse things were waiting for us than becoming homeless.

Well you can't really argue with that @SimoArmo, she lays it all out, what I find most difficult to explain about her behaviour, is the fact that she is writing this, having had years to think about it. The calculated way she exploits the reader, who when reading her words and believing them to be true, would feel for this couple, which of course they did.