Thread 26 : To feel disappointed - and disgusted and vindicated now too - after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL

Please see the OP of Thread 25 for all the links to The Observer's reporting and podcast series, our threads one to 24 and so on.

After 25,000 posts there are still new things to discuss:
BBC Sounds - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available Episodes
If you are posting about a podcast, please start your post with the episode number you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so.

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. The Observer's excellent podcast series The Walkers (link in Thread 25) covers most things.
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, 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. For over 8 months we have done amazingly well together for 25 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.

As ever, as we embark on our 26th thread riding the community charabanc, keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5485730-thread-25-to-feel-disappointed-and-disgusted-and-vindicated-now-too-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Tbf officially you could have someone capable of doing a 630mile accompanied hike, and still need help for "personal care" so qualify. eg I used to know someone who had quite profound learning difficulties so they were in supported living, but could run a marathon - with support because they wouldn't have been able to follow the route on their own. Just don't ask them to cook a meal or catch a bus or read instructions because that was beyond them. You could see how free they felt when running, which was lovely.

But in real terms I doubt they mentioned the walking.

Ok very late to this party! I was just reading SW statement and I’m intrigued. She says she didn’t have the necessary proofs to prove she was innocent of taking money. But’s not the way it works - she’s reversed the burden of proof.
And if I was accused of taking money I wouldn’t higher a lawyer & pay the amount back and make my accuser sign an NDA.

I don’t know what to think about TW illness.

Yes, exactly to your first point. TW certainly doesn’t have CBD — he’s outlived any other known sufferer, and he’s in obviously unimpaired health, even, ironically, while appearing in videos for the CBD charity that cut ties with him and SW after the Observer story. He was visibly in the full bloom of health at the TSP premiere. If you’ve seen the documentary, a CBD specialist talks through footage of TW, noting all the things he’d expect to see in someone with the condition (impaired gait, poor balance, lack of facing expression etc etc) and noting that they’re not present.

The Observer podcast creates an entirely damning picture of someone continually claiming to be seriously ill, to the point where none of the extended family believed him, and of SW as a repeated thief and liar.

Yes, but that’s all entirely explainable away as the frightened imaginings of a panicked spouse running with a possible diagnosis, as she carefully does not represent the consultant as giving a firm diagnosis of CBD. Of course, we know from CH’s work and SW’s statement that any medical consults were considerably after the purported SWCP walk, anyway.

And yes, she’s behaved in interviews (well, they both have) as though he’s definitely dying of a specific illness, and likewise in the two subsequent books — I would be enormously interested in what the legal team at PRH can possibly have thought they were doing with TWS and LL, which completely straightforwardly claim TW is dying of CBD.

Clearly, they can’t have asked for proof of any of the medical claims, as it can’t possibly have been provided.

Surely SW is not dopey enough to have tried out her forgery skills on medical letters as well as bank statements?

TL; dr: my only point is that SW avoids having a medical authority make a firm diagnosis in TSP, and in fact represents herself as telling the consultant repeatedly that’s ’got it wrong’. I tend to think that this was for plausible deniability, in case anyone raised issues or the public didn’t swallow it in the first book.

When the public did swallow it, and fell in love with poor, saintly, stoical Moth, reciting Beowulf, dragging one leg all the way around the SWCP, unable to put on his own rucksack, cruelly refused council housing by a woman with a tight ponytail, derided by smug people in boating gear, presumably SW thought ‘Suckers!’ and threw caution to the winds for the cash.

But that still doesn’t explain why the legal team at PRH let unsubstantiated medical claims, including a miraculous DAT scan, go into print in TWS and LL.

In some ways, that’s far more puzzling than TSP itself.

I find the letters on the website confusing.

Was it that CBD was mentioned at some stage and SW took that & ran with it ever though she knew it wasn’t the case?

There’s quite a few letters from the NHS on her website as I’m sure you know, they confused me!

The letters post-date the alleged 630 mile walk. The earliest is date 2015 while they claim to have lost the house & done the walk in 2013.

Ah ok!
That would be key!

Me again, panting to catch up with the charabanc...

I wonder if Sal's plan, should the publishers bring up the fact that she signed this document to verify claims made in her writing - was to put the blame on her agent.

After all, her agent will (or at least ought to) have read the document and approved it before Sal signed it. They will also have pointed out any drawbacks to the signing. So perhaps if everything blew up and PRH tried to claim against Sal, then Sal would just have said that her agent ought never to have told her to sign, and it was therefore someone else's fault. Which is her MO to date...

Unless a) Sal lied to her agent and told her it was 100% true and b) her agent decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth because she thought she was on to a winner....

I suspect that her agent might well have known that there was an amount of..err...truth massaging going on. After all, many people who read the final and edited book had questions about the whole 'repossession of the house' legal case and I can't imagine that her agent didn't ask further questions about this. And Sal could well have lied to her agent, but still maintain that the agent should have advised her better.

Her agent does have to bear some responsibility in all this, along with PRH. But ultimately the buck stops with the author. Sal won't like that at all though.

Thanks @MargaretThursday - your comment was very informative and also uplifting.

Firstly a disclaimer - that I have absolutely no connection with Waterstones/any other bookseller - nor with any author/publisher.
So imagine my surprise when, just this morning as I passed our branch of Waterstones, catching sight of a window display featuring a non-fiction publication by Annabel Streets entitled "The Walking Cure". Sorry I don't do a lot of reading so can't comment on the author but I did have a quick look this evening at their website entry, where the top R/H corner of a sample page of the book was clearly readable. Mentions that taking breaths of salt-laden sea air may well be beneficial. (Remember "lightly salted blackberries?!")
It also reminded me of my mother's remarks whilst on the promenade at Minehead years ago, taking great breaths of sea air and muttering "smell the ozone" whilst I was thinking "more likely the rotting seaweed, mother".
There is though some truth in the ozone comments and sea water, also rain, have a distinct smell. The hydrogen ion, perhaps?

Gosh...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/07/the-walking-cure-why-we-should-all-be-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other

I went to have another look at the letters last week on her website and they are gone, along with her statements, just a profile page, a page on TSP and a contact page, no reference to TWS or LL, just that she is working on her fourth book.

Interesting. ‘Putting it all behind her, and moving on’? And/or recognising that the statements and medical letters were actually more material for those who recognise the Walkers are serial thieves and scam artists, rather than the refutation SW intended?

Crickey Moses - the author seems to tap into the same pseudoscience that RW harnessed re: healing plant chemicals in the air. That's on top of aforementioned salty air. I feel tempted to read it with scrutiny.

Are you suggesting we look into it? 😉

She is a Sunday Times bestseller and wrote another book under a different name - as Annabel Abbs, she is the author of Windswept: Why Women Walk, voted a top ten 2021 travel book.

The statements are still there but aren't listed as menu items so harder to find.

The most recent December one is linked to at the foot of each page. The original July statement is linked to in the text of the December one.

Does seem like she's distancing herself from the fallout. What intruigues me is she has no agency or publishing contacts listed anymore, which I know has been like that for a while. I wonder if they have simply washed their hands of her, even if they publish the 5th book.

What I don’t get is why they keep renting from random people like Bill Cole (the farmer with the cider farm who gave them discount rent). The book was a bestseller. Can they not buy somewhere quiet & hide away instead of giving more people more material for podcasts?
Or are they afraid of being sued for fraud?

Wow! Thank you everyone for your latest posts and discoveries! Honestly the cheeky feckers think they can remove evidence from the website and people will eventually forget it ever existed or won’t know of its existence. This fits so well will their past actions that I don’t even think a lawyer needed to advise it. Oh yeah she will keep her statements even if you have to hunt them down, because they’re so Victim-y, full of the defensive style of outrage that these types are known for that they still manage to fool some people.

@the7Vabo we’ve often pondered the same question. If they really were the people they invented themselves as, I’m sure that would have been their eventual goal but… they are not. They’re greedy and sneaky and were probably going to launch a wellness retreat at the house they’re currently renting. That’s if they are still there.

Why did she change her name? Interesting.. I do remember reading about “Why women walk” and thought it might be an interesting read. I didn’t follow up on those thoughts and eventually forgot about it. Thank goodness.

Yes, I was being a bit naughty - pointing out a few similarities with Sal. I have to say, she has both names up front and doesn't seem to have a close association with a particular medical condition.

But ..... I would be very wary as she has hit on a successful formula and is churning the books out - 8 in 9 years is some going. I am on red alert at this review, by a captivated fan:

Modern medicine, she reminds us, has spent decades chasing inflammation—the slow, smouldering kind that underlies everything from depression and dementia to heart disease and frailty—with pharmaceuticals that are escalating in cost and complexity. And here, almost embarrassingly, is a free intervention that does much of the same work: a brisk walk in the right place.

Yorkshire Times

“Why we should all be putting one foot in front of the other” The Guardian. I’m sure articles and books like these rode the crest of the Raynor Winn wave.

Going back a page, @NervesofSteel wrote some brilliant posts which I fully agree with. Nobody shot down the CBD claims at the time because they are so good at doing what they do. I honestly think the books should be pulled from the shelves completely based on this truly hideous lie.

I suppose context is everything. It is patently obvious that walking is good for our mental and physical health, so I have no issue with a book about the benefits of walking even if it veers into pseudoscience and "wellness" as long as it doesn't make wild claims of healing or offer false hope. The difference with TSP etc is RW did precisely that with Moth as the case study. "The Walking Cure" is no doubt aimed at a demographic akin to the readership of TSP. If anything, the title is what screams alarm bells to me, which is likely down to the publisher wanting to tap into the market. Still, from a charabanc perspective, I'm curious to see what it contains, especially as it seems to echo RW's "research" into the mysterious CBD healing chemicals from trees.

She's still listed as a Graham Mawe Christie client on their website, so I assume she still is -- I know that when I left my former agent, my profile had gone from the agency website by the end of that day! (Wounded, moi? )

It's standard for the agent to continue to get their cut of any moneys earned by book deals/rights etc they brokered when you were represented by them, even if you've subsequently terminated your contract, so even if SW or GMC ended their relationship now, the agency would still get its cut of money earned by TSP, TWS and LL, and all foreign translations, subsidiaries, film adaptations etc, and anything else they brokered for SW.

At least, individual contracts may obviously vary, but that's pretty standard.

So it's not the 'historical' money GMC are standing by her for, because they will continue to get it anyway. Presumably it's either because of genuine loyalty (though it's hard to see how?), or the hope or expectation that SW will continue to have a lucrative writing career in some form (not impossible).