Thread 27 : 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 26 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:
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? | Mumsnet

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse are always welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from some of Investigative Journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou's excellent exposé items before posting. Chloe's podcast series for The Observer 'The Walkers' covers most things:
The Walkers: The real Salt Path | The Observer
Another suggestion:
BBC Sounds - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available Episodes
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 nearly a year we have done amazingly well together for 26 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.

We are still here after 26,000 posts and fast approaching our one year anniversary together on 6th July 2026, 12 months on from the start of our first thread in response to Our Chloe's somewhat stunning initial exposé. Little did we know what else would come out. Our longevity comes as both a total surprise and a pleasure (mostly!). We've seen charabancers come and go, come back again, delurk and join us for the first time. All are welcome. Threads have both filled up in a day and moved at a more stately pace. Thank you everyone for sharing your time, thoughts, opinions, experience, questions, sleuthing (there's that word!), kindness (there's that other word!) and great humour with me and with each other. As ever, as we embark on our 27th thread riding the community charabanc - this time all holding our brollies and fans aloft for much-needed shade and breeze - keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider, (but not too much in the current heatwave).

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 26 IS FULL:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5506717-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?

This is almost certainly a staged photo. When I’m camping I always have gear around my tent and include it in the photos.

Only an idiot would pitch a tent so close to a tree. Summer branch drop is common particularly with the recent dry weather. A widow maker might be what she’s hoping for.

I was going to say that no one who knows anything whatsoever about camping would pitch a tent so near a tree, but @AgitatedGoose said it first!

Also, as in one of their previous 'lonely tent in the wilderness' photo, there are no guy ropes (photo is unclear on left hand side of tent, but definitely no ropes or ground staples on right back corner and right front corner. ). Unless it's a pop up, that tent is not actually pitched.

Initially when they started posting these pretend-camping photos I thought perhaps they'd just nicked them from the internet, but I guess they are too canny for that as it would be too easy to prove via a Google Lens reverse search. But I suspect they have a look at stock online photos and then replicate to produce something really similar that visually more or less fits the narrative.

But there isn't even a narrative now, is there? Just random semi-obscure statements that don't even really mean anything.

I think she's just trying to keep her page active for whatever reason, because these gnomic utterances she keeps posting aren't advertising material.

Perhaps we should all start posting on Insta, photographs of random cows or a bit of grass with odd captions like 'living life' or 'eat, pray, love' or something. It would be just as meaningful.

The problem with her anodyne IG posts is that they reinforce the message to her followers, that nothing has changed.

Wake and smell the coffee! Since July last year, it has. Have the courage to face up to reality rather than continuing to bury your head in the sand!

Very true about the random semi obscure statements; no substance to them. I'd guess she's trying to keep her page active to retain what supporters she still has. But additional to that, I'd interpret recent photos (lonely tents, pictures of walking gear, rural or beach scenes) as trying to spin a narrative that she's still a walker (haha!) and preparing for another 'big walk'. I agree she hasn't been at all successful in trying to create this most recent narrative - it's all too disjointed and the photos are so generic. This teasing 'might be about to do another walk' voice really doesn't work does it. But I think she's trying (unsuccessfully) to create a narrative that she's still in the game. In reality I'd bet the only walking she's doing, or preparing to do, is in circles around their luxury rented Cornish estate, walking the dog after dark.

Chuckling at these posts! 😀❤️
Maybe in Toy Story style, the tent has a life of its own! But seriously, “worth every step” is an insult, a slap in the face for every person she’s plundered from in one way or another. I think she was born in the wrong time! On another note, every now and again I walk along to the Helford passage because it’s a lovely walk that passes a pretty cove, some ancient woods in Glendurgan gardens and a beautiful wildflower meadow. There’s always a luxury boat speeding around those waters and it makes me think it’s Tim.

Yes, I think that’s exactly what is going on. Sort of ‘I’m still leading my best life, still walking, still camping, still readying my boots and kit like the humble forest creature I am — I am exactly the person I’d like you to believe me to be, not the liar, thief, forger and scam artist. Nothing has changed.’ It’s kind of hypnosis. Nothing to see here.

Apart from the fact we no longer show our faces. And that is DEFINITELY NOT so people can’t say ‘Tim’s looking blooming, isn’t he?’ It’s because we don’t trust people any more, because some people have been so mean.’

A nice Insta page would be a picture of two paths in a wood, with the message "The path less traveled by. Honesty."

What i find perhaps even more weird than her/their attempts at the "live laugh love" aesthetic are the vacuous comments. These are not people who walk or regularly experience nature on a deep level. The comments read like generic, stereotypical AI interpretations of what is expected of them.

Maybe they have now discovered AI (through Alice!) and are planning on deploying it in a future book! Maybe Raynor and Moth are in the process of becoming avatars.

Of course it's not the first time that they have pitched their tent near a tree without guy ropes deployed...

I think she's trying to 'stay relevant to walking' to keep the pathway open (see what I did there?) for the publication of OWH. If she stayed absolutely silent and then suddenly OWH is published, she's lost any of the very thin strand of credibility that she might have retained among her rabid fans as a continual walker who finds healing in nature.

You can't write books about how wild and free you are and how much you love the wind and waves and the power of nature and expect to be taken seriously when you've been holed up in one luxury location for years. So she's trying to keep up the narrative of still being a free spirit.

While living in one luxury location for years...

Sure, but since 6 July 2025, surely OWH has become totally and utterly redundant? Maybe PRH and her agent are stringing her along. Maybe they think that a significant number of her 73k IG followers (as well as many others who have been living under a rock for the last year) will continue to lap up anything she produces.

It's still being trailed for pre order, and if her publishers still want to release it then she's going to have to do some publicity for it. I doubt PRH will push it very hard.

If it’s still available for pre-order then presumably money is earning interest whether it gets refunded or not and that will be a nice little profit if nothing else.

(Trigger warning for @Anythingbutheadlands
Reading a local paper this week I’ve discovered that Glendorgal Coast path group campaigners featured on national TV (Good morning Britain). This is the perfect thing for our two eco warriors to get their teeth into - especially as one of them is an Ambassador no less. It’s been a long running dispute over access to the headland in Newquay. Quoted from the Falmouth Packet “The row centres on a pathway on the Glendorgal side of Porth Beach where fences and “keep out” signs have recently been installed during a £9.5 million redevelopment of the former Glendorgal Hotel. The land is owned by Bluechip Hotels limited, run by Seamus and Amanda Redmond, who maintain there is no public right of way and that those using the path are trespassing. However, campaigners say the route has been used openly for generations and are now seeking legal recognition through definitive map modification order DMMO. Campaigners organiser Matt Kennedy-Smith said: “This campaign is not about revisiting planning decisions. It is not about stopping development. It’s about ensuring that the long history of public access across Glendorgal Headland is properly recorded and considered, so that future generations have the opportunity to enjoy the same routes.”
It goes on to say that tensions have flared recently due to the installation of hideously ugly gates, private property signs, no entry etc. The route provides an important safety access point, particularly when tides cut off sections of the beach. The local Labour MP has backed the campaign. Cornwall council has said that planning conditions linked to the development state that any public right of way must remain open and unobstructed.

Thanks for the trigger warning @HatStickBoots - I’m just about coping as “the word” was used judiciously - just twice, as opposed to the seven times that Sal used it in one of her brief newspaper articles 😊. A quick snack on some fudge, a swig of cider, and I’ll be back to normal!

Maybe Sal will continue to churn out these vacuous IG posts to keep her fans "engaged" and OWH will be rolled out in a low key way on schedule in Jan 2028. OWH will generate some decent royalties, attract mixed reviews and that will be it. Sal and Tim will quietly fade into obscurity. A plausible scenario or is there another twist in the tale?

@HatStickBoots - it's my understanding that money for pre-orders isn't actually taken from the purchaser's account until the day that the book publishes. Pre-orders are just used to drive the book up the charts so it hopefully releases at an already high point and therefore stands a better chance of hitting the charts.

Ahhh thank you for enlightening me. It still seems odd that there will be a pending transaction on people’s accounts. I suppose there are some who have pre-ordered this book. As the books appear to exist in their own time capsule, those readers when finally able to find out what happened to their intrepid heroes, will be most saddened to learn that Moth has become a husk and that Raynor can barely leave him but leave him she must. They won’t at all associate this masquerade with the reality of Sal and Tim on the Red carpet that year.

Argh, yes, this is where the delay in publication might work in Sal's favour, if OWH is a misery-ramble while she mulls over Tim's poor health - people might well have forgotten that she wrote it in the same year as he was prancing all over the red carpet in evident robust good health.

Well, especially if she's locked him in a cellar in the interim. Or pushed him over a cliff. Then she gets to say 'I TOLD you so!' (Is it Spike Milligan's gravestone that supposedly says 'I told you I was sick'?)

I just had a look @Oeufs, it's 'I told you I was ill' in Gaelic :) I'm still chuckling at the thought of Tim prancing about on the red carpet @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, he kept grabbing the lady in green, rather enthusiastically :)

I too thought it was strange that pre orders were being taken @HatStickBoots, thank you for explaining the reason @Vroomfondleswaistcoat. PRH might feel the book would sell well unaltered, just from the sheer number of people who would want to know what RW had written. Or could Sally rewrite and model it into a, 'mistakes were made' confessional with a redemptive walk, Sally might be planning to push Tim or drag him as dear @Uricon2, planned to drag Mr Uricon in her imagined literary adventures.

Sally could of course revert to form, she already has a book written, she could rewrite the timeframe for events, as she did in TSP. Sally could confess all of her terrible deeds, before she is exposed by CH and the Observer :(

She is a bit stuck with OWH though. It was apparently written and ready to publish when Sal's misdeeds became public knowledge and Our Chloe's work appeared. So do they run with the original version and pretend nothing happened (which risks reviews filled with vitriol) or does she rewrite it (but unless she comes clean about having misled people about the entire story so far it's going to be hauled over the coals anyway). Or does she rewrite it completely, ignoring the blurb that's been publicised, and concentrate on random meandering thoughts about being an older woman?

If she writes a book that ignores absolutely everything that's gone before and just writes a sort of 'it's tough being a woman, walking alone and ageing' and never mentions Tim or TSP or any of her previous works...do you know, she might get away with it.

I think you could well be right @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, a complete rewrite in the way that you describe, ignoring everything and not including Tim.