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?

I think it is beyond certain now that she is a pathological liar and embellisher. Nothing she says or writes can be taken as fact. Tim too. Someone earlier mentioned his sporting claims...well he does have a common name and there was a lower division English footballer in the early 1980s called Tim Walker. There was also a namesake American footballer in 1980s who played for Seattle. And we know there was and still is a botanist called Tim Walker too. So Perhaps Moth simply created life stories around his namesakes. Yet to find a TW that herded llamas with cats though.

Sal, cured of 'frozen lung' by nothing more than some simple antibiotics! It is another medical miracle!

I am surprised that medical professionals aren't queueing up outside their house...

CBD? What a joke. The Walkers really are the ultimate grifters!

Tbf to Tim he only claimed to have herded sheep (not lamas) with cats in Guatemala. This to a young shepherdess who was trying to introduce a flock of sheep at Haye Farm to ecologically mow the apple orchards. She was freaked out by his comments apparently!

I didn’t even bother to find out what ‘frozen lung’ meant because of the flippant way that The Author dropped it into her feed. The character in the book will probably regale us with a near death experience and how the walk they had always wanted to do together almost had a cruel, tragic ending. The author reassures us however that hey, there was always the sky and how about that chocolate?!

Until I saw that @TheBookShelf had looked it up I thought it was Sal being dramatic over having a slight cold anyway. I had never heard of 'frozen lung'. Sal honestly must have a medical dictionary that she turns to because how many of us would even know that frozen lung was such a severe condition? Only the people who had actually suffered from it themselves or known someone diagnosed with it - the rest will just assume it's like a nasty cold or something.

Why on earth Sal always has to go for such overkill when she's already told us she had a 'chest infection' beats me. We all know what a chest infection is and how it can be nasty, why ladle on another layer of near-death?

I agree, a chest infection is quite enough truth. You’ve put it so perfectly when you describe it as “ladle on” because the writing must be so terribly bland that nobody would care about it without this added peril she thinks. She thrives on people’s sympathy and has made a comfortable existence from it. The drama, the limelight, the attention. A frozen lung is a manipulative lie again which guarantees she receives those accolades.

Thank you. I’ve browsed round there many a time and bought materials. They do lovely soup and cakes in there.

I've just been reading through a few days of posts - very interesting. Some of you may remember the article below - which is rare in that it is after the film premiere and a week or so before the exposé. For some of the newer charabancers, it sets out the emotional anguish of the solo walk and entices us to buy the book!

No, I didn’t camp for this one, because it was winter, and some days I was in amazing snow in -10C. But I was on my own. Maybe not my best choice, but there’s a reason it had to be winter, which you’ll find out when you read the book!

Raynor Winn On Winter Hill | Muddy Stilettos Cornwall | Muddy Stilettos

The US and Canada release isn't until 28 August. The lady in the green tracksuit is one of those who says: “Working with Marianne on her first feature was a rare opportunity to translate an intimate, deeply felt story to the screen,” said producers Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley.

Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs Drama 'The Salt Path' Gets U.S. Release

The Variety article seems to be from Penguin's parallel universe.

Thank you @BrandiedAromatics for the repost of the Muddy Stilettos article, it was good to read that and refresh my memory.
There’s a lot I’d like to comment on, mostly the bare faced cheek of lying so brazenly and the irony of talking about seeing herself as a character onscreen whilst we know that she is in a permanent state of cosplay and probably feeling disoriented, like being in a hall of mirrors. I’ve just lifted this extract:

And how is Moth? The event today is of course to raise money for the PSPA charity, which must be close to your heart.

He was in the best health that he’s been in years, but last was a really tough year, and he had a difficult time. But he’s been trying really hard to get back to where he wants to be, and he’s in a much better place now than he was a year ago, for sure.
The PSPA charity is the one that oversees anything to do with helping people with CBD (Corticobasal Degeneration, which Moth has) [and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)].
They have support groups like the one in Devon and Cornwall, and that’s really helpful for people who live with these conditions to just share experience with other people, and for the families that are involved. It’s good to share and not have to explain yourself, or the feeling, or emotion behind all the physical feelings.

How on earth is it possible for someone with a degenerative disease to swing back and forth? The ‘tough year’ and ‘trying really hard to get back to where he wants to be’? Without explaining the process. I can’t imagine how the people in the support groups must have felt with this imposter amongst them. It makes my blood boil.

Do you suppose he actually showed up to support groups and acted, like the narrator and Marla in Fight Club, who are addicted to support groups for illnesses and conditions they don’t have? That’s unforgivable.

Imagine talking about some of the more difficult or humiliating CBD symptoms in a supposedly safe, private space, and discovering that in fact you were being used for credibility by an impostor to shore up his wife’s memoir scam. And, presumably, that he was taking note of every spasm, slur, stagger etc so he could use them in his act.

I'm afraid I thought that this was a contributory factor to Moth's collapse at the end of one of his fundraising walks. He was scheduled to walk in accompanied by 40 other PSPA supporters but didn't manage the part with the group and an ambulance recovered him. Shortly afterwards, in a TV studio, Raynor airily says "he's fine" when asked how is Moth.

Yes, it might have looked a tad obvious if the supposed CBD poster boy looked positively incandescent with good health compared to literally everyone else with the condition. And there’s a long tradition of TW pretending to be ill to get himself out of trouble.

(I see you on the ‘Stalked’ by Amanda Hutton and Richard Burton thread, @BrandiedAromatics — what’s your thinking? Extensive AI to make it resemble TSP, or something else causing the publication pushback?)

I noticed this time reading the above extract when Sal is talking about the PSPA charity - the first part when she's talking about Tim sounds personal, it's full of 'he' this and that. The second part, talking about the charity is completely removed and impersonal. No mention of 'we' or 'he' or what effect the charity might have had upon Tim - it's distanced, almost as though Sal and Tim didn't need help from the charity at all...

‘Stalked’ by Amanda Hutton and Richard Burton thread

Yes, definitely drawn in by the similarities and, as I shared upthread, the fact that it has now been kicked into the long grass, like TSP. I was hoping some of the charabancers would take an interest re: the publisher, authenticity, etc, and you will see I am asking about the literary agency.

ETA Interesting post on there re: the impact of 'remembered' dialogue that doesn't work, like TSP.

Yes, I imagine the pair of them just sponging it all up as part of their research in much the same way as they did when writing about themselves being homeless. I agree that it is unforgivable and very damaging. Even now they still want to present this lie as being “a beacon of hope” which is incredibly insulting. A swallow was called a beacon of hope to a sailor because they showed that land was near. I detest how they have taken anything they want, whether it be money, goods, other people’s ideas and stories, goodwill and charity, they’ve used and abused trust and profited handsomely. The list goes on. There is no compensation for this and with Penguin standing by and supporting their author, it’s sickening and outrageous.

Yes. Where she says “It’s good to share and not have to explain yourself…” etc all I can think is that that suits them down to the ground because of course they have nothing TO share OR contribute!
🤬

I am not familiar with this thread or the story. I’ll take a look.

Yes, it’s an interesting question. I read the Guardian ‘extract’ (which I thought was odd because it wasn’t a ‘teaser’, it essentially told you the whole story of the book, leaving very little reason to buy it) and thought it was significantly AI, but wondered whether that was just (!) some Guardian subeditor running it through AI to abridge it, so the problem was at the Guardian, not with the book itself. But if it’s suddenly been pushed back for publication, the problem clearly is with the book itself, and not just the way the Guardian piece was edited.

It does also raise the rather horrifying spectre of copycat Raynor Winns, not just in walking or nature writing books, but in entirely different fields of writing. ‘ChatGPT, write me a cosy crime novel in the style of Raynor Winn, about an oil company coming after a former ecowarrior!’ ‘ChatGPT, write me an Aga saga about a London divorcee who finds herself by opening a tea shop in a Cotswold village, in the style of Raynor Winn!’ ‘Write me a space opera in the style of Raynor Winn where the ‘nature’ is inside a biome on Mars!’🙄

Such attendence at support groups would surely have helped him in his acting role for the PSPA charity video that appeared on the Sky documentary, as well as coach unsuspecting Jason Isaacs. Shameful.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5551404-to-think-this-couple-in-the-guardian-are-strange-and-this-was-not-an-appropriate-subject-for-a-book?page=3&reply=153528144

Amazing what you can do with ChatGPT!

Moth in Guatemala!

It is truly unnerving that you can make such manipulations to images@ThompsonTwin, the results are very funny especially the Mars bar, but the way that this technology has the potential to be used is scary.