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?

@Oeufs @Vroomfondleswaistcoat @HatStickBoots I'm laughing at the posts above about the journalist who was diverted from meeting Tim. I couldn't share the original link earlier as it is behind a paywall in The Times (and I have tried to archive it twice and failed).

My memory is that it just says that Sal picked her up herself from the station and drove them to the Duchy Nursery but I haven't reread the original.

On the subject of authenticity, that we were discussing last night - this is an example for me from the extract shared by @Oeufs from Grazia : where music and loud chatter abounded beneath the blooms. When I read that I thought oh that journalist has definitely been to that café - it is an amazing space, a converted barn with huge beams exposed high above. But, the acoustics are deafening with conversations bouncing off the walls, and the chairs scraping are a nightmare ....

Whereas, when I have seen extracts of TSP, I often thought oh the ferry you want does not go from there, or you paraphrased that from 500MW, or the dolphins would get stranded if they swam with you and you never seem to swim.

So to follow up my post above: I couldn't share the original link earlier as it is behind a paywall in The Times (and I have tried to archive it twice and failed).

Here it is, at last: What the Salt Path author Raynor Winn told me about honesty

Regarding interviews, I just re-read this interview at Polruan.

"Moth" wasn't there (out for a walk) - but he came back while the journalist was still in the flat.

Journalist observed that "Moth" looked better than expected, given his illness.

"Moth" indicated that he was losing his memory so couldn't answer any questions.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/06/home-is-a-state-of-mind-you-dont-need-walls

Ahhhhhh good old memory loss! I’d forgotten that excuse could be used, thank you @Peladon and @BrandiedAromatics im going to read these now.

I'll be honest and say that when I was reading it, I didn't know it was supposed to be non-fiction, the opening few chapters did seem rather far-fetched. It also rambled on quite a lot and I got a little bored in the middle, so I didn't finish it. I do love Cornwall and Devon and some of the descriptions were good but yeah, not a book I'd return to finish.

Not sure if anyone read this Guardian article which was extracted from a book written by a couple about a strange series of events.
It was very much giving TSP vibes to me and left me very curious of what an objective account would look like.
Very odd.
I have shared the thread about it which has the link in it.
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?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Read like TSP to me. Maybe the same ghost writer?

I did look to see if it is Penguin but it is Harper. The extract, in The Guardian, is so long that I don't know why you would buy the book. This book is definitely marketed for the True Crime section - but it starts off like a 1980s Timotei shampoo advert.
Interesting for the conversation @ThompsonTwin started about authenticity in writing/AI. Other than that I'll give this a miss.

I just think all those books are written to much the same style, whether ghostwritten or not. Rather like a longer-form version of those Take A Break ‘true life’ stories where they’re written very tightly to the same beats in the same language with the same kind of pull-quotes — ‘My whole world came crashing down’, ‘He was the perfect man’, ‘A chilling realisation struck me’ etc etc.

If someone on this thread had given the extract below, as if from the works of Raynor Winn, I would have just accepted it. So many comments say RW is a good writer but it is like this:

.. sometimes we’d sit outside in silence, letting the wind and birdsong fill the gaps that words couldn’t reach. We were changed, both of us. Scarred, yes, but also sharpened, more awake to the fragility of things – the land, the sky, the small mercies we’d once taken for granted. As the autumn light faded over the hills, ====== stood beside me on the field we’d once fought so hard for, her hand in mine. The grass shimmered gold and a red kite wheeled lazily overhead.
“Maybe now,” she said, her voice soft but sure, “the land can heal.”

Yes, exactly. It’s hitting precisely the same beats there. And yes, godawful writing. I think it’s perfectly possible that the ghostwriter’s brief may have been ‘The Salt Path but with psycho neighbours’.

(Renovating dilapidated Welsh farmhouse, financial shenanigans involving a stupid decision to trust someone, paeans to nature, nice middle+aged couple subjected to appalling reversal of fortune through no fault of their own etc etc).

So the ghost writer may have been told to match the Raynor Winn style to see if it might cross over into bestseller status.

Sal’s daughter has posted on IG about experiencing some “wild trauma” last year and having had a “nervous breakdown” which she’s now recovering from. I am feeling curious and compassionate - intrigued really as to whether this is linked with the exposure of her parents…

Writing that on Instagram…. Is that yet more examples of emotional blackmail? She needs to look at the cause.
People don’t hate the Walkers or wish them harm, but there’s been no closure on this. I’d be much happier if Penguin relabelled these books, apologised and took some responsibility to make sure that future marketing for them does not lie. I know there’ll be no truth coming from the Walkers but I’d like to think that this teaches them something real about life, rather than hiding behind the false narrative they preach about in all three books and the way they’re continuing to behave on IG as though they really are those people and haven’t got a clue what all the fuss is about.

I’m a compassionate person which is why I was so easily manipulated in the first place. I wish this family would stop using these tactics to control people. Some family therapy would be a good idea because it looks (from the above) as if Alice is just continuing the theme taught by her mother and father. If her parents won’t even acknowledge the problem here, at least she could? From what I have read about the subject I recognise so many of the traits of covert narcissism in Sally Walker. Alice is very talented in her own right but there’s no appeal at all in continuing to market fool’s gold.

I agree - if only there could be an open and honest acknowledgement of what has happened and their part in it. Not these tantalisingly vague hints.

Maybe she's still recovering from having been a bikini-clad vegan trapped and starving for three days in a London chicken shop, ignored by passersby as she held up her whiteboard and banged on the window begging for rescue.

Or, as one suspects, this is one of the long list of Walker-related incidents that never actually happened, beyond someone thinking it would make a cool story.

Does anybody with a good memory of the books know if the chicken shop incident was mentioned in either of the last two?

I’m pretty sure it was only mentioned here on the threads and in the related articles that were shared - not in the books.

No, it doesn't appear at all in any of her books, only on whatever website that was where whichever one of us linked it from via Wayback -- was it Penguin's own website??

In fact, her daughter is conspicuous by her absence from the books after she gushes over the MS of Lightly Salted Blackberries and recommends SW trying to find an agent. The Walker son only appears in order to teach his tech Luddite mother how to use Twitter in TWS, facilitating Bill Cole getting in touch to offer them Haye Farm, and then in again LL to act as live-in dogsitter for what was supposed to have been a period of a few weeks while his parents walked the Cape Wrath trail, but which ends up being four months.

Both children are only present when dramatically necessary, to either dog/house sit for long periods or to act as worldly goads. We're clearly meant to think that 'Raynor Winn' is no more likely to use social media than she is to wear a lot of eyeliner and heels, and that actually seeking a publication deal would be completely anathema to this unworldly child of nature who, after all, only write TSP to jog her tragic husband's tragically lost memory. It's those tech-savvy, worldly daughter, innit? She made SW do it. Otherwise she'd still be hunched inside her tent in the Polruan flat, her genius unknown.

Ahhh thank you! When I read the archived piece, I wondered if it was another of her re-hashed scripts.
@Oeufs it really does seem that way:

It's those tech-savvy, worldly daughter, innit? She made SW do it. Otherwise she'd still be hunched inside her tent in the Polruan flat, her genius unknown.
They may work as a team but SW has to be the driving force and it may seem impossible to imagine but your post has made me wonder if she set up her own daughter as a scapegoat! It’s this absolute refusal to take responsibility for anything. It’s always someone else’s fault. Apologies aren’t apologies they are just more weapons to use against anybody who faces her with facts.

IIRC my reading of the chicken shop episode which I shared way back in the annals of the charabanc was that the piece of writing was very much in the RW style of catastophising. It seemed to me that it was ambiguous as to whether the episode was a real event or if it was a product of RW's anguish having not heard from Alice for a couple of days. My interpretation fell on the side of it being a motherly response to fear the worst, thus the chicken shop story was intentionally written as her imagined scenario of what had befallen Alice, not what actually happened. Much like her catastrophising in TSP when Alice calls to say she missed a bus (in or to Croatia I think), or indeed her melodramatic reaction to the smug lipped consultant's "diagnosis" or IRL when confronted by her MiL about the stolen money. Melodrama seens to ooze out of her, most often in a very clichéd and hackneyed manner.

The daughter has two Instagram accounts. One is a more personal account which she’s recently made private. This showed regular holidays abroad and other shenanigans. I noted she was travelling abroad during the period TW told Bill Cole he had only a few months to live.

When my parents were in poor health I even worried when we planned a trip to Scotland and wouldn’t have considered going overseas.

Yes, she's had a significant number of trips in far flung places since her parents became homeless and faced terminal illness...places (based on posts I have seen) include Indonesia, Oslo, Barcelona, Japan, Cambodia, road trip in USA, LA, Cape Town, a holiday last year in Spain. Doesn't quite add up...

In fairness, anyone brought up by a pair of chronic liars and scam artists is going to have at the very least some mildly askew ethics. If she's grown up seeing TW's vague 'ill health' continually produced as an excuse for why he's not working, why he can't be expected to bother himself with the bills, why no one can mention her mother's thefts from family members because it might cause him to relapse, then she's unlikely to have been expecting him to die of CBD. She's used to 'vaguely fragile Daddy'.

Who knows what the adult children actually think of it all. How old would they have been when the Hemmings' theft was discovered and SW did her moonlit flit from the police? And if they were young adults at the time of the repossession of Pen y Maes, they must have known it was coming as SW fought her delaying tactics in court.

So the daughter would have been about 21 when she was helping to promote HNTDDD. The children were mid to late 20s when TSP published.