INSPIRATIONAL memoir The Salt Path has been exposed as the conspicuous bullshit it was all along. These are the questions every middle-class reading group didn’t ask:
‘Can walking really cure a degenerative illness?’
It’s nice to believe a seaside yomp can make terminal illnesses and self-orchestrated poverty magically go away. But it logically means the anti-vaxxer guy from Coast is a God of Health and right about everything which he can’t be, as he regularly appears on GB News. The ravages of corticobasal degeneration are not vulnerable to hiking.
‘Is anyone really called Raynor Winn and Moth?
Does these sound like names? Would you not let out an involuntary sigh on being introduced to such a couple?
‘Could dirty underhanded thieving be described as a bad investment?’
Hapless casualties of a vague business investment gone sour rediscover themselves wild camping sounds much better than ‘embezzler goes on run in tent’. Though given they owned a house in France maybe it was all a grand bourgeois lark of pretending poverty, like when Martin skips his round.
‘Is the South West Coast Path life affirming?’
The pyramids are breathtaking. The Grand Canyon fills you with awe. Poorly maintained Cornish footpaths looking onto gunmetal waves heavy with sewage affirm little. Retrace the footsteps of the Salt Path and you’ll end up walking into the sea after filling your pockets with stones.
‘Did they even walk it?’
A book about a walk which ascends an estimated four Everests in total should surely mention the terrain. As in the thing you swear at on walks. But Winn and Moth glide along the coast as if it were the travelator at Luton Airport while fuelled only by Pot Noodles. Check Uber and Deliveroo’s records for the region and period.
‘Did the publisher and Hollywood know all along?’
A movie adaptation with Gillian Anderson doesn’t just f**king happen. Hives of legal experts have gone over the text and concluded nobody can prove it false. Consequently shitloads of cash has been made by all involved, which just maybe was the plan all along.
