The (Fraudulent) Salt Path

A year ago I wrote this about the book The Salt Path:

Another book I read this month, found, in this case, not by Parnassus, by by Lisa, who noticed it’s been filmed for release later this year, is The Salt Path by Raynor Winn.

I am a sucker for impossible voyage stories, and I was attracted to the book for that reason, and because it’s a story of a couple roughly my age dealing with loss and illness by heading out to walk the South West Coast Path in the U.K.

I feared that the plodding nature of a long distance walk wouldn’t translate well to the page, and that the book we would a series of “walked some more, had lunch, found a campsite” vignettes. And it is that. But Winn is a colourful writer, and her descriptions of both their interior landscapes and the exterior ones they are trudging through, are lovely. I look forward to seeing how it translates to film.

Since I wrote that, the book—which I really did enjoy—and its author have been the subject of scrutiny and controversy, primarily by The Observer (The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation) for being at least partially fabricated.

These allegations are explored further in the documentary The Salt Path Scandal (trailer) and, this month, in a podcast series, The Walkers.