Response from Raynor Winn

[LadyAsnowt]

https://www.raynorwinn.co.uk/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLbinBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHn4CDTrUrIDuXL0tVAYJ3dH460teIoXUWeJHnN4d4OricMcLbXv7G34TYExG_aem_qY2LGgF-5wCef6Dhl2xyrg

She's got an answer for everything.

I think her attempts to wave away the stealing of money from an employer, and the loan situation… are not very strong.

I think it’s impossible to comment on his health condition without being a doctor really.

Using a pseudonym in a book seems like a fairly ordinary thing to do.

I haven’t read the book but am mildly curious about this story - I can see how you might get carried away and wash over some details not expecting it to become a global phenomenon with Hollywood movie etc.

Hmm
I have read the book but my memory is hazy. Now more confused than ever.
The embezzlement defence seems weak.

"If I did make any mistakes I'm sorry" hmmm!

The site froze on me so that might not be a verbatim quote!

Those doctor letters seem to say more what it is not than what it is.

She says they couldn't possibly stay at the French property because it had no running water, wasn't habitable etc and the land was covered in brambles...why didn't they just strim them and camp there on their own land instead of ripping off uk campsites? They could have probably acquired a caravan for the winter very cheaply or even free.

When I lived on my land in France (tents and a caravan) we had no running water etc. and certainly no tax credits. Idea was to renovate the ruin we had there...but like many we ran out of funds very quickly... a common scenario and setup for expats...like me many returned to the UK to go back to work...I didn't hear anyone whinge about their situation. Freedom comes at a price and is a personal choice and to some extent a luxury...the author could have always traded hers for a job.

Her statement is still obfuscation. The "explanation" about the loan is absolute nonsense. Her lawyers would not advise her to say this as it makes no sense. She clearly thinks we are all idiots.

What doesn't hold up is Raynor Winn's attempts to convince us her husband has CBD. He doesn't. They hiked the South West Coast Path (the "salt path") in 2013. Winn (aka Sally Walker) posts 3 communications purporting to be from medics (the last in 2025 looks dubious to me as it mentions their forthcoming film.. from a hospital consultant?). Let's focus on the other two. A letter dated 2015 - 2 years after they complete said walk. It states that Tim (aka Moth - the husband) had tests in 2011 including an MRI - it was negative. IF he had CBD - even though a complete diagnosis could not be made - as it could be confused with other ailments - e.g. Parkinsons, Alzheimers the MRI would not be negative (please do google, it's very clear). So by all accounts when they hiked the Salt Path he wasn't ill - at least not with a serious illness - and it wasn't terminal. In the same letter (2015) the author mentions that he exhibits symptoms of CBD (clearly where Raynor Winn gets the idea from!) and he's told of an organisation that supports CBD sufferers. However, in exactly the same letter the consultant writes he is likely not to have much in common with these as Tim's symptoms are "Mild" - Mild - so like not life threatening, not at deaths door... The next letter is dated from 2019 and here the medic writes that it probably isn't CBD at all. This is Raynor Winn's own defence. She has absolutely no proof that Moth/Tim Walker has CBD nor that he is dying nor that he was diagnosed with the condition when they set out to do the walk. But what is clear is that in 2015 she researched CBD and from this discovered most patients only live 8 years (which she says in the book the consultant told them) but which is nowhere written in any of the communications she has posted. It takes about a year usually to complete a book and 2 until it reaches the shelves - the Salt Path was published in 2018. As someone said on Reddit; it's like I am diagnosed in the future with having possible symptoms of multiple sclerosis then go write a book about my hike along the Pennine Way in 2018 in which I state I had just been given a diagnosis of end stage MS and got better along the way. Total nonsense.

It doesn’t say much for her husband that he allowed her to lie and use his supposed condition to dupe people and make money.

Also in the book and film it's the husband who is blamed for having 'made a bad investment' - begging the question why she's staying with him. Well now we know why...

Telling the world you are homeless to sell your book when you have a house in France is just fucking outrageous.

There is absolutely no way around that.

brambles 😂😆😂

They have a plot in France not a house as such - apparently it’s a wreck.

i reckon moth had depression and at the time of writing had other symptoms - maybe later books go into more but I didn’t feel in book 1 that they lied - more didn’t go into every detail

• Her husband doesn’t have CBD
• she’s a robber
• and the pair of them are grifters

He went through pregabalin withdrawal in the book as well

Are you reading the same letters I am?

For the consultant to mention the cinema release is not at all unusual. Having had numerous letters from my daughter’s neurologist over the years, they’ve contained notes such as “she is appearing in her school play on Friday and I wish her luck” or “she has told me she wishes to be a neurosurgeon when she leaves school and I recommended this as a great career” or “she has taken up baking and has promised to bring me some cake next time she visits.” In this scenario his consultant seems to be offering to speak with him regarding any issues after the cinema release. That’s not unusual.

Of course she took the diagnosis from something written in the consultant’s letter. What else would a person do? When my daughter first saw a consultant, they said “some people would call this collection of symptoms as being <insert her diagnosis>. From that point we assumed that was what she had. In fact, it was years later before anyone actually wrote the actual diagnosis in the letter.

The letters do not say he does not have the condition. They simply say some of the symptoms are atypical. Again, nothing unusual in that. One of my daughter’s friends was diagnosed with the same condition she has, despite some atypical symptoms, only to find out years later what she actually has is a rare genetic disorder which largely mimics the neurological condition. Before that second diagnosis, she was being treated as having the first condition despite many things which didn’t align with it. Whether the genetic testing one of the letters refers to shows something different if it is carrried out remains to be seen, but there is no doubt he has all the symptoms as have been described.

I have no idea of the veracity of the rest of the story, what’s true and what isn’t, 3 sides to every story and all that. I’m sure there will be a court case which will bring more evidence to bear. But to trawl over this man’s medical history and suggest they made up the diagnosis entirely doesn’t feel like a particularly good thing to do.

For the consultant to mention the cinema release is not at all unusual. Having had numerous letters from my daughter’s neurologist over the years, they’ve contained notes such as “she is appearing in her school play on Friday and I wish her luck” or “she has told me she wishes to be a neurosurgeon when she leaves school and I recommended this as a great career” or “she has taken up baking and has promised to bring me some cake next time she visits.” In this scenario his consultant seems to be offering to speak with him regarding any issues after the cinema release. That’s not unusual.

it would certainly be much more usual for comments of that nature to be in a letter of a child patient, rather than an adult.

Of course she took the diagnosis from something written in the consultant’s letter. What else would a person do?

The initial letter is the one dated 2015. It reads as a consultation following referral, and refers to previous investigations (all normal). It mentions that the symptoms may be a very mild form of CBD, and refers TW to a charity for information but advises him that most of that information will not be relevant to him.
The premise of the book (TSP) was that they set out on the walk after losing their house and being given a terminal diagnosis in 2013.

Having thoroughly reviewed many medical records in complex cases for my previous career; I agree the letters disclosed do not support Winn’s version of events.

The first letter dated 2015 is damning. It suggests it is a first diagnosis, the scans have all been normal, and says the symptoms presented do not really fit anything, but CBD is nearest. It is 2 years after Winn claims they got the diagnosis in 2013. It is well after they walked. It is when she is writing the book.

Consultants have a code for “this is very fishy”. The neurologist only observed two symptoms, an abnormal gait, but no loss of muscle strength or abnormal neurology to explain that (eg not caused by anything physiological), and weaving eye movements. Nothing that cannot be fabricated.

I enjoyed the book as a work of fiction, but never believed the legal or medical stuff. Moth appears to be almost coercively controlled by Ray. Many “extraordinarily happy” marraiges in public, involve one partner sacraficing themselves entirely?

I found it singularly unconvincing.

New article on this today

https://observer.co.uk

They seem to leave a trail of people conned and manipulated in their wake.

And now we read today in the observer that the man who leant them his house in Cornwall was told by Moth in October 2021 he’d be dead by Xmas. I mean, you gotta hand it to these people. They are supreme confidence tricksters. Hope Penguin turn down her latest book. They’ve made enough money out of duping people now, surely?

Apparently they have postponed the release of the new book.