To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The real Salt Path: how the couple behind a bestseller le...

I read Raynor Winn's book The Salt Path and her other two books. I was looking forward to seeing the film at some point and to reading her next book. I felt sorry to read about the challenges the couple had faced, especially with regard to losing their family home and with Moth's health. Now, having read the article in today's Observer, I feel a bit stunned and am not sure what to think.

They’ve very effectively concealed their identities through changing names and locations (and then even lying about the changed names - “his real name is Ray” … yeah, it’s not though, is it?).

Unless you’ve actually seen and recognised them from a TV appearance, you’d have trouble making the connection, especially if you’re in a small town in Wales and got swindled over a decade ago by people called Sally and Tim. And as a pp pointed out, she tactically waited for the two people with the most financial skin in the game to die before she went ahead with publication of the original piece of ‘poor us’ bullshit.

Revolting pair of work shy, entitled, narcissistic grifters who’ve done nothing but use and rob people, whilst simultaneously sneering at the generosity/gullibility of others. And the medical fraud is shockingly disgusting. I wish it was something that could be prosecuted.

Interesting as suggests some of the story is true at least!!

^This! Whether it’s gender nonsense or health nonsense or poverty porn recipe-mongers, any type of woo, the MN vipers are never afraid to call it out.

You don’t get as many long con trolls on MN these days, but I like to think we all developed our troll spidey senses way back in the days when there would be those sad-story scammers who tried to take people for a ride with pretend ill children or whatever, and we got very good indeed at sniffing them out. Good for MN.

Apologies if this has already been discussed & I missed it, but I remember the scandal from a few years ago around A J Finn. He appears still to be writing and has ridden out the "storm" so this one may go in a similar way. We will see ...
A J Finn

I can't keep up with the thread!

If i had relatives that treated other people's money like this, I'd want 18% and a charge on property to secure a £100k loan. The risk was always huge...

Mrs Hemmings ( employers widow). says it was about 64k missing ( obviously it could have been more) but if that's correct then they borrowed 36k more than they needed (though10k of that was for fees I presume to the ' good' solicitor and banking charges ) . And the lender's business went bust months later according to CH in Observer . So if so they would have had around 26k over, that means that they may not have been so broke as they said when they went off ( Walker says all they had was £48 a week ' benefits ' though I'm not sure how that could have worked on a walking trip because they'd have needed to sign on if it was JSA )

Yeah it seems the only true bits were the bits about criminality and deception

"When someone tells you who they are, believe them"

Can I ask: did your friend catch them illegally camping and trying to sneak off without paying, or is it that she has she had a spate of illegal campers since the publication of the book? It's not quite clear from your wording.

I feel incredibly upset by this - my Mum has the related condition to Moth’s supposed diagnosis - PSP rather than CBD.

We both loved The Salt Path for the nature writing and the South West Coast Path.

My Mum is now incredibly poorly and dreading telling her if she hasn’t already heard on the news that it might be made up. CBD and PSP are awful awful diseases that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

If they’ve made up that he’s suffering from CBD that’s incredibly cruel - I wonder if that’s why they’ve done so much fundraising out of guilt.

I even had thoughts that we should have tried more walking when she was first diagnosed as it seemed to help Moth so much and slow the progression.

It is indeed. Decent oul skins in local pronunciation. One I like ' he's a nice oul misfortune' . Talk about back handed compliments.

I didn’t like her when I saw her interviewed
It’s awful what they’ve done and I really hope someone investigates his diagnosis too.
Hideous people.

Will they, or have they been prosecuted for theft/deception? it's not clear to me as they seem to be living their lives as usual. I might have missed something though.

The case of the man in the canoe John Darwin came to mind for me when reading this thread. But he went to jail for fraud in the end - along with his wife.

I don't know, for me it has been more a feeling of relief that people will no longer think I could have cured myself if only I had gone on a nice long walk.

So sorry to hear about your mum though. It sounds like a cruel disease

From the article:

The Observer contacted Sally and Tim Walker, putting all the information we had gathered to them. They didn’t speak to us – instead Sally sent a short statement through her lawyers. “The Salt Path,” the statement says, “lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives. This is the true story of our journey.”

I have read some of The Salt Path (got bored and abandoned half way through) and always wondered why the couple did not seek leave to appeal to set aside the loss of right to appeal that they describe. DD and I came to the conclusion that there must have been more to it than the book says. This was it, then. Karma arriving, perhaps?

Can you share a link please? Would love to see what they’ve said

There is that too - and sorry it sounds like you’re dealing with something difficult.

I think with these particular diseases no one really understands them so it’s very much grasping at straws.

I have friends who have experienced the ‘just do some exercise’ narrative with other illnesses which is never helpful.

@Daisydoesnt Wandering fool shared it here

My illness is well understood by neurologists (as was Tim Walkers alleged illness) but much less so by lay people yes.

Thank you!

I never felt happy about her.

And in the film (where she had editorial control) there are numerous little vignette of people being nasty (such as the lasagne episode) and her being the victim, as well as ones where she is giving her last monry to a young girl to "save her".

That, and her blaming moth for the unnecessary investment he made that got them into the mess.

It was all too much "I'm a victim and it's all been done to me by other people" and "I'm a lovely person who helps others".

And even being unable to help her children is somehow more their fault than hers...

Didn't like the character
Don't like the woman

And particularly have never liked her attitude in TV interviews...

Also the house was mortgaged and I suppose that must still be outstanding,? Chloe H in the Observer says that when they tried raffling it ( stating it was free of mortgage and any registered charge ) it still had 230k mortgage as well as. the 100k debt against it . So they must still have owed that to the Mortgage company? Surely they have to be liable to a fraud investigation as well now ?

This X post by the observer which includes the video and the statement in response from Sally and Tim is currently getting over 1,000 views a minute and has 106k views. Responses to it include:
https://x.com/observeruk/status/1941738885106872782?s=61

I wonder if anyone with CBD has embarked on a long-distance walk in the hope that it would alleviate symptoms in the way that trekking is supposed to have done for "Moth Winn". It's irresponsible of a publisher to put out a book like to this without doing detailed checks first.

I’m very pleased to see this couple ‘exposed’. Contrary to popular opinion I hated the book because I hated the couple who, in my opinion, were opportunistic, self-pitying, unpleasant, unlikeable.

Did they even walk the @swcoastpath to the extent described in the book?

Brilliant expose of The Salt Path. Bravo. I know West Penwith well. Some of the details in the chapter Headlands do not add up as in the previous chap the Wynns are in St Ives but then she writes of view from Godrevy, which is on opp side of Hayle,heading east, not west!

Very interesting, well done. I remember reading the book when it first came out and thinking it skimmed over quite a few details, but that it was well written and told a good story. The second book made me really question their veracity, it felt so off.

Thanks for this reporting. I hope we now get the even deeper dive to lay bare the full story.

My BS filter sounded very strongly just a few chapters in and I just thought what is the point in reading a true story when I don’t believe it’s true. People seemed to either love it or hate it!

This is at the end of The Observer video