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Thread 4: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

1000 replies

DisappointedReader · 09/07/2025 20:23

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Second article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

Third article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

OP posts:
Thread gallery
49
FurryHappyKittens · 10/07/2025 08:44

I can see her weaving a tale of how they had to leave the cider farm because of these nasty allegations, after all actual timelines don't seem to matter to her!

DiamondThrone · 10/07/2025 08:47

Just waiting for the "We were lent a croft in Scotland so we could get away from all the nasty journalists, it was in a terrible state and we completely fixed it while also going for lots of healing walks" book 🙄

Catwith69lives · 10/07/2025 08:49

In terms of where do the Walkers go next, well how about France? Presumably they have enough money in the bank to do up the place they own in Le Village du Dropt. Maybe they could be the next Peter Mayle (A Year in Provence/Toujours Provence) or, failing that, (having it seems walked most of the LDPs in the UK and Iceland) set off on the Camino to Santiago de Compostella.

Colddayhotcuppa · 10/07/2025 08:50

SomethingFun · 09/07/2025 22:10

I don’t get the impression that she thinks she’s done anything wrong. Her boss had more money than her, she needed and felt she deserved more money so she took it. When she was found out she didn’t want to get a criminal record so she found someone else with money and took out a loan I imagine she had no intention of paying back to pay the first lot off. But she sees herself as a good and nice and kind person who has fallen on hard times and she deserves these things and people with more than her obviously don’t deserve their things and you can take them off them and it just balances out. From the free cups of tea and nicking hot water for a shower to paying off your embezzlement with a loan, it’s the same behaviour and motivation. Marketing this behaviour as being a free spirit and at one with nature is genius.

Absolutely this. The entitlement is immense and bordering on Narcissistic. Normal rules don't apply to them. Hell, they seem to believe they are above the LAW. Taking things without paying, lying publicly, embezzlement....

But somewhere in Raynor's head she is a good person and is bewildered to find herself in these circumstances.

HolyPond · 10/07/2025 08:50

Scotland seems a strong possibility. They went there a lot to climb and wild camp in their younger days, as recounted in The Wild Silence, and married on Skye — and, if we’re to believe TWS, had actually always intended to buy land and settle in Scotland, not Wales. Wales seems to have been an accident when they hit bad traffic on the way to Scotland on holiday with small children, and turned off the road north.

In fact, weirdly, TWS, which I own but hadn’t read till last night, has the odd effect of making the SWCP walk of TSP sound less impressive and singular, because they seem to have hiked long distances in challenging terrain, and wild camped in way more edgy circumstances, when they were younger. You could have written the same walk as ‘joky account of how two creaky middle-aged people went back to the hobby of their youth’.

AldoGordo · 10/07/2025 08:52

HolyPond · 10/07/2025 08:31

Can someone with more familiarity with UK law suggest why, as RW says in her rebuttal, they didn’t declare bankruptcy at the time of losing their house?

She flags it as a sign of their integrity, that they chose not to, and instead of having their debts wiped, chose instead to make ‘minimal repayments’ to their creditors.

She also says they’ve repaid everything owed since, starting with the advance for TSP, and that if the Observer had run a credit check on them, they would see they have no debts…

My understanding is that filing for bankruptcy wipes clear all debts but in doing so you must legally declare all assets of significant value (i.e you can't wipe your debts for free if you have a stash of money or assets). This is what Boris Becker got a prison sentence for - he didn't disclose property and loans that valued 2.5 million.

So I'm guessing here that RW still had some assets. We already know about the property in France so maybe they had other assets somewhere. Perhaps for this reason they didn't want to go down the bankruptcy route.

An alternative to bankruptcy is something called a legal agreement called a Trust Deed which involves paying creditors back at an agreed rate over an agreed term which sounds like what the Winns did.

I'm not entirely sure why they'd have a lot of debt after the house repossession to need to go bankrupt either as I was under the impression the house sale would cover the debts. I can only think they perhaps still owed their mortgage lender after the Cooper creditors got their money.

Youareonmute · 10/07/2025 08:52

I am agog watching all this unfold…Like everyone I read the book but always felt the explanation about the house / bad investment very sketchy. They always seemed to have loads of friends to stay with - like through the winter after the first leg of the walk- plus resources on hand ( like a French farmhouse tucked away)

I think her statement was ill advised too.
She avoids answering the question of stealing any money in a vague way but she was feeling pressured!

What I don’t get in her statement is that she says In 2008, they asked for the money back from this so called ‘Cooper’ from their investment in the 1990’s. He said he didn’t have it but offered them a loan through his company. They agreed!! He owned them money… so why did they agree a loan. I don’t get it. Even with my limited finance knowledge I know that does not make sense.

sualipa · 10/07/2025 08:55

EternalLodga · 09/07/2025 23:12

I know people change but considering how little financial acumen these two seemed to have i find it surprising that someone who was such a hard-core activist he actually had a guerilla nickname that lives on today, would pivot to investing in a property portfolio

Dale Vince - CEO of Ecoctricity was a new age traveller back in the day and was at Battle of the Beanfield at Stonehenge in 1984. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Vince

AldoGordo · 10/07/2025 08:57

FurryHappyKittens · 10/07/2025 08:19

I wonder where they are now.

If they left the cider farm months ago, I'm surprised she hasn't mentioned anywhere about some wonderful, amazing new opportunity.

Oh didn't know they'd left the cider farm. Where did you read or see that?

Localres · 10/07/2025 09:00

I have (admittedly skimmed in places) all of these threads and while I think she’s clearly got found out, by some excellent journalism, the tendency of comments here is leaning a bit OTT. I don’t mean on her “guilt” (of stealing money or of lying) - that seems pretty clear. I mean that the obsessive picking over of meaningless details (his job title? Going after some poor doctor??) is making this all seem a bit mad.

what is fairly clear to me (and I’ve written books) is that she lied to make a better story, but that there is absolutely no way she could possibly have expected to make the money and sell the copies she has. No one would. Almost no writers make any money, that’s just a fact. Every year thousands upon thousands of memoirs die on their arses. The fact that it hit a public nerve and earned her loads is hardly something anyone would have bet as much as a tenner on. So my point is not that it’s not wrong that she’s made money from lying (it is) but that she very reasonably would not have expected to - and thus not gone into this with any idea that she would have to maintain the lies and eventually so publicly get found out.

again, I’m not expressing doubt on any allegations or defending her - I’m just saying it wasn’t some conspiracy she planned in advance to make millions. People lie, mostly they get away with it because no one checks. She will not have ever expected (though clearly still took advantage of!) to be so much in the public eye so inconsistencies etc are only to be expected.

sualipa · 10/07/2025 09:02

FurryHappyKittens · 10/07/2025 02:36

I can't link but on Peter Knight's Gigspanner Facebook they have posted a link to her statement and are very obviously supporting her.

Many comments about how awful that Ray and Moth have had to share such personal information, and that she has successfully rebutted the allegations made.

Very odd parallel universe there.

Folky people tend to be quite fluffy and generally like cider if they drink at all.

Thread 4: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?
Thread 4: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?
HolyPond · 10/07/2025 09:04

AldoGordo · 10/07/2025 08:52

My understanding is that filing for bankruptcy wipes clear all debts but in doing so you must legally declare all assets of significant value (i.e you can't wipe your debts for free if you have a stash of money or assets). This is what Boris Becker got a prison sentence for - he didn't disclose property and loans that valued 2.5 million.

So I'm guessing here that RW still had some assets. We already know about the property in France so maybe they had other assets somewhere. Perhaps for this reason they didn't want to go down the bankruptcy route.

An alternative to bankruptcy is something called a legal agreement called a Trust Deed which involves paying creditors back at an agreed rate over an agreed term which sounds like what the Winns did.

I'm not entirely sure why they'd have a lot of debt after the house repossession to need to go bankrupt either as I was under the impression the house sale would cover the debts. I can only think they perhaps still owed their mortgage lender after the Cooper creditors got their money.

Thanks, @AldoGordo — that makes sense. I did wonder about what happens when a heavily-mortgaged house is legally repossessed with the proceeds (apparently?) going to a creditor other than the mortgage lender…?

Reading The Wild Silence atm, and interested in the fact that they pay the owner of the cider farm rent, even though at times she seems to present it as the owner doing them a favour and despite the house, as RW depicts it, is uninhabitable, with standing water in some rooms, huge mould, and infested with mice. Also, before they move in, someone vandalises the house, gluing the locks shut, throwing red paint everywhere and writing SCUM (and a giant penis) on the exterior. They write it off as ‘kids’, but is it another Walker enemy disgruntled about a debt?

HolyPond · 10/07/2025 09:06

AldoGordo · 10/07/2025 08:57

Oh didn't know they'd left the cider farm. Where did you read or see that?

The DM article someone linked above sent someone there and said the house was clearly uninhabited, with heavy dust on the windows and only a few bits of furniture and old clothes inside. And said locals said they hadn’t seen them in a while. There was talk locally of a falling out either the farm’s owner, Bill Cole.

Bruisername · 10/07/2025 09:07

I would have thought the bank would have a first charge on the property and ‘cooper’ didn’t get full payment from the sale

she may not have had bad intentions at the start and didn’t think the book would be so successful but she has compounded the lies over many years in interviews and subsequent books

Merrymouse · 10/07/2025 09:07

Youareonmute · 10/07/2025 08:52

I am agog watching all this unfold…Like everyone I read the book but always felt the explanation about the house / bad investment very sketchy. They always seemed to have loads of friends to stay with - like through the winter after the first leg of the walk- plus resources on hand ( like a French farmhouse tucked away)

I think her statement was ill advised too.
She avoids answering the question of stealing any money in a vague way but she was feeling pressured!

What I don’t get in her statement is that she says In 2008, they asked for the money back from this so called ‘Cooper’ from their investment in the 1990’s. He said he didn’t have it but offered them a loan through his company. They agreed!! He owned them money… so why did they agree a loan. I don’t get it. Even with my limited finance knowledge I know that does not make sense.

I think she might be linking the two morally, but they are two completely separate transactions.

If you invest in a company by buying shares, you have no right to anything if the business fails, or any right to ask for your investment back. Perhaps they asked ‘Cooper/James’ to buy their share of the business and he said he couldn’t.

It doesn’t make sense that he then had enough money lying around to loan them £100,000, or that he had a business that had a standard lending rate of 18%. Any ‘business’ that routinely makes loans at that rate is a credit card company or is in loan shark territory.

The only thing that makes sense is that they were desperate for money and had nobody else to ask.

sualipa · 10/07/2025 09:07

More outpourings of support for Gigspanner and their support.

Thread 4: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?
Bruisername · 10/07/2025 09:09

sualipa · 10/07/2025 09:07

More outpourings of support for Gigspanner and their support.

I worry about this country when people read her statement and think it is a comprehensive rebuttal

nomas · 10/07/2025 09:09

Noshadelamp · 10/07/2025 08:27

"To be guided on the truth" sounds so manipulative, it's really not a nice phrase.

I wonder if she had to restrain herself from saying ‘guiding them to our truth’.

nomas · 10/07/2025 09:10

sualipa · 10/07/2025 09:07

More outpourings of support for Gigspanner and their support.

Such a lack of critical thinking in those posts. Only a blind desperation to believe.

Merrymouse · 10/07/2025 09:11

sualipa · 10/07/2025 09:07

More outpourings of support for Gigspanner and their support.

They have clearly misunderstood the ‘allegations’, but if people want to continue buying books and going to shows, nobody is stopping them.

sualipa · 10/07/2025 09:11

Bruisername · 10/07/2025 09:09

I worry about this country when people read her statement and think it is a comprehensive rebuttal

People are generally good natured and not suspicious (aka gullible - just look at how Boris and Trump got elected ) and in this case they are very happy to follow the yellow brick road and find the Wizard who is of course Wonderful !

nomas · 10/07/2025 09:12

Bruisername · 10/07/2025 09:07

I would have thought the bank would have a first charge on the property and ‘cooper’ didn’t get full payment from the sale

she may not have had bad intentions at the start and didn’t think the book would be so successful but she has compounded the lies over many years in interviews and subsequent books

It depends on how much equity was in the property. It was up for sale for £415k I think, from what I saw earlier in the threads.

HolyPond · 10/07/2025 09:13

Bruisername · 10/07/2025 09:07

I would have thought the bank would have a first charge on the property and ‘cooper’ didn’t get full payment from the sale

she may not have had bad intentions at the start and didn’t think the book would be so successful but she has compounded the lies over many years in interviews and subsequent books

Yes, I would have said so too, but I know nothing about this kind of situation. I mean, most people would surely not put a charge on a house without checking the size of the remaining mortgage, anyway, surely, but then the whole ‘Cooper’ situation doesn’t make a lot of sense, even if we take it at face value.

But then again, neither does the Observer’s tale of a distant relative of Tim Walker’s who was family-minded enough not to want to see Sally go to prison, but then loaned them money to repay her embezzlement and legal fees against their house at a high interest rate, and with a savvy lawyer to enforce an NDA.

sualipa · 10/07/2025 09:16

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