Thread 7: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

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

Fourth item in The Observer
‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...

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Thread 6
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Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting.

To all - Please be careful when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with possible visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail.
Keep on the path as we have done together amazingly well for six threads so far. No saltiness. Thank you.

From what I gather, to do it properly it has to be very carefully managed and tended, like woodland does, to get an optimal number of species and habitats. I think some people use it as an excuse for not doing very much, letting it descend into a mass of brambles and getting Brownie points.

There's an old joke about a vicar walking past a chap tending his beautiful garden and saying to him "Ah, caring for God's land". Chap says "You should have seen the state of it when God was in charge".

It also makes no sense. He's living in the country on a farm with land, probably with all sorts of terrain nearby and able to be outside and active as much as he needs, not cooped up in a city flat. Why does he need to take off on a challenging trek like that if the benefits to his condition apparently come from exercise and walking? Why is a "long trail" needed?

I also wonder if it might become more popular on environmental grounds; if you know how much product you'll be selling, you can avoid having any left over to pulp/dump.
That works on several levels, from avoiding the risk of spending more than necessary on production, through a genuine wish to avoid waste, to a way to look saintly.

Just had a look at SW's IG feed documenting the end of the Cape Wrath Trail in 2021 (June 20). Photo of Moth at Fort William at the start of the WHW. Have a look at his boots - they appear brand new, certainly not boots that have just traversed one of the toughest footpaths in the UK!

Starting to think that 99% of what they say is utter bollocks

They are pretty lucky that they didn’t invest in a wreck just an itsy bit further south because keeping the wilderness at bay on your property is a requirement sort of by law to prevent forest fires in some départements. They call it by the Frenchiest most difficult to say or spell word (even worse than renumenerer)

La débroussaillage:

In which case is brush clearing mandatory? | Service-Public.fr share.google/FbWDuFZ7DeM5ta8CB

I haven't read Landlines but I was surprised to learn from a PP earlier that sometimes they got taxis. I don't believe they did the CWT but rather, small sections of it between taxi rides. I've done it and it's blinking hard work! It does cross a few roads and even follows some near the north end where they started so pre-arranged taxis don't seem out of the question.

The renewed talk of 'Cooper' has for some reason brought me back to the Walkerwinnwyn's Gangani Publishing, the How not to Dal dy Dir book of 2012 by Izzy Wyn-Thomas, the bios on the website and the plot of the book. I have a feeling the book would make interesting reading for the whole Walkergate scandal, including 'Cooper'. In the book he is possibly Jeremy, a childhood friend and property developer. It even has a dead sheep. I know there is an archived link elsewhere on the threads to the removed Gangani website with the bios and more on Jeremy if anyone has the time to look.

There is a copy of the book on eBay but it was flagged as out of stock in May 2025, making me wonder whether it was bought by The Observer or as part of the crisis management clean up process by the Walkerwinnwyns and others connected to TSP book and film.

A review of the book on the Accidental Smallholder's forum where 'Gangani' posted to drum up business for the book and house raffle:
'I felt so sorry for the main character and her adversary reminded me why I moved to the country'

Gangani on the forum claims:
'There's a second book that should be released January/ February next year, it takes the story a step further - 3 Mountains and a Ceilidh - it looks back and forwards in a cross-country romp through the UK. I'll let you know when it's released.'

I keep seeing it being said in interviews and written that 'they lost their farm ' 'we lost our farm' and I wondered what they were farming and on how much land. It seems to have been a smallholding with one sheep, one hen and some fruit trees. 'Acres of fresh air' are mentioned but where were those acres? I don't think the house and barn came with much land when it was sold? Again from Gangani on the Accidental Smallholders forum:
'My friends have an organic smallholding with a jacob sheep and a bantam hen, loads of fruit trees, a 3 bedroom barn conversion, beautiful garden and acres of fresh air. Due to ill health they have to let it go - just when the housing market has collapsed and no-one is buying. I'm a publisher with a fantastic book to market, so I said I'd help them out and we've put the 2 together and we're giving the smallholding away to one of the purchasers of the book.'

On another thread 'Gangani' advises a newcomer not to read the book as it might put them off the area.

'Gangani' pretending to be a friend of Raymoth but in all likelihood Raymoth.

Hello from Wales - The Accidental Smallholder

I like this article from a creative writing teacher at Goldsmiths.
https://www.francisgilbert.co.uk/2025/07/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-the-salt-path-after-the-truth-came-out/
It seems like he really identified with the book, used it in his teaching and wrote lots of articles about it. I think he's gutted and makes a point that I was trying to make, but more eloquently:

"7. The narrative fits a marketable myth
Sally and Tim Walker, under the names Raynor and Moth Winn, were the perfect protagonists for a certain kind of publishing story. Educated, white, articulate, middle-aged and apparently penniless, they embodied the resilient, poetic poor. But this narrative glosses over the reality of structural homelessness and can obscure more uncomfortable truths about who becomes visible and who does not."

Sally and Tim had their own land and relatives they could have stayed with. They also turned their noses up at an offer of accommodation from the council. They were never sleeping in shop doorways with spice zombies and getting beaten up and spat on. They don't know what homelessness really is.

@Redheadedstepchild @Chateaudiaries you might know. If Raymoth's French place is as the neighbour keen on architecture suspects medieval (possibly part of a former bastide) would it attract the attention of the French equivalent of English Heritage if it is basically allowed to fall down? Perhaps the whole countryside is bristling with such places and noone official is bothered but it would be interesting to know.

Funnily enough I was about to return to the Gangani stuff off the back of the Cooper stuff. Thank you for sharing. Something struck me when reading your post:

"due to ill health they have had to let it go."

This was written in 2012 a year before Timoth's alleged 2013 terminal diagnosis and a year before he allegedly stopped working due to ill health, according to 2015 letter.

Makes one wonder...

It would arguably been more useful to go on walks around your local district, get to know people, love your little patch, make connections, be part of a high trust little community...

...oh sorry, I forgot. They can't be trusted and have to be in a state of perpetual motion and be on to the next target for their swindling before they get sussed.

I can't give away my sources but I hear chickens are hiring private security foxes to guard their hen houses in rural areas to prevent against egg rustling from these chancers.

Not that they see it like that. They've come to the area to right wrongs and heal hearts before moving on again like the German Shepherd dog in, "The Littlest Hobo." I used to watch that with my own Alsation as a kid.

Excellent piece you shared, thanks @FlyAgaricc

I think Izzy’s book ‘How not to Dal…’ is potentially very problematic. Chloe H of Observer was trying to find a copy I saw pre article. I imagine she found one. Not many in circulation.

The estate agent’s details from 2014 (when they’d already left and the house was being sold, I presume) say

sits in delightful landscaped gardens along with two separate paddocks, ample parking, a useful outbuilding and former pigsties amounting to approximately 1½
acres in total.

IIRC they said the same about the amount of land on Escape to the Country. I don’t know much about farming but to my untutored eye that’s not a farm, it’s a nice, big garden. Maybe a hobby smallholding? Not big enough for stock on any meaningful level, maybe a few chickens etc. I know horses need several acres.

The only other possibility is that they rented land from neighbours for their stock - but that wouldn’t be their land.

@Redheadedstepchild 😍 I loved that show as a child!

I loved The Littlest Hobo, as soon as you said that, I started singing ‘maybe tomorrow I’ll wanna settle down..’ 80’s childhoods

Don't worry, it's only the one minute long theme tune. I won't subject you to half an hour of sentimental Canadian children's tv programming from the 1970's. I wish my Ricky had been able to fly a microlight plane or parachute though.

It is! I live in bastide country (Lomagnol) and actually have a pigeonnier - mine is inhabitable and not that old ( ie not part of the 'patrimoine')

Sorely tempted to visit the Chateau Lagruere and have a chinwag with the inlaws....

I don't think that in any way amounts to a "farm" either @WynkenDeWorde . A friend has more and it amounts to a small orchard and chickens (and guinea pigs). There is a stable I think for the carriage horse the original owner kept in the 1830s but the house had more land then, long ago sold off and built on.

Anyone got access to the Spectator to read this article?

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/weve-missed-an-important-clue-about-the-salt-path-fiasco/

@Redheadedstepchild Trying to resist tracking down the full episodes!

There's a link further up in this thread somewhere! (Am rushing or would find it)

Is the episode of Escape to the country with their house on available anywhere?

Yes, that made no sense to me. Just go for a walk every day! Surely wild camping isn't part of the 'cure'.