Thread 8: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

Well, this has turned out to be slightly longer than the dozen or so replies I expected when I started the first thread!

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

2nd Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

3rd Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

4th Observer
‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...

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husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

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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 extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct 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.

We have done amazingly well together - in the main that is, not mentioning any names but you know who you are! - for seven threads so far. I can't be on the threads as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion ticking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.

No saltiness. Keep to the path. Thank you.

Maybe @DisappointedReader needs to put a disclaimer at the start of every thread now

An NDA is not valid if intended to prevent access to information about criminal behaviour.

@VogonPoetLaureate, I meant to ask you, are you in the Simon Armitage SWCP book? I’ve only begun it.

😀

Yes it is.
They claimed Moth had a terminal illness and they claim that after the walk his condition improved. How else should people interpret those claims?

Certainly plenty of inspiration to be found https://www.phoebe-smith.com/books

@Smike "You keep saying things like other people assuming Sally Walker is ‘evil incarnate’ or ‘all bad’ No one has suggested that, or anything like it."

It's a tactic. Same as when Sally accused people of saying that Moth had lied about his illness. Nobody said that at all, they just had a lot of questions as nothing added up (and in any case, it was she who would have been the originator of any lie, as the author). It's just a tactic to play into the victim narrative.

I also noticed something I hadn't before when reading the pp showing the end of the book. It says something like "Moth will go to university and I will keep writing". So at this point in 2014 she's already a writer? Didn't she claim to only start writing in 2015/6 to give the book to Moth as a gift due to failing memory? So what "writing" is she referring to at the end of TSP?

In one interview she says she started writing TSP in Autumn 2016

Started Simon A's "Walking Home" last night and enjoying it. He's able to laugh at himself, which is the truest form of humour.

I've been proper annoyed about TSP, not the art work, for years, so here's another thing.

That whole thing about the lasagna and massage near Duckpool, the greek myth siren section.
Simon Armitage stayed at Hartland Abbey on Friday 6th Sept 2013 which was a well known place for arts events. Anyone living in the Hartland hinterland would know it as the host.

Below is a post from thread 4, so the Winns would have been in Hartland weeks before.

Catwith69lives · 10/07/2025 14:34

Catwith69lives · 10/07/2025 14:34

Yes it is, although the timelines are a bit strange. Simon Armitage walked from Minehead to Land's End from the 29 Aug to 17 Sept 2013. Sally and Tim Walker apparently started off from Minehead on the 6th Aug. When they reached Portheras Cove on the 13th September Raynor Winn stated that they had covered 243 miles and slept wild for 36 nights ( ie covering about 6.5 miles a day). Simon Armitage covered the same distance in 19 days (ie he was walking at twice the pace). Thus he was way behind the Walkers until St Ives. Therefore quite why anybody would have mistaken Moth for Simon Armitage is a bit of a mystery as their paths didn't really overlap until right at the end of his walk (he gave a reading in St Ives on the 14/15 Sept). The Walkers reached St Ives on the 12 Sept and saw posters in the town advertising Simon Armitage's poetry reading. I'm not saying the cases of mistaken identity didn't happen, but it does strike me as a bit strange.

I sense another inconsistency, or at least retrofitting. I can imagine an editor suggesting that actually. "We need the audience to know what you are going to be doing next...say you are going to keep writing, it'll hint to them there's more to come."

So that could mean that Sally Walker could still be prosecuted. Unlikely but a legal possibility perhaps.

New thought piece - New Stateman

The Salt Path and the sins of memoir
We are all unreliable narrators of our own lives.

As the author of a memoir myself, I admit the story left me unscandalised. Yes, the allegations, if accurate, make a mockery of The Salt Path’s claim to be nonfiction. But to tell you the truth – and would I, dear reader, do anything else? – I’ve come to have low expectations of the average memoir. The genre defined by fidelity to the facts is, on average, a poor guide to deeper truths about human beings. If you want to understand people, you’re better off reading fiction.

But successful memoirs are exceptions. We’re much better at seeing through other people’s hypocrisies and contradictions than our own. That insight underpins the narrative revolution pioneered by Jane Austen: the blending of a character’s innocent perspective with the author’s more knowing one. If Elizabeth Bennett had written her own story, it would be a banal tissue of vanity and delusion. But when Austen told it, she invented “free indirect speech” – and the modern novel.

The messy truth behind the Salt Path may well turn out to be neither Winn’s inspiring redemption story nor the cynical fraud imagined by her online critics. Perhaps it’s something more interesting: a case of two people backed into a corner by bad luck and terrible decisions, who stumbled onto a slightly too perfect escape – and found themselves trapped in their own distortions once it succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Whatever actually happened, it would make a gripping story. Just don’t expect Raynor Winn to be the person to tell it.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2025/07/the-salt-path-and-the-sins-of-memoir

They've got a point - the real life story of the Walkers is far more gripping than the semi fictionalised one told in TSP!

On the theft

paying back the stolen money meant they lost their house. If you were innocent why on earth wouldn’t you trust the investigation to clear you

unfortunately forged cheques paid to yourself are hard to explain

I think she says ‘Moth will go to university and I will start writing’. Which I think just means that (obviously) she knows with hindsight that she will go on to write TSP while Moth is studying. Probably a later revision when she had a publishing contract, possibly at the behest of an editor saying ‘Well, Moth had his plans to study when the book ends — what did you think you were going to do?’

What I find slightly odd now we know Moth was studying botany or horticulture or whatever at the Eden Project is that in TSP is that throughout TSP, it’s described as a change of career to ‘teacher training’. Not that he couldn’t have eventually taught in botany or horticulture or whatever, but the later stages of TSP make it plain he needs to get the degree, then do further post-graduate training, in order to teach. It’s quite the long training path for someone who doesn’t think he has long to live.

In case anyone has a problem reading the full article here's an archived version of it. https://archive.ph/tEPth

I think it just means that the Hemmings were always free to talk about it (although they wouldn't necessarily have known that). Anyone asking why it's a double standard that Ros Hemmings may have broken an NDA hasn't got a leg to stand on, really.

@Smike I think this is exactly what happened - it was so unexpectedly successful that it garnered far more ‘interest’ in their circumstances- I think unfortunately for them the film triggered an even wider interest and that then alerts ‘interested’ parties. Personally I wouldn’t have sold the film rights if I wanted to keep things lower profile but I wonder if that wasn’t their decision to make - may well have depended on the terms of the book deal contracts and sometimes new authors sign off on stuff like this in their excitement at getting a deal .

🚨🚨 WARNING: Thread may contain:

1. Hyperbole
2. Excessive mentions of Simon Armitage.

So why did the employer’s solicitor allow him to sign the NDA if they were convinced of criminal behaviour?

why did the author’s solicitor draw one up in the first place?

spilling the beans on an NDA because your husband rather than you signed it is contrary to its intended purpose. The NDA would have been with the organisation and covered anyone who worked for or was associated with it.

This approach would effectively prevent any individual sharing their experience in case someone misinterpreted it. I don’t buy this argument.

I just watched the Rick Stein programme - I know it’s been commented on but they really act as though they own the place. She seems much more sure of herself and likes waxing lyrical (the apple juice tastes like history); he spends a lot of time looking down, except when he is doing physical work, without any problems. Maybe he swerved other interviews because he wasn’t as confident in lying.

Mr Hemmings was unwell (cancer). Struggling financially (due to the theft). It was far more in his interests to get the money back and leave it there. It also in all honesty was kinder to Sally than letting her face a potential custodial sentence.

His family were already aware of the theft before he signed the NDA. They aren't bound by it.