Thread 9: 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 ...

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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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 visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as this will only encourage them back to the threads.

We have done amazingly well together - in the main that is, not mentioning any names but you know who you are! - for eight 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.

Their raising of CBD awareness, and how the consultant perceives the way they've raised awareness, is completely and utterly irrelevant. It is as relevant to this controversy as saying Moth has read Beowulf. I'd be glad for you to tell us why it is a relevant piece of evidence so I can reconsider my position on this point.

Absolutely agree. And, to add to that, I feel like ‘be kind’ has - perhaps unfairly - been tarnished over the last few years because some people have weaponised it and have demonstrated the very opposite of what it aims to do. ‘Be nice’ or ‘be civil’ seems like a much more fitting motto.

Agreed - especially because of the misleading claims they have made about it, such as walking being a good way to manage or even cure it.

CBD sufferers have said that the books raised their hopes about walking off their prognosis or made them feel bad because they couldn't walk off their prognosis. How's that for raising awareness?

That’s awful.

As a consultant you are generally heavily reliant on what your patient tells you.

That paragraph reads as if they had a conversation something like:

Dr: It's great you are doing so much awareness raising for CBD
Raymoth: Thanks, we love telling people about Moth's walks
Dr: You do make it clear that other sufferers shouldn't expect to do as well as Moth and that exercise isn't a cure?
Raymoth (with fingers crossed behind their backs): Oh yes, absolutely

Your opinion, which seems stacked against the consensus. That much is clear.

The above I would have no problem with if the opinion didn't also seem to be stacked against all reason and being doggedly pursued. It becomes repetitive and tiresome after a while.

Someone will say that it isn't anything to do with Sally and Tim what other people do or don't do based on what they read in the books.

However, when you present yourself, or your spouse, as pretyy much a (literal) walking miracle, then you have to take some responsibility for others trying to emulate that.

On Reddit, X etc there are so many saying how this has really affected them.

Some (genuine) CBD sufferers have experienced:

-many people telling them they would feel better if they just went for a long walk

-feeling like failures to themselves and their family because they haven't been able to have the same improvement as Tim did

-experiencing a rapid worsening of their symptoms because they've pushed themselves in an effort to replicate Tim's miraculous recovery

-experienced increased judgement from others who believe they could help themselves if they just made more effort

And much more.

Yes they may have raised awareness, but Sally/Tim are also single handedly responsible for now creating a myth that simply walking might help this chronic incurable disease.

They may not have directly said 'walking will help you too' but come on, you can't be so dim as to not realise the impact that the book might have.

If it's marketed as a fictional story, then that's absolutely fine but stating it all as fact is horrendous.

Actually, as they've made money, it's criminal - nothing short of fraud.

Edited for typos.

I've been pondering, who has a vested interest in defending the Winn/Walkers, other than Sally and Tim themselves?

They don't appear to have any loves ones stepping forward to speak for them, or none willing to do so openly, or not yet.

Professional affiliations seem to be cutting ties (SWCP, PSPA, AH), or hedging their bets for now (PRH, filmmakers).

So that leaves professionals, reputation managers hired to mitigate the crisis - but hired by whom?

Or readers, people who so identified with the couple and their story that they cannot countenance the unmasking, or rather the discomfort it causes their own psyche; so will expend considerable digital ink on trying to exonerate them on every possible point.

Anyone else? Maybe a compromised medic somewhere along the way? (Thinking of that oddly-worded, possibly film-related letter).

Thank you to whoever it was who shared the Loose Ends interview

SA "I was thinking about writing a book about walking the SWCP "

Stuart Maconie "Would that be fiction or non fiction?"

😂

This is exactly how I read think the meeting went from reading the letter

And that's before we get to the seriously odd reference to the upcoming film and queries that might be raised

For most people, I think the 2 major premises where the book starts (homeless through no fault of their own, and diagnosis of terminal illness at the same time) being untrue are the sticking points.

I suspect most would not mind some exaggeration of symptoms in a book (or even dream of querying it) but struggle with a diagnosis that comes 2 years early in a book said to be 'unflinchingly true'.

There was a lot of detailed discussion about the letters in a previous thread, so anyone who is truly interested in that can easily read it.

As someone who has written many similar letters, I have a few thoughts (and agree with everything previously said by our medical correspondent mauvish)

2015 letter - reads like the response to a referral, summarises previous investigations and the current clinical state. It also points TW to the charity for information, while being clear the information will mostly not be relevant to him as his condition is less severe

2019 letter - reflects the fact that his condition is slow to progress and other diagnoses have to be considered

2025 letter - is strangely worded which most have picked up on. I've been thinking about this and in what circumstances I might have seen something similar written. I think the consultant may have been made aware of queries and possibly asked to mention something about the subject but has worded it carefully - 'I was very pleased to hear from them' rather than 'I know'.

ETA took a while to write so cross-posted with @AnnaMagnani

@bluegreygreen yes.

The account of how they lost their house didn’t make sense to me in the book, but I assumed they’d just not had much business acumen and had made poor decisions. I can just about get my head round RW presenting that as ‘no fault of her own’ because she’d feel embarrassed and told it as ‘well, naivety isn’t really a fault’

to discover the loss of their home was directly related to embezzlement - taking out a loan with a charge on their house to pay back stolen money and avoid prosecution - well, that’s next level. The entire narrative is based on dishonesty.

There’s also the sense of an overlay of dishonesty about their general activities that I find troubling - e.g. Timothy, in an interview some time after TSP had been released (apologies, at this point I’ve no idea which one or where 😆) when he was asked whether he knew that his wife could write, saying that he had no idea and it was a complete surprise. And yet he is down as the sole director of Gangani Publishing, who published the “Izzy Wynn-Thomas” novel that they used to try to raffle their Welsh farmhouse in 2012

The 2025 letter is written in Feb - do we know when the Observer first started asking questions?

I don’t really care if they actually skipped more sections of the path than they said they did, or spent a weekend in Bristol or made up most of the encounters with people on the path.

I do care that the premise of the books strongly seems to be based on 2 massive lies - losing their home through no fault of their own, and Tim being given a terminal diagnosis before going on the walk.

If Sally wants people to stop discussing her and accusing her of lying, she needs to own up about the theft and either produce a consultants letter dated 2013 confirming the CBD diagnosis, or own up to lying about that too.

If she wants any chance of public redemption she also needs to try and fully grasp why people are so angry about the walking=miracle cure narrative thread in the books, rather than just argue that they’re wrong to have taken it that way, and apologise to everyone who has been harmed by that narrative.

It’s all very sad because if the health circumstances around the walk had been presented more honestly in the book, it could have been inspiring to many people without causing harm. I think are some nuggets of honesty and helpful wisdom buried in TSP in amongst all the weird and unbelievable bits and that’s why so many people connected with it and are so upset by finding out it was based on lies.

Off the top of my head I think this past March but I'm only half sure!

I was about to suggest it could be related to the Observer investigation and not necessarily related to the film coming out. It also starts ‘Dear colleague’ rather than to Tim’s GP.

Yes I wondered that too, but the 2025 letter was from Feb and Chloe first contacted her in March so it’s not in response to that. The letter reads to me that the consultant wanted it on record that he was uncomfortable with the walking = miracle cure for CBD narrative in the book and the film, and he wanted assurance from Sally & Tim that they were being clear with people that his case was not typical. Which they weren’t.

"The Observer began its investigation into The Salt Path story in March 2025, when reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou first reached out to Raynor Winn. According to The Observer, they made six offers to meet before publishing their exposé in early July"

So I don't think we have anything on record stating factually exactly when Hadjimatjeou first received her anonymous tip off, giving her Sally & Tim's real names?

From my interpretation of that letter I completely agree.

Wait to be told that what some consider lying and deception others would call accidental mistakes!

Although FWIW I agree with you.

The timing of the anonymous tip-off may have been mentioned on an Observer podcast. I haven’t listened to any of the podcasts on this, so I’m not sure, but I think someone on a previous thread may have mentioned the timing of the tip-off being mentioned on the podcast.

It’s relevant because:

The views of medical consultants have largely been accepted as fact on this thread. Yet this one - which specifies that the Walker-Winns have been careful not to claim that what works for them will work for others - is framed as irrelevant. This is inconsistent and selective.

By the way, your tone is aggressive. I imagine this could prevent other potential contributors from doing so.