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.

Photos showing proximity of the French properties in the village du Dropt owned by TW and his younger brother.

I bet they never thought anyone would find out they owned property/land in France, let alone have the Daily Mail out there with drones!

Is this estate agent's ad from the Herald Cymraeg their house? Did they buy it in 1992 as a repossession, or did someone else own it in the interim? I can imagine it would be upsetting to lose the house, especially if you had done it up yourself, even in circumstances of your own making.

I think that's a possibility. I wonder if it's their daughter who's pictured as Izzy Wyn-Thomas.

Pure speculation. I don't know what the daughter looks like. But the photo - as much as the face is (deliberately?) obscured - could look rather like a younger RaySal.

In case it's useful for you to cross reference, I raised some of these points this morning around 08:30 on page 25 (I think) of this thread.

I've seen a picture of the daughter. It's definitely possible.

Great find! Doesn't look very dilapidated or ruinous to me given they rebuilt it "stone by stone, slate by slate."

Also interesting the pp quoted the article that suggested they moved there in early 2000s after Moth resigned from the gardening job. [Edit] Re-reading the article quoted, I think i misunderstood. It actually seems to mean they moved to Criccieth from Staffordshire after Moth resigned [from the family business]...so that could be early 90s and tie in with them buying the house as advertised.

Still, more inconsistencies to contend with.

I'm fairly sure his real name was never mentioned in any of the books. But I've just skim read the first 3 chapters of my 2019 edition of TSW to double check and it's not there.

So Moth Winn is on Wikipedia with a date of birth as 1960/1961
Newbery bypass opened 1998, peak protest Jan 1996, almost 800 people arrested, I dont think he was part of that or Winchester bypass. So where was he eco waringering?
Greenham Common started 1981
Hunt sabotage?
PETA?
What is Moth's eco bent? They don't seem to talk about it. Just being a sixth former with a 'down with this sort of thing' badge?

Surely Greenham was women only, and that and CND were peace rather than eco focussed.

Twyford Down was before Newbury (1992-3), but a bit far south for a young Moth I would have thought. I would bet on it being just low level local stuff, more posturing than anything

https://www.gonorthwales.co.uk/where-to-stay/pen-y-maes-cottage-p458751

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BmMv9iztD/
Salwin is claiming they walked back to Cornwall from Scotland

This Irish Daily Mail article says they moved from Staffs to Wales ‘in the early 90s’. Nowhere seems to have a more precise date. So it’s quite possible they moved into the Wales property in 1992. The article also talks of the extensive renovations including expensive slate tiles and the now famous blue aga.

It’s quite some spending if they bought the property for £40k in 1992 and in 2013 had a £230k mortgage on it AND had been caught embezzling £64k. That’s £250k mortgage drawdown and stolen funds in 20 years so c£12k a year on top of their earned income although they were a gardener and a part time book keeper so not earning a fortune. I don’t know how they managed to get to a £230k mortgage - they must have maxed out the earnings multiples and got the holiday let income added in.

I wonder if the embezzlement started as they got to the point that they couldn’t make the mortgage payments any more on their salaries and were at risk of having it repossessed if they couldn’t keep paying the mortgage.
https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/irish-daily-mail/20250712/281925959032863?srsltid=AfmBOooAMf7vLWFH1AmvgiDLdap04ZI95QkoIKCDd37kmfkSNt6efyqb

That sounds pretty insane! I hope Chloe H manages to fact-check that at some point.

That's exactly how I remember it from reading the book a couple of years ago @AlertCat. At the time I thought, 'Moth' was strange (but since the controversy a few Ti-MOTH-ys have flown into the light online). I clearly remember when I then read "real name is Ray" it was really perplexing. It was tossed into the passage as a throwaway aside, never explained. Even at the time I thought how peculiar, given the author's name is Raynor.

In my Thread Historian capacity (TBC), I know this was definitely discussed before, early on, with a few PPs mentioning it as coming from TSP book.

I raised it half jokingly in an earlier post, but did they also remortgage Paen y maes to make the investment into the half uncle's property business sometime in the 1990s?

I think somebody mentioned that Gangani Publishing is named after the Celtic Gangani tribe that moved from Ireland and settled on the Llyn peninsula in the centuries before the Roman invasion in 43AD.

Apparently the term Gangani means ' the geese people' and one of their most impressive hillforts (Tre'r Ceiri is located 5 miles away from Pen y maes at a place called Llanaelhaern

Ancient Welsh Tribes That Shaped Pre-Roman Wales - 5 Tribes

Yr Eifl and Tre’r Ceiri Walking Guide – NEARLY UPHILL – GREAT WALKS IN NORTH WALES & MORE!

Yes- I also thought ‘Ray and Ray, how odd’ and even wondered if there was a mistake at that point, either with her name or with his. So glad you can remember the passage too- I’m now kicking myself for having sold it.

It seems a feature of this whole thing is the repetition almost by rote of certain parts- RaySal reciting her own (??) words in interviews and so on. This interview is from 2018 and mentions the hardback being published, yet repeats this about his name. Do we have a correspondent for inconsistencies and mysteries? Do we need to look into a Ray Walker!?

This would be pure evil.

Re timelines I don’t think there’s a year missing although how they live without income I couldn’t speculate.
2013 - August - winter — walking first time
2013/2014 Christmas etc resting at Polly’s
2014 August - back to start walk from other end, late 2014? reach Polruan
move into polruan ? 2015
applies for course at some point
spring 2015 living polruan, RW mum dies
sept 2015 MW starts course

I think it was the Mail article which quoted people who knew them from the past, saying they’re the sort of people who, if they tell themselves something enough times, will believe it’s true.

That fits with my take on it all. I think RW conflates certain people and events, so takes elements which have a grain of truth in them but twists/omits/ exaggerates/distorts/ falsifies to the extent that her version is a million miles from the truth.

It’s quite possible that she and Moth did invest in various relatives’ portfolios along the way. They certainly chucked money around, starting a holiday business, buying the French plot …. So it may be true that they invested in a business which failed. But thats conveniently airbrushing out that the loan secured against their house was to pay back the embezzled money.

I think RW has developed such a victim mentality too that she genuinely believes that every other person they met on the walk was hostile. Similarly, the medical appointment just before the walk becomes a ‘hated’ doctor coldly delivering a death sentence. The friends who try to help/ offer accommodation, are criticised, pulled apart and
made into the ‘enemy.’

Whaaat? I thought they rebuilt it "brick by brick, slate by slate" ?!

Are you telling me that was a lie too?

It did cross my mind after posting that perhaps the £250k wasn’t spent but invested. Slate tiles, a blue aga and a rundown house in France don’t cost £250k.

They seem to copy Tim’s brother who is also an author and has a large property in France. His is a chateau so perhaps, in desperation to keep up with him, (and perhaps trying to replicate how he made his money) they remortgaged and invested. Perhaps more than one investment. Maybe one or more investments did go wrong leaving them with no possibility of paying back the amount remortgaged - putting their home at risk - and that’s when the embezzlement started.

When the £64k was uncovered they needed to pay it back quick to avoid jail so borrowed it from the uncle. This isn’t a million miles from the Salt Path version of events except the book doesn’t mention the source of the initial investment money being remortgaging their house and misses out the embezzlement as the reason why they needed the loan.

Another lie. Who’d have thunk it?

They may have rebuilt the pigsty "brick by brick, slate by slate" but the exterior of the cottage looks pretty much unchanged from the 2016 estate agent particulars. Its a classic example of SW painting an untrue picture which has an element of truth about it.

doc04.pdf