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Thread 9: 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 · 20/07/2025 00:16

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...

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?

Thread 4 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5370609-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 5 Thread 5: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Thread 6 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5372494-thread-6-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-
husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 7 www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5373425-thread-7-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 8 www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5375023-thread-8-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

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.

The real Salt Path: what’s in the book, and what The Obse...

The real Salt Path: what’s in the book, and what The Obse...

Raynor and Moth Winn’s redemptive journey from penury and homelessness led to a bestselling book. The truth behind it is very different

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

OP posts:
Thread gallery
52
IMeantIt · 23/07/2025 16:42

exasperatedflatmate · 23/07/2025 16:38

@gattocattivowell quite. It would seem they haven’t moved from where they were living, and have done no more than issue that one flimsy statement. Access to the property is challenging, so they haven’t got lenses trained on windows or anything. But photographers are in the vicinity.

Sorry, I tagged the wrong person upthread, @exasperatedflatmate. No, not nice being doorstepped, and I suppose they're doing what anyone would do for now -- find somewhere a long way off the road, keep the curtains closed, hope you have enough food or that a discreet friend can deliver, and that everyone eventually loses interest and goes away.

Redheadedstepchild · 23/07/2025 16:43

Oh, I forgot the worst bit. Whilst everybody recognised the fakery involved in the construction of their own alter egos in the book, there did seem to be a bit of mental block in seeing that I wasn't bloody Vespa Lind or Pussy Galore.

Got some very strange looks and odd invitations for quite some time.

mycatismyworld · 23/07/2025 16:49

Did anyone read the link I sent from The Irish Times? They claim that their daughter is currently staying with them in Cornwall.
I really feel for their children.

IMeantIt · 23/07/2025 16:49

Redheadedstepchild · 23/07/2025 16:43

Oh, I forgot the worst bit. Whilst everybody recognised the fakery involved in the construction of their own alter egos in the book, there did seem to be a bit of mental block in seeing that I wasn't bloody Vespa Lind or Pussy Galore.

Got some very strange looks and odd invitations for quite some time.

I'm dying to know in what way you were portrayed as a Bond girl type, @Redheadedstepchild -- were you continually vamping around the place in a low-cut evening gown with a gun strapped to your gleaming thigh?

IMeantIt · 23/07/2025 16:52

mycatismyworld · 23/07/2025 16:49

Did anyone read the link I sent from The Irish Times? They claim that their daughter is currently staying with them in Cornwall.
I really feel for their children.

I don't think I saw that @mycatismyworld ?

exasperatedflatmate · 23/07/2025 16:52

mycatismyworld · 23/07/2025 16:49

Did anyone read the link I sent from The Irish Times? They claim that their daughter is currently staying with them in Cornwall.
I really feel for their children.

Didn’t read it. But I know the daughter lived and worked not far from where they live. I wish she’d run a mile tbh so as not to get entangled

User14March · 23/07/2025 16:59

User14March · 23/07/2025 13:49

Waves at psychology correspondent.

Thanks for this. The nephew has labelled them/her as pathological liars but we can’t know of course, you’re right.

I read of a case about a psychopath, no one saying Ray is, but he was habitually dishonest & known to all as ‘Billy Liar’. His tissue of lies were a grandiose fantasy to hide his banal failure of a life. What struck me as interesting is that there was always a kernel of truth in what he said. To cover up a hole in a timeline etc he’d pick a true event, say he was there etc. Thing was, when checked out, he did indeed attend just months after he said he did. After a while he couldn’t distinguish the truth from his constructed reality.

A better way of describing might be Belle Gibson. I think she admits no deceit or wrong doing even now, just ‘her truth’?

Redheadedstepchild · 23/07/2025 17:00

IMeantIt · 23/07/2025 16:49

I'm dying to know in what way you were portrayed as a Bond girl type, @Redheadedstepchild -- were you continually vamping around the place in a low-cut evening gown with a gun strapped to your gleaming thigh?

Well, mainly to make the twerp seem like an absolute stud who managed to casually seduce the most dangerously sexy woman in the world with just a look.

I was quite surprised that there wasn't a chapter in which he tried drying his socks on his balcony washing line and hoards of women fainted in the street below, overcome by the pheromones.

Cornishwafer · 23/07/2025 17:00

Just had a thought .... i saw an article somewhere that said that the sale of their home in Wales didn't cover the full amount owed to creditors ....

If true, is it possible that Raymoth were literally on the run/walk in case creditors came to them for the rest...if they couldn't pay, then more ccj's would result....SW might even have been worried about the precious theft (if true) raising its ugly head again.

Perhaps the whole living in the tent business was a means of not being found at a fixed address

User14March · 23/07/2025 17:02

Cornishwafer · 23/07/2025 17:00

Just had a thought .... i saw an article somewhere that said that the sale of their home in Wales didn't cover the full amount owed to creditors ....

If true, is it possible that Raymoth were literally on the run/walk in case creditors came to them for the rest...if they couldn't pay, then more ccj's would result....SW might even have been worried about the precious theft (if true) raising its ugly head again.

Perhaps the whole living in the tent business was a means of not being found at a fixed address

Can you buy a house with cash if you have CCJs?

SereneLilac · 23/07/2025 17:12

User14March · 23/07/2025 17:02

Can you buy a house with cash if you have CCJs?

I believe so. You're not looking for credit so it wouldn't be an issue.

Cornishwafer · 23/07/2025 17:20

mycatismyworld · 23/07/2025 17:09

Thanks for that....I'm left with the impression now that they didn't want a fixed address as they didn't want to be found....hence the walk, which always seemed to strange thing to do when Moth had health concerns. Walking might be helpful but I can't sleep more than a night in a tent without my back protesting !

FlyAgaricc · 23/07/2025 17:22

If you do a Google search with the Izzy Wyn-Thomas beach pic, all that comes up is Goodreads and Mumsnet. So don't think its a stock photo.

Catwith69lives · 23/07/2025 17:26

For the last 7 years (since the publication of TSP in 2018) it seems to me that SW and TW have controlled the agenda. However, since the publication of the Observer article they seem to have lost control despite SW's attempted rebuttal.

From a psychological perspective I would have thought that could be enormously destabilising. However, IF you are a pathological liar incapable of handling objective facts/define your own truth, maybe it just confirms your existing character type - narcissistic victimhood.

Any thoughts from psychologists/psychiatrics?

Redheadedstepchild · 23/07/2025 17:29

Redheadedstepchild · 23/07/2025 17:00

Well, mainly to make the twerp seem like an absolute stud who managed to casually seduce the most dangerously sexy woman in the world with just a look.

I was quite surprised that there wasn't a chapter in which he tried drying his socks on his balcony washing line and hoards of women fainted in the street below, overcome by the pheromones.

Wouldn't have really fitted the narrative for me to be, "That girl I kind of saw occasionally but she didn't seem that into me, mainly because I was constantly making up crap about things that didn't matter, lived in fantasy land generally and all her friends said that I was a shifty bastard, who wasn't even that good looking, and for her to think on before she put my type of ears and lying brain into a baby."

SereneLilac · 23/07/2025 17:40

I went on twitter the other night after catching up here. This was the first post I saw.

Thread 9: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?
mauvishagain · 23/07/2025 18:00

Going back a few posts, to where the Winns farmed: SW's older sister married in the 1970s in the same registration district (in Staffordshire) as the one in which her mother died in 2015. So it's probably fair to assume that SW's birth family was based on that area throughout her adult life.

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 23/07/2025 18:08

exasperatedflatmate · 23/07/2025 16:23

@Cornishwaferi think you’re right. I think the way to avoid this is for the Walkers to have made a better job of telling their (revised) story. I’m not going to give away the location. But upthread people were wondering why journalists hadn’t found the Walkers. The update is that they have.

Interesting thanks, I was one of the PPs wondering where the press were whilst bit actively wishing for the WWs to be doorstepped.

I'm now wondering if they're there because either they know something of what might be coming out in the Observer this weekend or because parliament out and they have pages to fill.
Both probably.

User14March · 23/07/2025 18:09

SereneLilac · 23/07/2025 17:40

I went on twitter the other night after catching up here. This was the first post I saw.

Brought to mind children’s authors who secretly hate children despite proclaiming otherwise.

AnAlpacaForChristmasPleaseSanta · 23/07/2025 18:13

User14March · 23/07/2025 18:09

Brought to mind children’s authors who secretly hate children despite proclaiming otherwise.

Enid Blyton famously being one of them, which always taints my love of her books fractionally.

Mind you the Secret Seven had a 100% success rate. If they were real (and not aged around 98 which the must surely be now) they'd settle The Mystery of The WalkerWinns.

AldoGordo · 23/07/2025 18:16

mauvishagain · 23/07/2025 18:00

Going back a few posts, to where the Winns farmed: SW's older sister married in the 1970s in the same registration district (in Staffordshire) as the one in which her mother died in 2015. So it's probably fair to assume that SW's birth family was based on that area throughout her adult life.

I think so. Her mother was registered to vote there up until the year of her death.

Redheadedstepchild · 23/07/2025 18:16

SwetSwetSwet · 23/07/2025 15:29

Back to their house in Pwllheli, this is a picture of the outbuilding that they converted, sometime between 1998 and 2002 I don't know how much work they did themselves, but it does look like it was in a rundown state, and would have cost a fair bit to do up

That poor building seems to be in an equally bad if not worse state than the French wreck, so on the one hand, it just goes to show that you can bring things back to their former glory but on the other, "Needs money."

Speagle · 23/07/2025 18:17

In the Irish Daily Mail link, the article states that the book How Not to Dal Dy Dir is 'a 255-page novel written by Sally Walker under the penname Izzy Wyn-Thomas'.
Do the journalists have evidence then that Sally wrote it?

AldoGordo · 23/07/2025 18:20

Speagle · 23/07/2025 18:17

In the Irish Daily Mail link, the article states that the book How Not to Dal Dy Dir is 'a 255-page novel written by Sally Walker under the penname Izzy Wyn-Thomas'.
Do the journalists have evidence then that Sally wrote it?

Edit...made an erroneous remark. Or "a mistake was made."

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