Thread 10: 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...
Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn
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New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting. There are currently 10 items on The Observer website The real Salt Path | The Observer

To all - No saltiness. Keep to the path. 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 - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for nine very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.

Keep calm and eat fudge.

Thank you

I think RW has to omit anything that makes the walk look like a planned holiday, or them going back to a way of travelling on the cheap that they seem to have done a lot before they had children, or as though they had other options other than walking.
Or as if the walk was for the purposes of writing a book.

Totally agree, but I still don’t get why RW mentions the bits in TSP about whether to take a notebook and about forgetting the notebook. I know it’s not necessarily an important thing to pore over in the grand scheme of things, but it’s got me thinking. You’d think they’d have bigger things to worry about than whether to take a notebook with them 😂

It’s tricky now to separate how we imagine their ‘book personas’ would have acted and how they would’ve acted and would’ve been thinking in reality outside of the personas they present in TSP!

And it’s also now occurred to me - what would’ve happened to all their stuff in the house once they’d done their (alleged) midnight flit at 2am? Was it all just taken away by the bailiffs?

Do you think maybe he did a botany course at college or something, he met Raynor / Sally at college didn't he?

Can someone save a copy of this video? Just in case it gets taken down. This is where the Tattle Life approach of storing media, having a timeline of known events etc, is useful to refer back to.

I think the idea that he had a botany degree was a pork pie.

Never!

Either TW told the journo he had a Botany degree or the journo made it up. Pick a side.

Tricky!

😂😂😂😂

Already done!

Thanks for this. Something about her visiting a grandfather's farm in Wales as a child?

Not sure if we can save it as such, but perhaps we could save some screenshots of key moments.

Saved the day! Thanks. Sorry, I’m useless at Instagram 😂

The Tim Walker with a botany degree is quite a high flier in the botany world. Read botany at Oxford and has been involved with the Oxford Botsnical garden and the University ever since. He is Dr Walker and a senior lecturer at Oxford. I am sure a lot of this info wasn’t readily available online twenty years ago though.
http://www.timothywalker.org.uk/about-me/

It's been mentioned that money is tight in publishing and that Penguin Random House couldn't afford staff to investigate the WalkerWinns. But all they'd need is to have sight of a document written by a consultant confirming CBD within the relevant time frame. It would be in private and should have been the least PRH could do after the Belle Gibson fiasco. They might have been expected to ask more about the bizarre claim to have lost their home after investing in a friend's business.

From now on, publishers will have to be more savvy and careful about true stories that many readers love so much.

I completely agree.

One grandfather was born and died in Nottinghamshire, and was there in censuses and 1939. He died in 1950. The other was born in Leicestershire, was there during censuses, was in Lincolnshire in 1939, and died in Staffordshire in 1975. I suppose he could have gone to Wales between 1940-1975 and come back again.

I think Dave and Julie should fall out with them (Dave: ‘I’m not actually just ‘big and Northern’!’) and write a kiss and tell book called Walking With the Walkers. 😀

I don’t disagree. There are things that seem needlessly self-betraying. But RW never thought the books would be pored over for evidence of significant untruths. It’s like films made before the advent of video meant you could freeze frame stuff and notice the stuntman in the wig standing in for the lead or continuity glitches.

I don’t know what the deal would be with stuff left in a house after it was repossessed — storage and billed to the owners, and binned after a certain time? Or anything worth money sold off asap towards the debt?

Nice work! Hmm, do I think the BBC added this in themselves for no reason, or do I think that TW had included it in the narrative when he went for the job? 🤔

Quite @AzureStaffy. I totally get that a publisher won’t want to spend much on due diligence for a book that might only sell 1,000 copies but, given they had a marketing campaign (that in the end got the book to the top of the bestsellers list in about two weeks) and that the diagnosis and dealing with it was a central theme of the book it should have been the first thing they asked for.

In fact it now makes me wonder if they did ask for a confirmation of diagnosis, got the 2015 letter, skim read it (maybe a junior was tasked with checking it) thought yes, good enough. But obviously it wasn’t anywhere near good enough due diligence.

Here is your Thread 6: @SwetSwetSwet · 13/07/2025 18:05

That page from the bbc is also archived in 2012, and it has Tim's picture from back in the day.
archive.ph/9riE
**

I think this highlights how little is on record about either of their lives in terms of qualifications and work experience. We know they met at sixth form / FE college. We don't know what either studied or specialised in, correct me if I'm wrong? TW is described in the article on the NT Wales property as having previously worked for the family business as a 'master plasterer' (studied at college? self or family trained?) as having 'a degree in botany' (awarded when, and by what institution?) before taking up the head gardener job. Not clear how, when or where he gained the relevant experience for any of this. SW is a 'law clerk' (qualified how, worked where?) and then of course went on to become a book keeper. Just feels like they both have a nebulous work/educational history, and may well have blagged their way into jobs they did formally do.

Tim's dad lived nearby so maybe he dealt with the contents?

My hunch is they cleared it completely and stored somewhere. TSP mentions keeping a few things in a "friend's barn" such as their dining table. Meanwhile, their son posted about helping them move "so much stuff" in Feb 2015. Is half a year since finishing SWCP with very little money really long enough to have accrued so many possessions to explain the son's post? I think not.

Agree. I think a consultant confirmation that long distance walking was helping was also essential. It's not just the murk regarding the diagnosis it's the promotion of a miracle cure that is deeply problematic.

Thanks. I thought I'd read it somewhere on these threads. Mistakes however could be being made.

He was interviewed and quoted in the article so I reckon he told the journalist. Very unlikely the journalist just made it up and put it in. TW went for the job after first volunteering in the garden for a while so he most likely blagged it through his experience and existing connection.

Regarding the Welsh family connection.

Sally Walker's great grandmother's brother moved to Wales. He was a miner. His father, Sally's great great grandfather, was living with his son in old age, and died in south Wales.

That branch of the family were from Gloucestershire.

Maybe set a low bar for fact checking a story presented to you as a publisher.

1. If it involves any claims to significant health improvement based on non conventional medicine then check the person was diagnosed in the first place and the health improvement happened and they badically did what they said they did,
2. If the premises of the book is based on a life event that triggered the rest of the content of the book then check the event happened as per in the book,
3. If something major life afirming is reported in the book that significantly involves another person, check it happened as per the book,

The rest doesn't particularly matter. Those checks aren't difficult or so resource intensive that it makes publishing unviable.

Kudos, Furry! Can’t remember, but are you our Genealogy Correspondent? If not, you should be! Would also genuinely love it if you could help me look back through my family tree.