Thread 17: 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's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
The 14 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer
More from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...
The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)
Links to more Observer videos can be found in an early post of this new thread and here: Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube
Working timeline and references: can be found in early posts of this new Thread 17.
Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn
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?^
Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12
Thread 12: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Threads 13-14: Links in the OP of Thread 15
Thread 15:Thread 15: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Thread 16: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5395002-thread-16-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the 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. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. 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 sixteen 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 our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Yes, it really is Thread 17. I'm as in need of smelling salts as the next person.

We seek them here, we seek them there, mumsnetters seek them everywhere: just where are the elusive How not to Dal dy Dir and On Winter Hill?

#handwavium #appropriation

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

Well, I was assuming that if someone was a litigant in person then it had to be the same litigant throughout, but maybe I’m wrong, and the Walkers could both have taken turns? I mean, their entire scenario reads like a parable about not embezzling from your employer, not taking out a ridiculous loan to repay him, and not then hoping you can somehow legally prove you don’t owe him anything while representing yourselves…

Re SW representing them in court ( if true) - I can imagine Tim stretching back in his armchair with a nasty grin, saying “ you got us into this mess Sal, so you can sort it out”.

The lies are so prolific and so public. I hope The Observer articles have put the end to any idea of a healing and wellness centre.

There are health claims made:

Since the walk, Raynor has been researching the connection between being in nature, endurance activity, and the impact on the body and on Moth’s condition.

“It seems to positively impact the build-up of a faulty protein in the brain. There are so many benefits to being in nature. Whatever the physiological reasons - we have experienced it.”
(The Ecologist)

For me, the fact that hopefully the wellness centre won't proceed is possibly one of the better things to come out of this. For the moment let's ignore the fact that most of us believe the CBD 'diagnosis' was in 2015, this leaves us with a woman who by her own account in TSP, went against all medical advice and took her terminally ill husband on an arduous walk, let him go cold turkey from serious pain medication whilst wild camping and on insufficient calorie intake and poor quality diet. She did all this not because she had any idea that it would do him any good but simply because they had nothing better to do. She also appears to have a low opinion of meditation. And she thinks she is qualified to be involved with a wellness centre.
Of course, the other good thing to have come out of this is that I, as a first time mumsnetter, have found a similarly obsessed group of people to vent my frustrations to in a non-trolling grown-up setting. Thank you all.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and from the little knowledge I have of neurology, I would say she knows even less than me!

I would be nervous about going on a Walker-Wynn retreat. What are they going to do, load up participants with rucksacks full of rocks and send them off along the cliff tops!? Noodles for dinner and tea and fudge for breakfast??

Also surfing.

Tea made with one teabag for the whole group.

I also think that her researching is probably just reading articles and drawing conclusions from the few bits that she can make sense of and then repeating these elements as fact.

In fairness, if my partner had embezzled a lot of money from her employer and had used our house as security on a high-interest loan in order to avoid prison, I might well feel that she needed to handle the court angle herself.

Though again, one has no idea at what point TW was aware of any of this. Did he know about the thefts as they were happening? He presumably knew, at the latest point, when SW was questioned by the police after Martin Hemmings reported the theft, and ‘disappeared’, and surely going to his half-uncle for the loan must have been his idea?

I also imagine SW’s research to consist of googling.

Can people say more about the ‘wellness retreats’? I don’t think I saw references to the Walkers running their own anywhere other than on here, just SW being a speaker at some Noon event. Where and when were they meant to happen? Or did some take place?

I agree, if my partner had embezzled tens of thousands of pounds I’d kind of think it was their shit to sort out.

of course, none of us will know unless SW comes clean (unlikely) but I’ve assumed TW likely didn’t know to begin with. If she was stealing relatively small sums and using them for food shops etc it would be pretty easy to cover up. I wouldn’t be surprised if she also passed things off as bonuses from nice Martin Hemmings.

it’s hard to imagine he didn’t know when it got to the point of police questioning and going to his relative for a loan. But I guess by that time she was in so deep she just kept digging!

im also intrigued about the Wellness Retreats. If there indeed was a plan by SW and TW to run something along these lines it adds to their delusion and readiness to rip off the public. There’s no indication of either of them having the slightest knowledge, understanding or skill set for this. I guess it would have just been another cash cow, perhaps for a future point when they couldn’t even pretend to be doing more walks. Anything rather than earn honest money.

When you see it written down - embezzlement of huge sum of money, high interest loan with house as security to avoid prosecution and possible prison sentence leading to loan being called in and subsequent loss of house. What part of all this was not entirely their own fault?! No wonder she scrabbled to get back on script when JI said ' you were conned out of everything '.

Re: Wellness retreats.

I can't drag myself to listening to SalRay anymore but she was teasing a project arising from OWH - along the lines of: you'll have to wait and see.

My main source is from our OP @DisappointedReader but it was before I joined the threads.

DisappointedReader · 07/07/2025 17:21

Sally Walker as Raynor Winn was meant to be the guest tutor at two of Arvon's residential non-fiction writing courses in August and September. I understand that she has now been replaced. I don't know whether this was a decision by Arvon or whether she has withdrawn.
As we already know, the PSPA charity has parted ways with the family and she has withdrawn from touring Saltlines in July and August with Gigspanner Big Band. There is another joint project with the band for next year. I wonder what will happen about the October release of her fourth book On Winter Hill. Creative wellness retreats with her are in the pipeline for Spring next year, a project called Zefyrn.
Then of course there is the ongoing publicity for the film and the potential releases in other countries.

By now, many things have been cancelled, edited on Wikipedia, removed from Instagram, etc.

Practice planking on trig points

Tim - man or mouse? Or moth?
When someone posted the Moth-man cartoon again last week I wondered why I didn’t like it. It doesn’t seem to fit TW somehow. In general people who have met him or have known him for longer seem to like him. So, ignoring wat his wife has written about him, what do we know?
Tim trained as a plasterer and worked in his family’s business. It looks though he didn’t really enjoy it. In 1994, as soon as the house in Wales was made habitable and had the necessary work done to it, Tim started volunteering in the garden in Plas yn Rhiw. At that point he was 34 and his children would just have started kindergarten/primary school. This shows three things:

• they apparently could do without him providing an income.
• he would rather work outside with plants and trees than carry on plastering.
• he was prepared to travel at least half an hour (14 miles) and back every day rather than look for (paid) gardening work close by.

I think Tim was trying to escape. From plastering and building, but also from the situation at home. Ros Hemmings said Tim was a nice person to work with but that he seemed a bit insecure. Previous pp assumed that was because he couldn’t live up to the claim of having a botany degree. But there is of course no need to claim a degree when you start volunteering. People would be all too happy for you to help out and anyway the head gardener at the time would have realised the truth soon enough. The botany degree is only mentioned in a BBC article that is otherwise riddled with mistakes, so I think we can safely ignore it. What I think is remarkable though is that he must have made such a good impression during his first year at Plas yn Rhiw that he was offered the job of the head gardener he was working for. He then kept that position for the following nine years until 2004. That in my eyes is an admirable achievement for someone who started out as an amateur! No, I think the insecurity and lack of confidence that Ros remarked upon are the same characteristics that we still see in Tim now. I suspect they are caused by Sally’s controlling behaviour. We know all too well by now how deceitful, mean and stubborn she can be, and how she always talks down other people. I think we can only start to understand Tim when we realise he is her main victim. I wonder what it is like when your wife (‘of thirty-nine years’!) keeps on telling the outside world that you are a dying man, without there being any obvious signs of illness or deterioration? And while you really are a strong, healthy, happy chappy, loving life and ready to take on the world, she calls you ‘Moth’… Small, grey and insignificant. What effect would that have on your sense of self-esteem? No wonder he needs the smart clothes to feel a bit better about himself. She writes the script and he has to perform. I can’t imagine he has always done that willingly, but for some reason (fear of her anger? Or care for her wellbeing?) he always seems to oblige. It really wouldn’t surprise me if the difficult-to-diagnose symptoms he started displaying turn out to be stress related, caused by years of nagging and bullying. Perhaps she knows this too and is therefore so desperate to cling to another explanation, like CBD, that has nothing to do with her… The garden in Plas yn Rhiw must have been a haven for him, away from her, outside, among his beloved plants and in the company of pleasant colleagues. So why, after so many years, did he leave? There is no indication that Plas yn Rhiw wanted him to go. No, I think Sally ordered him home to get on with the work on the barn conversion.Remember, the planning application for the barn had been handed in back in 1998, and by 2002 the work still hadn’t begun. Understandable from Tim’s point of view. After gardening all day who would feel like doing building work in the evenings? I bet she got fed up with the lack of progress at home and told him to give up the garden. Something he enjoyed too much anyway? I can see a few further attempts to escape in later years. Surely the idea of buying the house in France, probably with help of his family, was his, a way to make a new start and get away from it all! Going on a horticultural course was another. Apart from that we hardly ever see him act alone or independently. Why was he not allowed to follow up the course with some gardening work at another NT property? He couldn’t even go for a nice long walk on his own! No, she had to be there with him, at all times, pretending to the outside world he was too ill to be left alone and that she needed to care for him. Extreme controlling behaviour imo. And now they are both prisoners, holed up in a mansion, waiting for the storm to pass.I suspect we only just arrived in the eye of it though. People will have to break cover at some point soon, and then the winds will pick up again. I imagine Tim meanwhile desperately pleading for her to give herself up so he can have the quiet life he always craved for.

@witharelle: thank you for this interesting post. Do you know them (serious question)?

I wonder what it is like when your wife (‘of thirty-nine years’!) keeps on telling the outside world that you are a dying man, without there being any obvious signs of illness or deterioration?

But that doesn't explain why Moth himself told (was it Bill?) that he had 2 months to live.
He isn't as innocent as you're trying to claim.

@Witharelle I think you make very good points. I have read the two books after TSP and in the third one she practically forces him to go walking in Scotland. He gives in and when he struggles, she goes on about how she shouldn't have done it and he says, 'you know what buttons to.press.'

The mask really slips in that book. Regardless of how real or otherwise the CBD is, even in the imaginary world she's created she's shows how none of this is about him, it's about her.

It's not his recovery for his sake, it's because she can't bear to lose him. It's not his health she cares about, it's her need. That comes across massively when they stop walking out of the supposed 'necessity' of the original TSP premise.

The impression is that none of this is really about, or for, him. Whatever they did, or didn't do, even when she's inventing what happened, she's still showing who she really is.

Hello all. I hope you are well today. I haven't disappeared, just somewhat waylaid by life off the path.

DisappointedReader · 07/07/2025 17:21
Creative wellness retreats with her are in the pipeline for Spring next year, a project called Zefyrn.

This information came directly from Raynor Winn's own website. It was still up when we started these threads but then all the website content was taken down and replaced with her rebuttal statement.

I can't be completely certain, but seem to remember that this - now private - website is related:

https://zefyrn.com

Born from the desire to build a community around the things we love the most, Zefyrn is a fun and inspiring space for people to come together through creative wellness, and finding childlike joy...

Private Site

Zefyrn seems to mean breeze or west wind, which would fit.

I agree. I don't believe that Timmoth is innocent. Yes, one example being what he alone said to Bill Cole. It's the second link in the OP under the real Salt Path link with the 14 Observer items:

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

Let's also not forget Timmoth's input at the end of the interview with Sophie Raworth and that it was Timmoth who, we are told, spent the most time with Jason Isaacs for the film, teaching and telling him what his life and health has been like.

@DisappointedReader Timmoth who, we are told, spent the most time with Jason Isaacs for the film, teaching and telling him what his life and health has been like.

People who meet Moth are impressed by him:

"I'm never gonna be as tall, handsome, smiley [as Moth], he's just an extraordinary man," he said. "So I just wanted to know, 'What is it inside him?' One of the things I got when I met him is the sign that he wanted everyone else to feel comfortable.

"He makes a joke of everything, even when he was talking to me at great length about this tremendous indignity and terror of his condition and where it will naturally end, he wanted to make me feel at ease. So he made me laugh all the time about it. That's a quality I recognised and could walk away with."
(Jason Isaacs)

@Witharelle that’s a wonderful post. There’s a lot there to think about. However, I do think he is fully on board with the deception. I am thinking that he surely would have left her a long time ago otherwise.

Plus there is the nephew's comment about them both being liars

Sometimes the most narcissistic and controlling people can appear utterly charming to others outside the home- just saying.

People are often surprised when they find out that someone they have met is a con person but this is the MO of these people, they are nice, they are charming, they are using their personality traits to make people do want they want / part with their cash. Or, they play the victim!

Definitely don’t believe TW is a poor innocent victim in all this,- I’m sure he’s in on it all. Interesting that, although SW would be contractually bound to do publicity, interviews etc, I doubt that TW had any obligation, not being the author. So he clearly willingly put himself out there. I wonder why he didn’t just stay in the background.Would have been easy to do, given his illness.

Part of the continuing interest for me is that it is a - double act.

I remember reading the post below, early on when the deception was made public, and marvelling at it (even though I can't remember the source). It is, if anything, too complimentary, but here goes:

This is fascinating. I’d love to understand how you can come up with such a niche grift that draws so much attention to you as a person and never worry about being found out. If they didn’t even walk the path on top of lying about their circumstances and the husband’s health it’s almost performance art in itself