Thread 18: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

Hello all. I've simplified the opening post as I don't think we need to keep reposting all the links, timelines and so on at this stage of proceedings.

The Observer's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
First thread: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Links to threads 2-16, the other 20 Observer articles and videos to date, Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement, our timeline and sources can all be accessed in the OP and first few posts of Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5403285-thread-17-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 exposé items 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 drive-by scolders 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 17 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.

Now three months in, if these threads could wear slogan t-shirts they would be Mark Twain's often misquoted 'The report of my death was an exaggeration'. Applications in writing from correspondents seeking supply parcels of fudge and cider will be tolerated.

Here we are again
Disappointed as can be
All good pals and jolly good company
Strolling round the path
Happy on a spree
All good pals and jolly good company

Never mind the weather, never mind the rain
Now that we're together, whoops we go again!
Whoops, we go again
La-di-da-di-da, la-di-da-di-dee
All good pals and jolly good company

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

I assume that Penguin may have some questions over their other publication. Yesterday @WyldMountainThyme shared this:

Channel 4's recent video piece about Mike Thompson/Tom Michell's book The Penguin Lessons and his (alleged) SA of his pupils also mentions the (alleged) scandals surrounding The Salt Path (13:16 onwards). C4 make the connection that Penguin Books were the publishers of both works. They also talk about the responsibility of the film company and the producers.

I remembered that The Independent had an article, shortly after the TSP deception broke, the headline was:

The Salt Path scandal has blown up, but there is already another memoir storm brewing
As Raynor Winn’s beloved tale of resilience faces claims of fabrication, Rowan Pelling reflects on the seductive power of storytelling – and how it feels when the truth bends too close to home

The Penguin Lessons was published 10 years ago and is based on events 40 years before that. So, I looked at the above article but it said:

I’ve been tipped off that a major scandal might blow up over another “nature-adjacent” memoir by a female author.

I wonder if that one has been published by Penguin/been made into a film?

The unflinchingly honest story of the original Mothman...

edition.cnn.com/2025/10/16/travel/video/mothman-west-virginia-legend-digvid

In the charity shop where I volunteer, TSP turned up last week - I said to my manager that a scandal has been revealed about the author and her husband which she knew about. It sold and a hardback copy was donated and one of the other 2 books and they sold too. We've now got a hardback copy and a paperback copy of TSP, and I'm pleased to say that they're on the fiction shelves.

Sorry to hear about your health issues. It is infuriating when people say 'go for a walk' to someone who is very ill or weak. It's dismissive of the person's reality.

The satirist Craig Brown has been paying attention. The Diary in the latest edition of Private Eye - 'My Strictly' - includes spoof contributions from Lord Jeffrey Archer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lord Mandelson, Lady Michelle Mone….and Raynor Winn.

Nothing - not the weather, not my whooping cough, not Moth's diarrhoea, reckoned by one doctor to be the worst he’d ever seen in his life - was going to stop us from dancing in the final of Strictly Come Dancing. We were dancing at an angle of 45 degrees, I was in a sou'wester and anorak and Moth was in a mackintosh, and the dance floor was in total darkness owing to a power cut….

🤭😁😅

Indeed!

I think it will depend on how long the controversy rumbles on. It might be that we've all forgotten who Raynor Winn is by next year and that PRH might slide OWH out as a very soft launch (possibly as an e book first) to judge audience reaction.

Of course it might also be that RW is currently working very hard and fast on an 'explanatory' book that puts forward her point of view on everything that happened (with much blame-casting on everyone around her and probably lots and lots of references to poor mental health) which could incorporate OWH, so instead of ruminating about whatever-it-was that she ruminates upon in OWH, she actually ruminates upon how unpleasant the entire general public is and how they don't UNDERSTAND HER and the pressures she is under as the wife of an incorrigibly tartan-shorted man. Mistakes were made (but not by her, obviously)... and so on.

Simon Armitage probably gets it in the neck too.

“Simon Armitage probably gets it in the neck too.”

I’d like to see her try! I’m imagining her either metaphorically shrivelling up or turning into mincemeat.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat

'the wife of an incorrigibly tartan-shorted man.'

Took me a while to read that properly: first I thought it referred to a Scotsman who didn't have the full kilt! I must cut down on the fudge-infused magic mushrooms.

No don’t do that! You’ll need those for when reading OWH! 🍫🍜

I agree with you. In a weird way the Salt Path controversy gives SW another opportunity to play the victim card and rail against the injustice of the world.

Other authors have blurred the lines between fact and fiction in the past, why am I being unfairly targetted?

A million little salt paths: how much can you trust a memoir? | British GQ

I just can’t see how she can easily latch her ‘explanatory, expiratory ’ element onto her Coast to Coast walk, though, given that we know that she did this in January 2025, while supposedly musing about something entirely different, and has written this up as a previous book. She’ll have to lead with the walk and then go into to ‘No sooner had I got home to my close-to-death husband than an unpleasant Observer journalist got in touch with her misleading questions, and BASICALLY YOU’RE ALL MEANIES AND NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME, WAAH!’

Silence is golden?

Dave and Julie from Up North have been keeping their heads firmly beneath the parapet since the Salt Path scandal broke.

Do they have a right to preserve their anonymity or do they have a responsibility to come forward and divulge the truth, whatever that may imply for the veracity of the events in TSP or the impact it may have on their friendship with the Walkers?

They appear to be one of the few characters in TSP who are depicted as genuine good guys, a portrayal which continues in TWS and LL. Friends in need are friends indeed?

They aren't central characters in TSP and they don't even make the cut in the film of the book (who would have played them?. But they do feature in all three books and SW gives some pretty detailed information about where they live and what they do and (if accurate) has already gone some way to revealing their identities.

My question though is quite simple. If they have nothing to hide and the events described in TSP which involve them are completely accurate, then why don't they simply come forward and confirm this? If, however, they have something to hide, then maybe their silence becomes more understandable.Only they (and of course the Walkers!) can provide the answer to that question.

As a travel writer friend of mine said after the Salt Path scandal broke:

Non-fiction still requires an author to tell a story,sometimes for the narrative it is permissible to shape events to improve the read, but I think it all boils down to one simple principle, which is, tell the truth.

It's just struck me that in the group photo in the hills (is that Iceland?), there's only one person without a walking pole. And that person is -- yep, who one who's terminally ill with a neurological disorder that affects mobility. How strange!

TimMoth also shows good balance and core strength with his posture - the left leg raised quite high with foot resting on small, jutting out part of rock?

Moth never ceases to surprise!

@izzywizzyletsgetbizzywynthomas My question though is quite simple. If they have nothing to hide and the events described in TSP which involve them are completely accurate, then why don't they simply come forward and confirm this?
If I was Julie or Dave, I would not come forward whether I had been completely trusting of the WinnWalkers or suspect their story didn't quite add up. Having lives disrupted even if for a short time by being contacted by different media outlets (all for a couple that they may have only met a few times) may not be of jnterest. Even if they did it off the record, they could worry that other people would dig about and then identify them.

I am actually beginning to assume that 'Dave' and 'Julie' are a composite of people with details taken from various friends that the Walkers have walked with. So the photos are of one couple - who aren't called anything like Dave and Julie, conversations are invented, biographical details are a fudged-together assembly of several people and maybe even details of the walks are altered.

So the Dave and Julie in the photos could only come forward and say 'we are the people in the pictures but we didn't have any of the conversations that are reported,' Other couples may recognise parts of conversation or elements of walks they did with the Walkers, but nobody is Dave and Julie enough to come forward and either refute or confirm any of the details.

Yes, it isn't even just in a still photo but, here he has one leg raised and reaching, with good balance, for scattered apples.

From 3.00 in the apple orchard.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001j82s/rick-steins-cornwall-series-3-episode-2

Looking at the picture in shorts before the start of the Thames path walk posted by @izzywizzyletsgetbizzywynthomas , it strikes me that Timoth has very good muscle tone and definition for a man in his 60s, let alone one who has even intermittent periods of compromised mobility. We all know how quickly loss of muscle mass can happen and how hard it is to regain it as people get older.

I'd never tell him so but he's in even better shape than my gym bunny, distance running DBro who is only a few years younger.

The 'planking on a trig point' pic never fails to annoy 😂

Instagram

The above one is really cool - I wonder if he was a skateboarder, would have built up good muscle control and poise .....

in TWS SW says that she had a walking pole, as did Moth,Julie also had one while Dave had two.

Wasn't his son teaching him to surf just before TSP walk? I know he was younger then but had (according to Salray) been diagnosed.

I know "learning to surf" can mean "faffing around in the shallows and falling off a lot" but to even consider attempting it at 50+ implies a reasonable level of fitness and crucially balance, I'd have thought.

It was body boarding which requires a good deal less experience/ability to balance than surfing.