Thread 20 : 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 ...

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?

Thread 18: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5422393-thread-18-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 19: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5437058-thread-19-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 and ploppers 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. Over five months we have done amazingly well together for 19 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.

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

Up and coming:

• Salt Path: A Very British Scandal, Monday 15th December 9pm Sky Documentaries and NOW
• Sunday Papers Live, The Real Salt Path with Chloe Hadjimatheou, Sunday 7th December (see image below for tickets and further details)
• Observer Newsroom: The Real Salt Path Story, Thursday 8th January 2026 6.30-7.30pm. More information and to book via this link observer.co.uk/our-events/the-real-salt-path-story

The long term friends such as Dave and Julie from up North seem to have been reluctant to get involved. Maybe they think their opinions will get drowned out in the general clamour for blood and they won't get a fair hearing! Who knows. Maybe more will emerge in CH's documentary. Con artists do often have the ability to charm the birds out of the trees.

@NaughtyNoodler - this is why I'd rather hear from them or other people who have known the Walkers for more than a few days. People who might have seen them in all conditions. I'm sure CH will have talked to as many people as she can find who are willing, and I would have thought that anyone who's been friends with the couple over a longer period and still has a good opinion of them would have come forward to at least defend their friends. An absence of such would me me suspicious that either a balanced view wasn't being put forward or (and probably more likely) any long term friends are well aware of what they are like and don't want to come forward.

Good morning everyone and well done all for keeping the show on the road.

Thank you @Freshsocks, and also @TonstantWeader - I've missed you laughing at some of the comments when you're on the train ...

Maybe Raymoth will be offered a big money interview which they will find impossible to refuse and they will appear on camera with Dave and Julie from Up North to slay the dragoness that is CH!

All cults have their defenders and why wouldn’t Moth be making his hand shake whilst signing an autograph or limp for the benefit of an audience? Truth is in the actual evidence. We know these two are skilled deceivers. An acquaintance from school thinks they’re lovely people despite the fact that they ruined another family with their actions. Honestly. Some people are so secular that they can’t look beyond their own tiny bubble at the bigger picture. That school friend was probably bitched about the moment she left the house. Just because they present people with the face they want them to see. It worked on everybody.
In her books and statements and all her interviews prior to July, she was saying that her husband was terminally ill with CBD and baffling doctors because his symptoms had not only improved but his brain was healing itself. I can’t remember the quote from that passage of the book where Moth’s brain lights up like a Christmas tree and shocks the neurologist. This is all fiction.

I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that I reckon that

• Moth probably does have some sort of neurological condition
• it almost certainly isn't CBD
• it could be psychosomatic
• if so, it's not impossible that exercise might help alleviate his symptoms.

In TSP Sal claims they took 100 days to walk the SWCP (630 miles). If you strip out the bits they skipped, they might have walked something in the region of 550-580 miles in 100 days. That's under 6 miles a day, a very slow pace which suggests that either they were extremely indolent or that Moth can't walk as fast as an able bodied person. Most walkers on the SWCP in their 60s or even their 70s seem to manage to do at least 10 miles a day. In fact Moth managed to walk the 120 miles Thames Path over 10 days in April 2024, but the terrain is pretty flat compared to the SWCP, so maybe that isn't so surprising. Although 11 years after embarking on the SWCP there appears to be no evidence from his Thames Path walk that his physical condition is deteriorating. That simply isn't consistent with all other CBD sufferers known to medical science.

@HatStickBoots I can’t remember the quote from that passage of the book where Moth’s brain lights up like a Christmas tree and shocks the neurologist. This is all fiction.

Yes, this is a serious claim. Is it the same section as this:

Landlines, has a description of how one of Moth’s recent brain scans showed ‘a distinct reduction in his receptor cells’.

I do not have the book to double-check - I make a note, as we've gone along, of the hard claims.

Just catching up with the charabanc. I think I can Simon's cardboard head flapping in the wind.

Almost all of us in our sixties are undergoing a slow degenerative process. It would be a miracle if we weren't. I can no longer run as far or as fast as I used to be able to, at 65 a four and a half mile run is getting to be my limit, when I used to run six to eight miles a day. Nothing wrong with me whatsoever (except this naffing cold, which can get stuffed), just the normal ageing process.

I wonder if Sal is going to go for the medical jugular and sue the doctors for misdiagnosing Tim? That way she could claim that she was right all along, but operating with false information.

@NaughtyNoodler Although 11 years after embarking on the SWCP there appears to be no evidence from his Thames Path walk that his physical condition is deteriorating. That simply isn't consistent with all other CBD sufferers known to medical science.

From the books, interviews, videos the evidence is that TimMoth's health situation is what she, at any given point in time, says that it is. And she defies anyone to contradict her ...

Sal is caught between a rock and a hard place regarding Moth's CBD diagnosis.

My daughter in law is a solicitor specialising in clinical negligence and reckons Sal wouldn't have a leg to stand on if she tried to sue the neurologist for a misdiagnosis. Why? Because she may have been instrumental in causing that misdiagnosis in the first place by not divulging in June 2015 that she and Moth had completed an arduous 630 mile walk on the SWCP over the previous 18 months!

However, what was a compelling part of the original narrative arc (albeit one that was retrofitted to heighten the dramatic intensity of the events described in TSP) has increasingly become an albatross around their necks as time has elapsed. Moth's CBD progression has become so atypical as to be unique and begs the obvious question, does he really have CBD after all?

The problem for Sal is that all the books she has sold to great commercial success depend very largely on the notion that Moth does have CBD and is living on borrowed time. If he hasn't got CBD, then he is just like many other 60 year olds with a chronic but manageable condition that doesn't leave him exactly bedridden or wheelchair bound.

So yes she can try and blame the specialists (including the top dog in the field who gave the original diagnosis) but she can't absolve herself of the responsibility of continuing to adamantly claim that Moth has CBD if there is no evidence that she ever sought a second opinion. Leading the cynic to suspect that maybe the misdiagnosis was actually very convenient for Sal and also, rather lucrative!

@NaughtyNoodler I think we have mused on here many times already about just WHY neither Sal nor Tim ever seem to have sought a second opinion or a rediagnosis when it must have been obvious within a couple of years that Tim never had CBD. All Sal's 'oh, it's the walking making him better/brain completely rewired' and not ONE doctor ever recalled them for a second look? When he could have been prescribed something that might potentially keep him fit, healthy and able to work walking for many more years?

That's even if he ever was properly diagnosed in the first place, or whether Sal took a nebulous 'weeeelllll.... it could be one of a lot of things' with CBD being somewhere on the list and ran with it. It's clearly made her a lot of money with people believing Tim to be seriously ill.

Glad the charabanc waited for me! (I was @WellSurely on the last thread and I can’t remember what on the ones before.)

I’m certain the Walkers are capable of being charming and fun to be around, and that they have longterm friends and family who perform a certain kind of doublethink about them, sort of ‘They’re lovely people, but Sally always had a tendency to let her imagination run away with her’ or ‘She’s great, with one blot in her past — but which of us hasn’t?’ and the like.

My mother does this. I point out regularly that we are our actions. There’s no essence of a person that somehow stands apart from what they do. There’s no such thing as ‘A truly fabulous guy, but he has a tendency to throw punches when he gets angry’. He is his violence and anger every bit as much as he is good in a crisis, bad at DIY, or has a nice singing voice.

I’m sure neither Walker is a monster entirely without good elements, and that it would be perfectly possible to know them as nice neighbours or have had an enjoyable encounter with them on a hike or at a book signing. But SW is an embezzler and chronic misrepresenter of TW’s health and their circumstances, peddling a substantially untrue story as fact for vast profits, at the very least. TW, at the very least, has allowed this, gone along with it, and profited from it.

Perhaps the documentary will throw up completely new things. Maybe people casting blame on one of them and claiming the other is an innocent dupe, or being coerced?

As we have commented previously, Moth's CBD diagnosis is an insult to genuine sufferers with this terrible condition.

I am beginning to get a little concerned about the effect of all this on Raymoth. I know that Jason Isaacs found them to be a very warm and welcoming couple and clearly they do have some friends and they are not monsters.

The history of deceit and deception is inexcusable, though they have not asked to be excused in any genuine way. I read the original Salt Path sometime ago and enjoyed it a great deal. Although, having said that, I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t pick up on all the inconsistencies, except the original business about the house was a bit confusing.I also read the article in the observer on the Sunday that it was published and was absolutely dumbfounded by what I read.

I’ve enjoyed and been entertained by the threads on here and the investigations. My concern is that this couple have become the subject of extraordinary and devastating very public criticism. And this from the heights of acclaim.

It’s a terrible situation to be in and I don’t know how one would find one’s way out with dignity and I don’t even know if anyone is helping them do that. I’m worried about the effect on them of this new documentary. It would drive me to despair.

I’m well aware they’ve brought it on themselves, that’s the misery of it for them.

I don’t expect anyone here to agree with me and I’m not for a minute suggesting that these threads shouldn’t continue.

Yes these people are the most important in all this. I remind myself of this. Then, others who had the truth destroyed and distorted. The Hemmings, the half uncle. And then all those that these lies gave hope to - when individuals were going through their own difficult times.

If people want to say "but it was a nice book" - fine, but quite shallow. When it is said it is a witch hunt - it hasn't been, more examining facts with no honest answers.

Fraudulent liars: need a rigorous verification of their claims and a healthy scepticism.

Is there a seat on the charabanc for a returning poster? I dropped off the pace and have missed a few threads but new of a Sky doc is very exciting. Is CH involved? I went to the Guardian event in the summer and was impressed by her.

@HoppityBun thanks for your contribution and to say that our posts crossed - I was not in any way commenting on yours.

Re: "they have not asked to be excused in any genuine way". To report on the facts from RW's statement:

Before I go any further, it’s important to say, the Observer were offered the opportunity, by my lawyers, to discuss in detail the allegations made against me to correct their inaccurate account and to be guided on the truth, on the basis that the discussion would not be made public. However, they chose not to take it, preferring to pursue their highly misleading narrative.

This is lies, again.

I understand where you are coming from but I'm afraid I can't agree with you, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, while they may not have expected TSP to achieve the extraordinary level of success that it has, they have had every opportunity to admit that some artistic license was occasionally used. But instead they have consistantly doubled down on the narrative that everything in the books is 100% true. And more than that, they have been quite happy to commercialise the memoir by having it transferred to the big screen. In the process they have become very rich.

Secondly, when the original Observer article came out, they had every opportunity to admit to some or all of the allegations made in the article. However, they doubled down on their claims of honesty, that "mistakes were made" during the time that Sally worked for the Hemmings and that Moth's CBD was entirely genuine. There wasn't a scintilla of remorse in the rebuttal statement. As a result, the documentary was made to try and answer some of the questions that remained outstanding after the original investigation.

I think the debate on this thread has on the whole been pretty objective and the aim has been the same as the original Observer investigation - not to obtain some form of retribution but simply to learn the truth of what actually happened.

I think @HoppityBun they had a window of opportunity after Chloe's story broke to come clean. As noone is going to be able to access Moth's medical records without permission, they could have said that they have sought further opinions and it perhaps isn't what was originally suspected, rare condition, very atypical, etc etc. Difficult as the books following TSP doubled down on his issues and the curative power of walking but not impossible. There could also have been a mea culpa about the embezzlement. OK, they might have found themselves in hot water with PRH, but they are in hot water anyway.

None of this happened, the statement was very angry and actually made things worse as it further exposed problems with the timeline as presented. I'm very sure that the threatened legal action is not happening because the new documentary wouldn't be going out if were.

I don't think they're monsters, my bar for considering someone such is high. I do believe they are fundamentally dishonest people, architects of their current situation and entirely responsible for the fall that has happened to them. We've talked on other threads about people who have done far less deliberate wrong and had their lives comprehensively destroyed, often without the cushion of money to fall back on. I'm also very glad that whatever "wellness" project was planned has sunk without trace now, because the idea of people signing up for such is most concerning.

Welcome back @Choux ! Plenty of room. It would be really interesting if you have chance to tell us about the Guardian event.

Welcome back - I was very impressed by those of you who reported back from the event. Weren't you the one that sat next to Chloe's dad?

I agree with you @HoppityBun it would be a terrible situation to be in. It's what would stop me from any thought of writing a book portraying myself as something I was not, and calling it the truth, I would worry about all the skeletons in my cupboards :)

The problem lots of people have is knowing that Salray decided to do what she did, it was a deliberate effort to report Moths health as terminal and continue in that way, with health claims to boot. Many of us could profit financially and in other ways if we were to lie, and of course many people do, Salray is not alone. Living in this way brings the risk of being found out, Salray knew what she was writing about and was very happy telling lies and soaking up the money and the glory.

We don't even know how much they are suffering, yes they have lost credibility and people are writing about them online, they don't have to read any of it, I mean you have to make an effort to have a look. If they wanted to slip away out of public notice, they could, after all Tim already gets easily mistaken for SA, so no one will know who he is and Salray is able to blend in, as she has repeatedly written about being an ordinary looking woman that doesn't attract attention.

I don't think they will be so much bothered by what they have done, more that a stop has been put to their plans to continue in this guise within the wellness industry. If Salray is a shy little nature child, then she has her wish, enough money to live in rural isolation, away from all the old greedy people and others who offend her. She has the money to stop doing the book tours and gigs that must have been terrible for her, leaving her beloved Moth. Now she can afford the time, something most of us don't have the luxury of, to dedicate to Moths health and enjoy her children.

Salray has lost her good reputation, but I think the documentary will show that the good reputation was not deserved. Also how can this story be lauded as a great love story? Salray didn't dedicate her time to Moth once she was financially able, she was out making more money, if not why else was she doing it?

Glad you have hopped on the charabanc @Choux I feel we could be in for quite a rollercoaster ride.

One other point I'd like to add is that in her rebuttal statement (on her IG feed) Raynor Winn/Sally Walker seems to deliberately misrepresent what Chloe Hadjimatheou says in her article about Moth's CBD. Although CH talks to several specialists who cast doubt on Moth's diagnosis, she doesn't herself contradict the diagnosis or (as far as I can see) ever claim that Moth made it up. This is what Chloe Hadjimatheou actually says in the article:

People have the right to keep their medical history private, and Tim has chosen not to provide his to rebut the medical scepticism The Observer put to him. There is nothing I have seen to contradict his diagnosis or Sally Walker’s account of it. And medical miracles do happen.

In contrast, this is what Raynor Winn/Sally Walker says in her IG statement refuting the Observer article:

"Heart breaking accusations that Moth has made up his illness have been made leaving us devastated. To combat these vile and heinous accusations, with Moth's permission, and on the advice of his neurologist I am releasing excerpts from three clinic letters, showing he is treated for CBD/S and has been for many years".

The fundamental problem, which has possibly led to the Sky documentary being made, is that Sally Walker appears to have deliberately misrepresented what the original Observer article claimed or have deliberately avoided answering its main allegations. That ultimately is her choice but she can't be bitter or surprised if she has to then live with the consequences of her decision to essentially claim that the original Observer article was full of vile and heinous accusations which were untrue.

Just catching up…. Leading on from your last post @NaughtyNoodler Sally Walker created the classic straw man argument when she did that.