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

Seems the other way round to me: Sal has always been jealous of more successful, better off family members. Jealous of better looking women - she seems to think everyone would love to have bagged Moth!! Jealous of families where both partners earn decent money.

I honestly cannot see how any family member would be envious of her.

You may well be correct but if Sal's confession letter is accurate, that suggests a Machiavellian level of deceit and manipulation that might be hard for family members to forgive or forget.

Her letter continues: “Somehow, somewhere amongst this living nightmare, I started taking money from Mum. Any statements she has had over the last 18 months are fake. I forged them.”

@Gingerbread100 I take your point about the criminal record thing as she was never charged. My view is that she was doing what she did with Timoth's uncle, "Oh unless you help (or pretend to the bank it was a mistake) I'll go to prison!"

It worked on the uncle. I'm sure it would have been even more effective on her own sister.

Apologies if this has been said, catching up.

She is at the top of her game. It was always all there. She loves it and has always told everyone:

The bus took us to Barnstaple, and then we changed on to another for Westward Ho! I felt as though I was cheating, and didn’t understand why.

Some people do automatically default to ‘They’re just jealous’ as a way of deflecting criticism or perceived dislike from others, though. There doesn’t need to be any grounds whatsoever. It’s a self-protecting belief that makes other people the problem.

You see it on Mn all the time.

‘Waah! Some mum didn’t talk to me at the school gate!’
‘Never mind, she’s probably just jealous (of your good looks/wealth, popularity etc).’

I mean, if the families had both said at the time ‘Sure, Sally, we’re absolutely fine with you stealing large sums of money from your mum/our mum and dad — you crack on’, and then changed their minds years later, sure.

But it caused huge upset at the time, and presumably was only down to the fact that neither SW’s mother not TW’s parents wanted to press charges (probably because of TW’s terminal illness and SW being likely to be sent to prison, or possibly descending into serious mental illness if they believed in her ‘voices’) that no one reported it then.

Both families must have been watching the rise of SW and TW as media darlings who’d made a killing out of being beloved plucky underdogs and victims of their own trusting, unworldly natures, with mounting disbelief. When CH first published her story, at least one of the families contacted her immediately, but it took some time to find documentary corroboration, and to put ‘Anne’’s documentation together with stories from the other side of the family, in a way that took it beyond rumour/family gossip, all of the three victims of the theft being dead.

I agree with you. She certainly seems to have always had this notion that silence can be bought and paid for. Where does she get these illusions of grandeur from? How can she hate everyone so much? The way she treats her own family just illustrates the way she treats everybody in life, will no respect, no empathy but always an eye on what someone can do to further her desires. Anybody who thinks they can have a genuine friendship with her is sorely mistaken. There won’t be any friendship with Julie. Julie is just someone who has been manipulated along with everyone else.
I think these threads have outgrown their original title because I don’t feel disappointment. I am disgusted.

Nothing to add but I’m shamelessly hopping back on board again after many threads’ absence.

Except I suppose I continue to be astonished by the industrial levels of deceit over such a long period of time.

TV tonight: the next chapter of the shocking Salt Path exposé | Television | The Guardian

Sal's response?

To everyone who has read and loved my books, thank you. Nothing has changed. The Salt Path remains my honest recollection of the time when we lost our house and found hope on the Coast Path. Except in limited cases, where names of people or details of places and events were changed to protect privacy, as explained at the front of every copy.
Thank you to the thousands who have written offering love and support, it has meant so much to us

Curses. It’s Sky!

Yes. That quote in bold. In the book, you read that and softly chide her in your head, thinking “Awww don’t be so daft! It’s not cheating to catch a bus in your condition! Nobody blames you. It’s not a competition. No need to be a martyr!” You are invited to see Raynor as a strong, determined character who feels genuine guilt for robbing herself of these challenges because she is too weak, too tired, too hungry to carry on.
She cleverly squeezes out sympathy from the reader because she has also written her character as being so good, so true, so honest but so ill prepared for the beastliness of reality. She becomes childlike as she seeks comfort from the reader, asking forgiveness for petty crimes. Her aim was to worm her way into the readers’ hearts and be protected there.

Timothy is a fantasist, Sally is pathological liar and manipulator, as well as a criminal.

It doesn't sit well of course that they've made so much money and essentially gotten away with it - but I can put that aside as we know what an unfair world this can be.

What I can't resolve are these feelings of utter disgust that they've led chronically, terminally ill people to believe they could be cured or improved by walking hundreds of miles.

Those poor individuals and their families.

I agree - she must have some kind of delusions, otherwise her offering to talk to Chloe 'off the record' as long as Chloe signed something to say that nothing discussed would be printed? I mean, who the hell thinks a journalist would have any interest in hearing self-justification that couldn't then be reproduced? What the hell would be the point?

But Sal seriously thought of it as a good idea?

And the horrible irony of that is that she claims her lies were “beacons of hope” which have been cruelly taken away!

Whilst in one of her interviews (in Wild Swimming, IIRC) she stated that she confines herself to talking about TW's own individual experience - because it would be awful to give others false hope.

I can’t keep up!

All of her books do that exact thing she doesn’t want to give false hope about!

Beautifully put @HatStickBoots I was completely perplexed by this quote. @SimoArmo was onto her manipulation in the book, early on in these threads, and then I could see what she was doing.

When you think I was always a sceptic, had never read anything, stubbornly refused to go to the film, before the controversy ... and yet I was still troubled by this 'honesty' ...

Even in the interview where she said she didn't want to generalise because that might give false hope to others, she didn't stick to it.

It’s interesting that at least some of TW’s family didn’t necessarily believe in his illness long before the unlikely symptom-reversal claims made in TSP and its sequels. His parents did believe he was seriously ill, and it probably contributed to them not reporting the theft, but others thought he was faking.

Which suggests a longtime pattern of behaviour of feigning illness, or exaggerating a minor/indolent condition, as a form of useful alibi for not being held accountable for your actions.

‘I can’t work because I’m ill.’

‘You can’t go to the police about my wife, because I’m ill and it might kill me.’

’It’s extra-poignant and book-worthy that I’m homeless and walking the SWCP because I’m ill.’

’It’s ok to steal fudge and campsite stays because I’m ill.’

’I can’t make your cider because I only have two months to live.’

‘It’s vile and inexcusable for a journalist to question my illness because I’m dying.’

And not just TW’s illness, if SW was feigning insanity and pretending to hear voices and hallucinate whenever her mother in law tried to talk to her about the missing money.

Presumably they shelved SW’s MH issues for the purposes of publishing TSP and its sequels, the film, attendant fame, media appearances etc because they needed a frontwoman, and TW looked too robust to be credibly at death’s door, and besides, publishers signing an author, people booking events/ readings /Arvon tutorships, Gigspanner etc don’t want someone hallucinating all over the This Morning sofa or whatever.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if SW’s MH issues re-emerge now that it might be useful to be able to present herself as suffering from debilitating compulsive thieving/spending and being too fragile to deal with questioning.

@Groundsel Which suggests a longtime pattern of behaviour of feigning illness, or exaggerating a minor/indolent condition, as a form of useful alibi for not being held accountable for your actions.

Yes, it wouldn't surprise me if it goes right back to teenage. One of the reasons I have kept an interest in these threads is because of knowing someone who has done this for this length of time. In the case I know, it is a devastating accident which explains why they have a missing body of qualifications.

In my experience, when it starts early, it carries on developing. The story is repeated with embellishments involving neurologists, disability. I have seen believers completely drinking in the false narrative. I expect everyone would think I was jealous if I told the truth.

@BegazingBrandy @HatStickBoots Indeed, throwing in a little confession of nothing anyone would really query or be bothered about (catching a bus for a short stretch) is indeed more manipulation. "Oh look, this is the real me, so very honest and straightforward", admitting to a trivial 'fault' as proof of good character in the hope that it deflects attention from the rattling ossuary of skeletons. Fudgegate possibly similar, "Look, I admitted I stole (even though desperate of course, &c, &c) I'm a truthful person".

I stress I consider Timoth quite as bad. There is no way he didn't know about all this and he benefited from it. Chloe's article carefully makes the point that he did not refund the £25K.

Just checked Mail Online. There are a couple of articles within the last 24 hours, one with 166 comments so far. No sign of True Believers.

Similar story with Reddit threads - looks like the veil has finally lifted.

What I haven't been able to understand - since joining these threads - is how the interviewers, the self-confessed fans of TSP, have let her spout the 630 miles/Everest x 4.

How many times has she repeated this claim that is contradicted by her guilt and justifications for catching the bus, about 5 times, in TSP. She lies and they let her.

I once saw her at a literary festival, and when asked about Moth's condition, she mentioned that, as a result of Moth's story, there were plans for a research project into whether walking could help reverse his particular neurological condition. Looking back now, I'm just aghast that she could actually let that go ahead knowing the whole thing was a pack of lies.