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

Is it Ruth who was featured, in a short trailer I linked earlier, saying that when you close TSP you want to know more about Moth?

Yes

Instagram

Money - they’re multi millionaires off the back of the lies in the narrative books so can take it up with her privately if they have beef, she’s said.

A few from both families said letters are real about cheating both sets of parents (!) so she needs a defence mechanism! Windfalls in families cause jealousy she knows…deserved or otherwise. So…

But look, we agree.

Afternoon all. Just a little bit about the history and values of Arvon for those not already in the know:

About Arvon - Home of Creative Writing since 1968 - Arvon

Very moving interview with John, he explains how the book gave him hope that CBD might be reversed, he tells CH how he disliked her initial investigation he was angry, he wanted to believe.

To be fair he seems to provoke this response in others - NB: Jason Issacs.

Thanks so much @Freshsocks and @RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays that's quite a lot of different aspects of the whole controversy. I am interested to hear from the local author, in the Fowey area, and was hoping for one of the Pwllheli colleagues.

No mention of damning plot of HNTDDD & injustice of ££ first book prize?

Interview with former employee of PRH, lots of realism (like @Vroomfondleswaistcoat tells us about publishing :) no check were made, authors word taken, book wouldn't have sold as well if not a true story, she thought PRH would like to publish OWH, lots more money, sales helped by controversy. No mention of awards or first book.

sorry, I've just found ANOTHER thing to be annoyed about, you're going to have to rub me down with a cool fudge bar in a minute

I'm churning some fudge ice-cream for you and for all our frayed-by-the-Walking-Winn-Wyns tempers as I write @Vroomfondleswaistcoat

Yes, I think some of it must be the way London luvvies express themselves - because it does seem excessive. The director of the film, Marianne Elliott, describes Tim as a: positive, gorgeous, charismatic man

Relatives at the end part of documentary, only niece Cecille uses real name and face shown, happy family memories, Tim great fun a real character, great fun as a child, but found to be a fantasist, health claims not believed. Niece Cecille, very upset and crying, the family said that Raymoth have a symbiotic relationship.

True but Jason was so OTT even given that, the most extraordinary person ever met, many have an agenda BUT Moth SO genuine. Etc.

That said if he has all these God like gifts why hasn’t he blagged a very well paid job for low/no effort along the way in past?

Everyone - apart from his family, old friends and acquaintances - was introduced and 'got to know' Timoth through the rose-tinted lens of reading TSP et al, together with Salray's breathy adorations in interviews. They/we were sold a product: 'Moth'. In a sense Tim Walker is an actor playing a part. All conmen and conwomen are. That's how they get close to people and are able to con. When people meet someone, having heard such and only positive things about them, we tend to believe that and treat them accordingly - until the rose-tinted fog gets blown away by personal experience, gut feelings or an Our Chloe.

@DierdreDaphne i see Timmoth the way you do too, even while reading the books. I think he’s manipulative and potentially puts pressure (implied or explicit) on SalRay to be better than all the other girls- that theme comes through from her, that she’s scored way out of her league, that she’s always lived with the fear that he’d find someone else. And he’s such a dandy, and the “master plasterer” or the one with “so many skills to offer”. She says nothing positive about herself in the books and maybe that’s a reflection of her true self-image. Maybe pretending to be the creative child of nature is a way of projecting some sort of self esteem even if it’s hollow; a mask over the void within her.
For me this apparent imbalance in their relationship offers a motive for her theft- although she seems so cold that it may not have taken much guilt.

But yeah, he received the money into his account so he knew, and was he appalled and immediately returned it? Was he bollocks. He’s loved every minute of it.

The author lady, Ruth Saberton, was also very taken with Tim, she found him tall, handsome, warm friendly and a good story teller. She found Salray reserved, she read LL and was upset, she lived near them, saw them, she read the piece in LL where Salray says she and Moth were laying in his urine, Ruth cried she said that she had no idea things were so bad for them. But then she started to question the truth of the books and what she could see with her own eyes. She started to read the books and make lots of notes, she no longer believed.

@PinkPanther57 That said if he has all these God like gifts why hasn’t he blagged a very well paid job for low/no effort along the way in past?

I suspect even that would be too much like hard work and too humdrum for him and for them both. It is the maintaining of it in the medium and long term. They prefer to Bonnie and Clyde it.

I've been reading but not contributing for a few months now (life got busy), but my jaw is still on the floor after reading the latest. All I can say is this: For anyone still not convinced that Tim was a complicit partner in all of this, just take a look at his wedding photo (in yesterday's Observer article). The pose, the smug expression, the outfit (my god! the outfit!!) ... As the saying goes, if he was a bar of chocolate he'd eat himself.

The Glastonbury lady Daisy Floss, said that there definitely were not any drugs being smoked or burnt around Sal and Tim, only sage. She did not have any recollection of Moth being unwell or unable to move, or of having any problem whatsoever.
Tim does love himself doesn't he @GogleddCymru, I wonder what sort of chocolate bar he would be, definitely not run of the mill :)

Golden blond creamy white

So, here are my notes on the rest of the programme for @Aussiebornandbred and anyone else who can't watch

Maxine, the new owner of Pen y Maes – shows Chloe around barn

• She heard that they had a lot of moving vans and ‘ripped everything out’ and then were gone suddenly before the bailiffs came.
• Every week, letters from solicitors and bailiffs
• Says that neighbours didn’t have anything positive to say but then people gossip and it’s rarely about positive things, so she wasn’t really sure how they were thought about. None of the neighbours thought of them as friends.

Glastonbury

• Michelle (real name given) of Angel Healing interviewed.
• It was definitely not marijuana as SW intimated in TSP.
• She doesn’t remember Moth being in great pain.

Grant

• Real name given in programme
• Had lasagna, stayed in orchard, had bacon butties – these are the only truths
• Massage did not happen, he had not heard of Simon Armitage then, not happy with the portrayal, his opinion was “bunch of crap”.
• Grant says they discussed his hardships in life but CH says that because SW and TW can be the only victims in the book, no one else can be a victim anywhere in the book.
• CH dines on lasagna

Haye Farm

• Neighbour interviewed, a fellow author
• SW was lovely but shy and nervous, he was much more outgoing
• SW didn’t want to talk about her journey or her books
• Moth was a great raconteur, helpful, ‘so much presence’, warm, friendly and talkative. Always seemed full of vitality, but you can never really know how someone is coping with illness.
• Ended up going through the books with a critical eye because what she read in TWS and LL did not tie in with the man she was seeing.

Illness

• Showed the previous interview of John
• Interview with a Neurologist who specialises in CBD and who has been diagnosing it for twenty years.
• On watching a video of TW, he said that one prominent sign is loss of facial expression but TW has excellent facial expression. At 18 years he has never seen such a good stride length for a CBS sufferer.
• DAT scans will never revert, if it had done, MW’s doctor would have almost been duty bound to publish it and to this Neurologist’s knowledge, none ever has been published and it would be something he would have seen if it had.
• The longest time that the Neurologist has treated someone is 8-9 years (and at that point they were on 24 hour care) with the median being 5-8 years from diagnosis.
• Shows MW making the statement to Rick Stein “I am still going strong thanks to walking the coast path”
• Neurologist says that giving the idea that it can be reversed by walking long distances can make patients feel that they are responsible when it worsens.

Publisher

• Former PRH employee interviewed
• She is positive that PRH will publish OWH
• She wasn’t surprised about the revelations, she personally felt the health claims needed looking into.
• No formal fact-checking, done on trust, onus on author
• There is no incentive to change things at the moment – CH’s investigation has made PRH money. (Tho’ surely this is only short term?)

Family

• Identities hidden apart from MW’s niece ‘Cecille’. There only seems to be MW’s niece, SW’s niece and MW female relative at the meeting.
• CH got in touch with SWs niece and was told about the confession letter and so CH got the families together so that they could talk.
• SW’s mother had the letters and put them in a box and then gave them to SW’s sister, who then passed them on to SW’s niece.
• SW’s niece said that her grandmother ‘idolised and put Sally on a pedestal’ and this broke her.
• In the confession letter, it says that TW invested half of their capital and lost it. He then became depressed and she took the money to ‘hold him out of it’.
• The letter goes on to say that when she was arrested, she thought she had only taken about £10,000 and was surprised when it was £67K at which point she then takes the money from Tim’s parents and puts it into Tim’s account and money from her Mum’s account.
• The family have happy memories of lots of visits to the cottage in Wales and the families were fairly close. The cottage was a meeting place. They were the fun uncle and aunty.
• Tim and sally have a symbiotic relationship. She was desperately in love with him.
• When asked if Tim knew about the money situation, they just said that Tim had a character that you didn’t know quite what to believe. As a child you would find him exciting but as an adult lacking total responsibility of any kind, no connection to reality. One relative’s husband called him a fantasist.
• They never believed the CBD diagnosis because he was always ill with something.
• They never apologised to the family for stealing the money from their parents.

Sorry @Vroomfondleswaistcoat - No mention of HNTDDD
The programme is sprinkled with both SW and TW quotes, pictures from Instagram and interviews.

I know it's probably down market for Tim, but he is Salray's marvellous creation :)

Hiding in plain sight.

The Emperor's New Clothes.

The Tims of this world are often flirtatious & unfaithful…

Has Chloe H now got a copy of HNTDDD? She must have to know plot involves stealing money. How long afterwards was this crime discovered in real time?