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

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+one+show+raynor+winn&rlz=1CDGOYI_enES1101GB1148&oq=the+one+show+ray&hl=en-GB&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:917b4040,vid:3QfFjlJ8mMQ,st:0

‘The loveliest person I’ve ever met in my life’ about 0:51. NB: Ray’s careful ‘script’.

Yes, thank you too @NaughtyNoodler it was a very good read. It’s easy to see why Sal was so reluctant to chat about what seemed to have been her passion.

This is powerful particularly around TSP giving a message the terminally ill are just not trying hard enough. Carers of the ill can go very ‘tough love’ when they believe these Lazarus tales are real causing stress and unhappiness in families.

My concern is that it & other criticisms don’t touch on what’s really inexcusable, the fraud & maybe the fact they didn’t cover 600 odd miles.

We’re very naive if we think any memoir at all is ‘unflinchingly honest’. They’re inherently subjective & never the strict truth from Laura Ingalls Wilder to others writing in the present day. Characters amalgamated & events changed. The danger is the defenders then minimise the crime & fraud seeing the book as uplifting, ‘feel good’ escapism. These things are not major crimes & can and do perhaps look like envy & sour grapes in isolation.

To my mind we should be viewing this more through a ‘Captain Tom’ lens. This article doesn’t touch on the frauds or crime at all.

I was a bit puzzled by Sal's seeming reluctance to talk about writing with another author. Most of us are only too keen to get together with other writers, even if it's only to sympathise with the tanking of royalties or the inadequacies of our publisher's marketing campaigns! Ruth Saberton makes it sound as though Sal barely wanted to mention her writing.

Extract from The Wild Silence, Chapter 6:

(they’d bought a tiny cottage and had been doing it up)

”We didn’t move into the cottage; instead we got in a train to the Isle of Skye. The registry office… was closed for renovation but had temporarily set up… at the back of the builders’ merchant.…..
We were a spectacle, an unexpected source of amusement…
We shone out against the grey tarmac, Moth glowing in a bright cream suit he’d had made by a local tailor, and me in a white dress I’d bought in a Laura Ashley sale. Clothes smuggled north in our rucksacks, hidden from each other on the train….
…..
Then we returned to our tiny house…
We still had to tell my parents what we’d done…”

My personal feeling is there’s some dishonesty in the writing too. Sal has a fondness for obscure helpfully long out of print walking books & other books of yore. The writing quality varies & it wouldn’t shock me if there was some ‘borrowing’ going on. ‘So Sal tell me about your xyz writing methodology’…Oh dear.

They are very careful on poss exposure of scam ‘Can I stop you there & take you back to the start…dispute with family friend’. NB: The One Show. Tim’s off shopping/can’t be here today/surprisingly good day.

So who are the people in the photo of them very evidently in their wedding clothes? With what looks like a big wedding bouquet or other bunch of flowers in the background? From the very tidy appearance of the two of them I'd say that picture was taken on their wedding day, but this extract makes it sound as though they eloped and got married without any family or friends present...

Or, as I'm beginning to suspect, did they get married with the full knowledge of the family who attended the wedding and Sal put in the whole 'ran away to get married' thing just to make it sound more interesting than it was.

I got married in a church in the 1980s but from the registry office weddings I have attended, I didn't think you could just rock up and say 'marry us', there were a few hoops to jump through first, weren't there?

I see some pictures of Tim on his good days on her insta.

And who can forget the Olympic Trig point planking. I’m pretty fit & younger & not sure I could look that poised or accomplished even in posed photo.

The marriage Scotland act 1977, came into force in 1978, meant people marrying could marry under the age of 21 without parental permission, but they still had to issue notices in advance, no just turn up and get married, so was the marriage planned?

A bespoke suit takes time. Hers in Laura Ashley. Shopping trip with sister? No online ofc.

Yet these were posted in the last 12 months

I’d be interested to hear from book prize runner up over 50s. Who lost out on 10k & their books being publicised.

Also, any psychologists about on writing about a crime - serious fraud etc - you fictionalise but have committed? Happened before I suspect. Not any admission intended but what? Grandiose narcissism?

Captain Tom’s daughter used funds criminally & there was outrage & here we have prison worthy crimes, embezzlement, elder abuse but most focusing on effectively minor textual exaggerations etc.

How is Tim now (?), he was kept off screen earlier this year on One Show - apart from hale & hearty brief appearance that moved Jason I to almost tears.

Any update on health?

I thought that there had to be a period of time elapsing, so you couldn't just turn up and get married on that day (although I seem to think Gretna was different, so maybe Scotland as a whole had a 'no questions asked' policy?)

I do know when I married in a registry office in 2008, we had to present ourselves beforehand to the registrar for a pre wedding interview a few weeks before. But maybe I am getting confused because I'm sure things will have changed over the years.

So who are the people in the photo of them very evidently in their wedding clothes?

The newspaper description says "Moth and Winn at their wedding alongside her mother." Bit there is another photo credit mentioning her father but with no photo so it may be her father and the credit got dismembered!

I do know when I married in a registry office in 2008, we had to present ourselves beforehand to the registrar for a pre wedding interview a few weeks before. But maybe I am getting confused because I'm sure things will have changed over the years.

Mine were reg office both times and although the first just involved me turning up with the paperwork, in 2012 me and DH2 were interviewed together and separately. It felt like the Stasi meets Mr & Mrs, if anyone remembers that.

I'm going with the idea that the photo was taken at a party held to celebrate the marriage once home. Thanks so much @NaughtyNoodler for sharing the excellent and thoughtful Ruth Sabarton piece.

Good afternoon dear gang. I'm not going to be around again until very late tonight or maybe tomorrow, so here's one I prepared earlier. No posts please until Thread 20 is full:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5460943-thread-21-to-feel-disappointed-and-now-disgusted-too-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

We should be ok, but just in case we get a rush on! I didn't want anyone to start anxiously listening for the charabanc or suffering from salt withdrawal symptoms!

As always a repost of the link near the very end of the thread please would be fine and dandy.

Thanks @DisappointedReader !

I just had a look @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, it seems that the whole turning up and getting married is a myth, fifteen days notice, theoretically they could have booked and gone through the correct process before hand, telephone, mail and cheques, then turned up for the marriage, but it wasn't running away to marry on a whim.

Thank you, @Freshsocks. So there is every chance that her parents were in attendance - and the story certainly varies from the version she gives in the books.

I popped in briefly in thread 18 but have been following along since the beginning. Having now watched the documentary (thanks to @DisappointedReader for the instructions) and read the latest article in the Observer (apologies as I can’t remember who posted that) I am even more incensed. Please excuse me while I have a rant!

For me, it is the casual exploitation of other people and their experiences. Sally and Tim can do this with ease because they seem to have no regard for anyone but themselves and their own wants. It is amazing how far a lack of morality and conscience can take people. Although I have experience of working with both mentally and physically ill people and their carers, I wouldn’t presume to say that I know what it feels like to them. I do know that they suffer greatly and I don’t believe that it is something that can be imagined.
I feel very angry that Tim and Sally have been trotting around blatantly representing themselves as a terminally ill person with daily agonies and struggles, and their devoted carer. That they also know what it feels like to be homeless. Just how dare they!
All those readers who thought that Ray and Moth understood them, their grief and their difficulties, and were offering inspiration and hope! It is a total betrayal of trust and a failure of being a decent human being. Even if they were temporarily thrown by the suggestion of CBS, it must have been self evident that this wasn’t playing out. As has been frequently mentioned here, most people would seek a review of that original suggestion.

It actually doesn’t surprise me at all about the money being stolen from elderly relatives. The person I know who is like Sally felt similarly entitled to help themselves and I can vouch for it being extremely damaging and very painful to the family. Creating “LIFElong” rifts even, although, they also obviously claim that it is everyone else who is being horrible and they themselves aren’t a problem. Any questions are met with denials, anger, tears, flounces, tales of trauma and tragedy, made up counter accusations and threats. Not to mention allusions to mental health problems. Is there a script I wonder? And, of course, no money ever paid back.
Sally’s sister helping her mother look into her money going missing must have made Sally really panic for her to have written that letter!

I always thought the main difference with Scotland was that until fairly recently, you could get married at 16 without parental consent. Gretna was popular because close to the border. You didn't need parental consent if over 18 anyway, in England or Scotland, in the 80s.

Or they did get married in the registry office on their own, but planned by them in advance, then a family party back home. The getting married in the back of a hardware store, because of renovation of the registry office, has always sounded suspicious.

@Innermagnolia Not a rant - a completely welcome assessment, with some personal experience, of some of the deeply unpleasant actions of Tim and Sally Walker.