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

I'd also like to know how feasible it would be for a registry office to 'set up at the back of a builder's merchants'? Surely, if a local register office is out of commission, you are simply sent to the next nearest one? I'm sure I remember registering one of my children's births and having to go somewhere different because there was a problem at my nearest one... but then my youngest is 29 and my memory isn't what it was (not to 'Sal levels of misremembering though, evidently).

Yup. I can believe SW might have crushed a high street wedding dress into a rucksack on the basis that Lady Di's dress 5 years earlier was famously creased and 'if it's good enough for her...'. But Dandy Moth? An expensive bespoke cream silk 3 piece suit he'd just had made? So he'd look the absolute dog's bollocks on his wedding day. No way.

Agreed- registry offices are subject to quite strict rules around the number of people in them (if we had married with more than 2 others there as witnesses it raised the price from about £60 to over £400). And legal events, too- I can’t see them just pulling a curtain across the back of the hardware shop, really.

Skye isn’t even a ferry ride away- you can go by bridge!

I think it was still a ferry ride away in 1986 though, wasn't it?

But yes, I thought registry offices were quite tightly legally tied to 'place'. I vaguely remember this was why you can't get married outdoors in the UK, because the wedding location has to have a post code of its own? Or am I imagining all this, driven by a lack of fudge and a surfeit of Angry Froth?

Yes, I paid a few visits to Skye in the 1980s and there was a choice of 2 or maybe 3 ferry routes. No bridge then.

She could offer a "get paid in exchange for silence" agreement. If she could find one to copy.

If I'd stolen tens of thousands of pounds, causing people massive problems and heartache, it would eat my soul, let alone needing reminding to repay when it all comes to the light. She could surely have approached them and offered amends after the success of the books. Had she done so, maybe they would have been less inclined to talk to Chloe, although the effects of what she did on both sets of parents could surely not be forgotten.

Ship has sailed?!

In which case, it would literally be their job to avoid criticising the Walkers.

It's SW's usual shifty language. She wants you to think it was all very remarkable, silk suits and solemn vows among the shelves of washers and screws. But, if there's any truth in it at all, 'at the back of the builder's merchants' probably just means 'in a small council office on the road behind Jewson's'.

Agree. Places have to be licensed for weddings to legally take place there and in the 80s, that was very much limited to churches (only of some denominations) and registry offices.

Our local registry office had a fire in the early 80’s. While it was being restored a portacabin was set up in the car park which is where my brothers were married in 1984 and 1986. So alternative venues could be set up but I doubt the back of the hardware shop story

As it takes time to have a suit made to order, and SW had presumably looked in more than one shop in those pre-internet days, their wedding was obviously pre-planned. The (condensed) account I copied from TWS doesn’t suggest they eloped on a whim, and I don’t recall any other mention of the wedding, but several mentions of how her parents hated her dating Moth (“You’ll regret this, my girl, you’ll regret this until the day you die”; “He’s no use to you, he’s useless, pointless”), so she was seeing him behind their backs.

In TWS she writes:
”We’d sat on the mounded oak roots in the Park as my stomach churned and I tried to breathe, in the moments before we walked down to the house and unfolded the marriage certificate on the kitchen table”.
Earlier in the chapter she quotes her mother saying, “Moving in without getting married, that’s disgusting, you’re an embarrassment”. So they didn’t move in together: “I couldn’t take the final step of defiance”.

They weren’t such unusual sentiments, even as recently as the 1980s. It’s quite plausible that her mother demanded a local wedding reception to avert her own embarrassment at her wayward daughter.
Photos shown during the TV documentary showed a wedding cake, as well as the “family photo” where SW looks tense, Moth looks smug, and her mother looks to be over-acting the happy MOTB!

If they wanted to bring attention back on themselves, then they could do worse than doing a commentary watching TSP together.
You know, where they make comments about filming etc and things they were told.
"At this point he said that he could hardly put one foot in front of the other"
"Yes, he showed you how he was dragging his leg..."

But I suspect they'll just hope it drops into obscurity.

It would be interesting; I suspect we'd find that they were both keen to put it on record that they always thought there was something off...

Documentary about to be shown again on Sky.

Indeed.

Whilst they don’t owe anyone an apology Jason apparently thought Tim was amongst the best of men he’d ever known. He was rendered speechless & awestruck by him so this especially rankles. He added that SO many he portrayed or met were bad buys but Tim he was ‘Father Christmas’. I think Gillian mat have had some private doubts…

I wonder what else may come out of the woodwork following the coverage this weekend and the documentary? Seems a good deal did after July and it could be the snowball effect now.

I thought that by the time of the premieres, and interviews to promote the film, there was always a marked difference in Gillian and Jason's attitudes (this is definitely watching after the controversy).

He was still completely smitten by Tim and Gillian seemed as if she had already moved on. In an interview, with just the two of them, he was still saying "they were shunned" and Gillian started talking about people in their 50s having sex.

The interesting thing is, once the controversy broke, I think TSP did lose sales (I know what the ex-Penguin woman says), well gradually probably, and one of the highest selling non-fiction books was Gillian's compilation of women's sexual fantasies.

On the Ray & Moth & ditching of ‘Walker’ & ‘pen names’ - were they doing this in part to hide?

He added that SO many he portrayed or met were bad buys but Tim he was ‘Father Christmas’.

And Father Christmas isn't real either!

I'm not sure that the next book will be released...I saw something recently, in reference to Sarah Ferguson I think, that when a publisher pushes out the publication of a book that is already set to go, it means they intend to quietly drop it when the furore settles down.

I don't think the bridge opened until 1995

Because in their eyes, they have done nothing wrong. To pay back would be to admit their wrong and that's not their MO.
Everything is everyone else's fault.
They have no concept of or awareness of the hurt done to others, eg in the confession letter Sal saying basically "I took all the money. But I'm not actually sorry. And I feel better now for saying this."

If they have now paid back the loan creditors, that would only be because they had no choice legally.

I googled the definition of a psychopath....makes for very interesting reading...

AI tells me that in the 1980s, the Skye registry office was run from the court building in Portree. It temporarily relocated to a former photographic gallery in early 2025 but is now permanently located in the council office building.

For me personally, that would be money that could never be repaid because it caused suffering to loved ones who are no longer here. Money would not do the trick only a very public and unequivocal apology would start to build bridges.

Which is tricky as she accepts no responsibility & has stuck to previous narrative.