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

This is very distracting @SimoArmo .. I’ve had to pull my copy out now… That bloody prologue! Then chapter one.. the full force of her emotional blackmail to the reader.
The books must be full of inconsistencies like the one you’ve checked out.. why did she do this? I think it’s got to be because she enjoys piling on the misery. Deep in snow, how dreadful… you wouldn’t send a dog out in that, you must be mad.. but here we are in badly fitting boots that are destroying my feet… here’s a hair shirt, I will wear that too. Sunny, crisp and cold? That’s for people who go for walks out of choice, because they want to and not because they’re making rods for their backs and milking every dratted thing for more sympathy. Sal, the public teat is dry.

@SimoArmo I read that as: I've finally got my hands on a copy of HNTDDD - my heart skipped a beat! I must be desperate to hear what is in this documentary ...

Still very interested to hear what you picked up on - we haven't had that sort of spot recently.

Very entertaining @HatStickBoots and @Uricon2 you are on form today:)

Great piece @SimoArmo, I don't know why Salray has invented so much, I'm sure you will discover many more inventions as you read on, I'm impressed with your investigative skills.

@SimoArmo Why does RW invent so much?

I don't know the settings of the other 2 books but with TSP - I read a bit and think: I don't think she did this. It looks as if they were set up to start in Minehead, by the sister in Bristol, and then helped along the north coast by having the son in Newquay.

I don't believe she swam with a pod of dolphins, for a start. She doesn't mention she is a swimmer usually and she'd have to be a fair bit out from the shallow.

Maybe they've hardly walked in Landlines and that's why it's so wrong, also?

I think lots of the (unnecessary) agony is piled on because she's an utter self pitying miserabilist who feels the universe is on a crusade against her personally, in all situations. See also, the misanthropy. They go together. If she's in any way like this IRL it must be very, very wearing to deal with.

I do wonder if she actually likes walking, at all.

Worth a gander if you haven't already read it.

Investigating a Scandal in the Publishing World: Q & A with Chloe Hadjimatheou – Global Investigative Journalism Network

Something that might support your suspicions of her not being into swimming...

https://outdoorswimmer.com/featured/swimterview-raynor-winn-author-of-the-salt-path/

This interview section in Outdoor Swimmer, called Swimterview usually has interviewees swimming with the writer. But not with SalRay. No, she couldn't partake due to having had a mysterious recent knee operation. Mysterious because she has never written about this which is odd for a writer who focusses on walking. Perhaps even more mysterious because the interview appears in Dec 2019, the very year they went to Iceland (as per TWS). They got back from Iceland mid Sept 2019. The interview clearly took place that summer going by the trees in the photo.

Incidentally, something I think I shared a long time ago, SalRay pulled out of a Rye Festival appearance in Sept 2019, just days after they would have returned from Iceland. Her excuse? She broke her toe and couldn't drive.

So, in summary, in 2019 she seems to have had a knee operation that prevents her from swimming, followed by a trek in Iceland, quickly followed by a broken toe. But only the middle thing here has she written about and all the while she was doing hard graft rewilding an orchard and lifting MothTim out of bed etc.

She did a "swimterview" for Outdoor Swimming magazine, 6 December 2019. I got the impression that the interviewer and subject normally go for a swim together, but "Raynor has recently had a knee operation, so swimming for her isn't an option. So the plan is to meet and drink cups of tea, before I swim from one of the stunning locations off the coastal path."

Sorry, @SimoArmo : i hadn't seen your messagr about swimming when I posted mine just now. Yours is more interesting!

Thank you so much for your meticulous research.

You see this has happened to me ever since I joined in this discussion - I just picked something I'd seen before, from my memory, and there's this related bluff.

Thanks also @Peladon - you just completely reinforced the main point without realising! Both posts are interesting to me as I knew nothing about this article.

The number of yachts moored off Polruan point to summer, too, @SimoArmo

@simoarmo So, in summary, in 2019 she seems to have had a knee operation that prevents her from swimming, followed by a trek in Iceland, quickly followed by a broken toe.
Maybe not related but there is a pic on Instagram showing her leg with a crepe bandage from ankle to above the knee and a comment saying "my leg needed fixing because it's walked too far". She also goes on to say "when most of us need to focus on paying the rent..." but this was in June 2023, so she had three best selling books but was still one of "us" worrying about the rent.

@SimoArmo does your copy of LL have the bonus chapter at the end?
I have turned to the acknowledgements which come before the bonus chapter and thought I’d share a paraphrased section. She follows Moth’s straight and even footsteps and thinks she is finally coming to understand what belief is. I’ll quote this bit:
It’s about understanding something to be true, without proof of that truth. As yet there is no proven scientific link between an abnormal and a normal scan, but I believe it lies somewhere out there, in a thousand miles of landlines.
Quote: Raynor Winn. Landlines.

I’m just elbowing my way onto the charabanc to secure my place before the big event next week.

Had to laugh today. I can’t now remember which article it was that contained the claim about Timoth's stupendous piles of twigs, so stupendous that academics came from far and wide to study them. Well, this afternoon I happened to see an article online about the amazing biodiversity in the woodpiles at Great Dixter, the famed gardens created by the late Christopher Lloyd, which academics have come from far and wide…umm….er….you get the drift. And that was happening at Great Dixter certainly as far back as 2016, according to an Insta post. Maybe earlier, but I haven’t tried looking.
Just fancy that.

Yes, i have that version. I read that part today as i was too eager unable to face reading to see what the ending was. I recoiled like a parent with child encountering a homeless person. Pseudoscience on a plate. She fails to consider the much more likely explanation - Moth was misdiagnosed and does not have CBD/S or a Parkinsonism.

But the words reminded me of something else - the Grant episode in TSP...

"When you tell a story, the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe it’s true, then everyone else will follow."

She would have said anything, anything at all, in order to get CH to feel sorry for her and stop the article.
Hence why it would be secret.

Made me wonder how close the commenter may have been to the Walkers - given SW's character I wouldn't be at all surprised.

I recogonise the commenter's name from PSPA publicity - they also donated to Moth's Thames Walk and London Marathon fundraising. I imagine they are friends through PSPA connection. They seem very much under the spell of hope that RW's books convey, which I suppose is good for them if they choose to believe it and gives them comfort. But therein lies the problem: the hope is false - founded on sporadic walking trips and flimsy breaths of words that disperse like smoke in the wind - and SW has made a lot of money off the back of it. Whatever illness TW has, walking and fasting have not reversed his decline. That much is certain because the amount of extended strenuous trips they have done is pretty piecemeal over the course of 12 years (since 2013)...the 100 days it took them to do SWCP was likely in shorter stages spanning 4 years, not 2 long legs as described in TSP, Iceland in 2019 was 10 days, LL walk in 2021 over 4 months was a mix of walking, taxis, cycling and lifts, with no doubt healthy diets.

Believers will believe, but what about those who have lost all faith in the Salt Path gospel, or had none to begin with because they saw through it? Surely that is where the harm and insult lies when making unsubstantiated claims of improving an incurable, irreversible illness, all to sell a "non-fiction" story to the masses.

CH's Observer article about the TSP scandal and Moth's possible CBD misdiagnosis has uncovered an inconvenient truth for many who have either emotionally invested in or commercially profited from the book.

The former include legions of devoted fans, some of whom are so beguiled by the story that they are either unable to or don't want to see the wood for the trees and cling to the misguided notion that the Observer expose is nothing more than a vindictive witch hunt.

The latter include the publishers, her agent and countless commercial interests on the SWCP who have monetised "The Salt Path". I've been struck by how few local hospitality businesses have come forward in the wake of the expose and commented on the story. They seem very happy to continue piggy backing on the phenomenal success of TSP and seem unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth. Many of them are probably silently cursing CH for having slaughtered the goose that laid the golden egg!

The Salt Path

The emotional manipulation that we know so well.

Thanks for sharing that, @NaughtyNoodler .
The large heading "The healing power of nature" jumps out.

Without context, that could be understood as a casual marketing-guff statement, like "it's therapeutic to have your nails done here".

But the statement is made in the context of a story (which the website states is true) about a person diagnosed with terminal illness and two years to live, who seems to get better by walking the path. This seems likely to attract people who are very unwell, and it really troubles me.

And I hope the question is raised - if it was all that walking that kept Moth going, how come he's still alive now? When their long distance walking possibilities now seemed limited to round the 'estate' (unless he's got a treadmill in there, in which case it ain't nature that's helping). Moth was in what Sal determined was a 'terminal decline' all those times before they went out, and yet now, confined seemingly to a small Cornish estate, he's still alive (and presumably well)?

Would that not raise questions even for the most hardcore fan?

According to Sal's chronology Moth didn't do any long distance walking between Sept 2014 (finish of TSP) and May - Sept 2021 (LL). The Iceland jaunt in 2019 was only around 30 miles so doesn't really count.

So she needs to get her story straight. Either walking helps him (and therefore needs to be kept up regularly) or it's a fluke/co incidence/fraud!

I remember she made up that if he does a big walk, 100 miles or so, that lasts him for a year. I can remember commenting that he must be fitted with an efficient lithium battery. This was at a literary festival shared by @SimoArmo

Everyone is forgetting that if she says what it is then that's what it is.

She who must be obeyed ...

If only getting fit worked that way! Imagine, you'd only need to do one long walk or a day of exercise and it would last you for a few weeks!

(I'm a touch bitter as I'm at the age where I lose fitness if I don't go out almost every blasted day and I'm staring at Storm Bram and knowing I need to go for a run...).