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 like how TSP is called a 'moan fest' in the article - others noted Salray's miserable attitude as well as those on here.

When I was in a charity shop yesterday, a staff member came up and plonked a pile of books on the shelf - lo and behold the top one was TSP. It looked quite an old copy which reminded me of how long this pair got away with their con. The price was 50p, or a £, if bought with 2 others.

The miserable attitude of Salray has been well documented on these threads, as @AzureStaffy says. I will be a bit disappointed if the documentary doesn't mention glumwashing, I can't remember who came up with it now, but I think that the word should be acknowledged, it would be a fitting tribute to Salray and her writing :)

It’s probably called #glumcore now… and trending!

‘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."’

The funny thing is that this is absolutely true… when you are writing fiction. It’s what I did when I was writing my novel, a sort of mental trick. But memoir, no. Facts matter.

I've tried to quantify if there is any rhyme or reason behind the ebb and flow of Moth's CBD condition.

Here is what we know from Sal's chronology
July 2013: Moth struggling putting on a shirt/rucksack, feet dragging
13 Sept 2013: After 200 miles on the SWCP marked improvement seen, Moth runs up beach at Portheras Cove carrying the erected tent
Oct-2013 - June 2014: Moth's health declines while at Polly's
Mid July 2014: Moth is so ill as they start off from Poole that he "was hunched under the weight of his pack, muscles receding against the incoming tau. Confusion washing over him in waves,, falling quietly like a sandcastle in the water running before the tide. The start of the mental decline that accompanies CBD".
1 Aug 2014: 75 miles after starting off from Poole (and resting up for 3 days at Weymouth) Moth has miraculously recovered his mojo, trig planking at Golden Cap
Oct 2018:"He is not as well as when they finished the big trek in 2018" (Guardian interview)
Sept 2019: They complete a two week walk in Iceland (40 miles) and Moth's health again recovers.
March 2020: SW reveals in her IG feed that moth is not well and the book tour for TWS has been postponed for 6 months until Sept 2020
14 Sept 2020: (Herald Scotsman interview). " He has found a way to keep his health on a plateau for now"
Jan 2021: Moth's health reaches a new low. "Moth's health was at such a n all time low and he was thinking maybe we were getting close to the end"
Jan 2021: Penguin interview, Sal makes no mention of Moth's health but says they are planning to walk from the north of Scotland back to Cornwall in the Spring
May - Sept 2021: Sal and Moth walk 1,000 miles from Cape Wrath to Polruan. At the falls of Glomach Moth's health takes a turn for the better: "it was almost like the falls were a turning point"
1 Oct 2022: "Moth not quite as well as he was when finishing that path last year" (Iceland)
Apr 2023: Moth walks the London Marathon
Apr 2024: Moth walks the 120 mile Thames Path in 10 days
4 June 2025: "His health has improved almost miraculously, just as it did when he was walking the Coast Path"
27 June 2025: Last year (2024) was a really tough year and he had a difficult time.But he's been trying really hard to get back to where he wants to be and he's in a much better place then he was a year ago, that's for sure"

Observations:

• there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why Moth's health recovers ( walking 30/75/200 miles or just being outdoors in nature making ecological woodpiles in the orchard?) or why it suddenly deteriorates (a sedentary lifestyle at Polruan?)

• Sal stumbles upon the idea for the LL walk in Jan 2021 when a Cape Wrath Trail guidebook miraculously falls out from behind a log basked. However, she has already talked about the next big walk in an interview in Sept 2020 and divulged full details in Jan 2021, so had clearly been planning it for some time: Winn is already planning her third book and another walk is in the pipeline. "It is one we are doing next year. Who knows? I might bump into you as I'm passing." Could a visit to Scotland be on the cards, then? "Might be," she teases.

• There is no mention in the Sept 2020 interview that Moth's health took a downturn in March 2020

• The 27 June 2025 interview which talks about 2024 being a really bad year for Moth glosses over the fact that he walked the 120 mile Thames path in April without any apparent problems

@NaughtyNoodler There is no mention in the Sept 2020 interview that Moth's health took a downturn in March 2020.

Look at the dates... Moth's health notwithstanding, it's highly unlikely that ANY book tour would have been ongoing because everything was locked down! So I doubt very much that 'Moth's health deteriorating' would have been the real reason for the postponing of the book tour - more like the fact that Covid would have meant that nobody could have come.

The 2022 Herald Scotsman interview referred to Moth's health not being quite as good as when they finished the LL walk (Sept 2021) not the Iceland walk.

@NaughtyNoodler : I love the forensic precision of your posts.

Sunday Papers Live, The Real Salt Path with Chloe Hadjimatheou, Sunday 7th December

Hello everyone. Did anyone make it to this? Apologies if someone has posted feedback and I've missed it. Mistakes were, as ever, made.

I did not go, but I have got 2 tickets for the Jan event and will only be using one. 8th Jan at the Observer in London, 6:30-7:30pm.
Would anyone like the other one?

Excellent run down. One thing i think is missing is the time when Moth is found face down in the orchard. Not sure which book or when but recall it being mentioned in these threads.

We also know that he seemed in pretty good health during the Rick Stein filming.

Jan 2021 as per LL?

Oh, yes that is probably it

Thanks for great timeline @NaughtyNoodler ... I'm obviously wanting to raise an incident too!

I have been intrigued by Moth's collapse ... I think it must be near end of Thames Walk ... he was supposed to walk last leg with a group of about 40 PSPA supporters.

I heard about it as Sal was asked, in a studio interview, and just says: "He's fine." Which made me think it was dodgy and that he hadn't wanted to interact with actual sufferers/carers ... so that then I felt bad for being so evil .... same sort of pattern as usual, really!

(ouch, all that has made my thumb hurt - pins came out this afternoon, frightening how long they were ....)

It’s at the beginning of Landlines, in a passage clearly intended to pluck at the reader’s heartstrings, just after he can’t pick up a sandwich without his tremor shaking the pickle off the cheese. ‘Not the hand that has held mine for forty years of wild entangled life.’

We’re told that he’s lost his appetite months earlier and this has caused muscle loss and weakness, despite the fact that he is spending all his time outdoors tending the orchards. Apparently there’s a symbiotic relationship between the orchards and their ‘carer’, ‘the trees needing as much care to stay upright and alive as their carer does.’ These trees are apparently also beyond their reproductive life, but have been reawakened by TW with a pruning saw.

Then he falls and can’t get up. Despite the fact that he’s apparently very active year round, and has had for three years exactly the ‘green life with no problems’ she thought he needed, it appears to be killing him. He falls just after SW has gone indoors to find her work gloves, which are suggestively close to a pile of guidebooks to wild places and trails. He goes upstairs to bed after the fall and straight away SW is back to the guidebooks, in a spectacularly heavy-handed act of foreshadowing, with a lot of metaphors of sparks catching flame, even though at this point he can’t walk a two-mile loop to the old graveyard (more heavy-handed foreshadowing of TW’s imminent demise).

i would love to go! I went to the one last summer and really enjoyed it.

@BegazingBrandy so glad that the pins are out and I hope everything goes smoothly now recovery wise. The pins sound erm awful and I think you need to not overdo it, especially in Panic Season sorry pre Christmas! You need full and painless use of your typing fingers next Monday

A friend told me that one of her colleagues is taking a sabbatical to walk the SWCP. I said next year? Apparently not, now.

Thank you for that marvellous abridgement.

That’s not fair, you know he told Bill Cole he wouldn’t be seeing Xmas just before the Rick Stein filming!

and here he is, it’s nearly Xmas 2025

More medical insights into the ebb and flow of Moth's CBD, this time from an article by Sal which appeared in the Literary Hub in April 2019.

In it she claims:

• while staying at Polly's in the Winter of 2013/14 "Moth's health had declined so far that he appeared to be reaching the stage of needing constant care" This seems to torpedo the notion that the June-Oct 2013 SWCP walk provided any lasting health benefits for Moth's condition.

• starting off from Poole in July 2014 Sal then goes on to claim "Moth's health had deteriorated so far that our progress along the start of the Jurassic coast was painstakingly slow" Actually it seems to have been faster than the previous year's walk (7 miles per day v 5.5 in 2013) and they also walked in lock step with Dave and Julie from up North for stretches of the path

• SW claims that "after weeks passed" they reached Golden Cap where Moth's health miraculously improved as he effortlessly trig planked. Hmm. According to TSP it only took them 2-3 days to walk from Weymouth to Golden Cap!

Literary Hub » Walking the Longest Path in England, Death on the Horizon

@NaughtyNoodler thanks for the above ... I noticed you put in the Snowdonia pic again - I had to check to see if it was in the article.

I picked up on: I ran around taking photos as if it were the first time he’d flown, or the last.

We never get one of her photos, though. Also, there was a discussion, in the last thread, regarding if they had a working camera ....

We never get one of her photos, though. Also, there was a discussion, in the last thread, regarding if they had a working camera ....

There is indeed a dearth of pictorial evidence for lots of their adventures @BegazingBrandy . Given the fact it has never been so easy to take photos as it is now (and has been for some time) it is...odd.

Still think that infuriating trig point planking shot needs a sensitive content warning 😂

SA didn't seem to have any problems taking photos during his walk!

@NaughtyNoodler and many of the shots there show places and people mentioned in the book. They give a real, accurate flavour of it.

Thanks @NaughtyNoodler and totally agree @Uricon2

I relate to this man and he is very welcome:

“Although I got lost in the Pennines sometimes, I did feel at home. I don’t here. I feel like a stranger.”

(From The Sunday Telegraph in September 2013)

It is a totally different, and to me authentic, spirit.

Pub date: Walking Away 4 Jun. 2015

TSP 22 Mar. 2018