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?

[DisappointedReader]

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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?

Thread 20: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5454438-thread-20-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 5 months we have done amazingly well together for 20 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. Our Cardboard Mascot Our Simon has had his head stuck back on and is wearing a very fetching tinsel boa. The charabanc is bedecked with fairy lights and very well stocked up. May the seasonal fudge and mulled cider be with you one and all. 🎅🌲🎁❄️🎄

These threads are the gifts that keep on giving:
New:

• Salt Path: A Very British Scandal, available from Monday 15th December Sky Documentaries and NOW TV
• ‘Don’t look for the money. I’ve taken it all’: Salt Path author Raynor Winn’s ‘confession’ that she stole from her family | The Observer

Up and coming:

• 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
• Podcast series from The Observer's award-winning Investigative Journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou
• BBC Documentary (NB Not involving Our Chloe)

*MNHQ correcting above 'Documentary' to 'Podcast' at request of author

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 20 IS FULL

I have never read the bit about the DAT scan that shows the amazing reversal in his condition in TWS. Does it give any details about which medical authority gave that?

Yes, I don't understand how she could have embezzled so much over such a long time without the accountants noticing. Even if she was forging documents surely there's a point over several years where the external professionals, who presumably aren't subject to the breathless blather, notice that something, literally, doesn't add up.

But then I have a friend who worked in a company which was defrauded by their in-house accountant for years. She stole several hundred thousand pounds and nobody noticed.

Speaking for myself, I've come to a pretty firm conclusion, and carrying out further analysis of how true TSP is seems equivalent to analysing how true Harry Potter is.

PS: This is not a drive-by scolding of these threads, which are endlessly interesting.

The Hemmings couldn’t understand why they were losing money despite ‘doing well’. Not a criticism & poss because Martin was unwell by then, but why didn’t they scrutinise?

I've browsed through news reports about cases in which an in-house bookkeeper or accountant has been convicted of embezzlement. A common feature seems to be fake accounts set up with names very similar to clients. Some fraudsters also used the accounts of their children, friends and family to siphon off/launder money. This is speculation but it does show how it can be done.

It was said by Ros that Martin wasn’t very good at sending out the bills. There was also a story maybe from his daughter? That he would come home with some fresh lobsters, just caught, gifted by a fisherman he’d done business with, and he’d get the proper payment “later”.
He was apparently a nice man, probably didn’t like the “money” side of business, well regarded locally but not a bean counter.
I also don’t doubt he was receiving regular platitudes from his bookkeeper. The woman forged cheques, bank statements and invoices, I’m sure she could forge things like a huge tax bill or something.
According to the confession letter, she’d deceived her mother for 18 months. £64k didn’t disappear overnight, it took the bank manager going through years of accounts to find that. She’s got a poker face and a brass neck!

CH: Was Tim fully aware of the finances, and what Sally was up to?

”Anne”: Tim’s that sort of character, you just don’t know what you can quite believe. He’s a character that as a child, we’d have all found really exciting, but as an adult, lacking total responsibility and any connection to reality

”Fiona”: My husband calls him a fantasist

It’s interesting that these replies from Sally’s niece (“Anne”) and Tim’s relative, the older woman (“Fiona”) don’t in any way answer Chloe’s question.

Did Tim know?

Is it not entirely possible that he EITHER vaguely floated the idea of SW sneaking a little money away from the Hemmings’ business, just a little, perhaps, just once, and (like a lot of bad behaviour), it got easier with practice, the thrill became an addiction, coupled with her desperation to do whatever Tim wanted… or that he actually is the clever one who masterminded all the theft, from everyone, and now lets SW take the flak, knowing she’d never accuse him? She’s the one working in bookkeeping, she’s got the access and the ability, did he encourage, congratulate and pat her on the head when she came up with the money? Was transferring money from HIS mother’s account actually at his behest?

Are we aware of any social media presence in Tim’s name(s). Is SW/RW the public face of a thoroughly devious couple?

If that were the case, then should he predecease her, perhaps a very different tale will emerge.

I really want Spitting Image or someone do a sketch about Whiner Rynn who breathlessly accosts publishers trying to sell her sob story of how she defrauded her employer and stole tens of thousands from them, her mother and her in laws.

"Gasp gasp it's the heartbreakingly true story of when we were let down by a family friend who discovered I was stealing from him...and asked for the money back....gaspgasp...but how could we....we needed that money for our home, for our lives together that may be torn asunder if I went to jail....gaspgasp....Moth who was dying of hypochondria spoke to his uncle who lent us the money....gaspgasp...we had to go on the run....and never paid him back....as I'd decided the money was no longer ours when my employer brutally took it from us....gaspgasp...and we only had the money I was stealing from my horrible unsupportive mother who idolised me to live on....gaspgasp

Etc etc.....

It’s in the final chapter in Landlines, page 302.

An interesting and well written, if not quite long, piece by David Blake Knox about this whole affair just days before the new Observer piece and documentary. He says he was a relative of Christopher Bland and was at the inaugural prize giving, and offers his perspective though that lens. I am not sure I agree with all his points or conclusions but it seems all well considered food for thought, or is it fudge and chips and rhubarb lollies?

drb.ie/a-pinch-of-salt

Thank you, I haven't read any of the books! I wondered if it was just vague as it is a massive claim, and I was picking up on the comment wondering about forged medical letters.

Thank you, it’s beautifully written but gives the duplicitous pair almost a free pass IMO. Who cares about poetic licence if they’re tortured pilgrims who made us feel better? Implies the Bland prize is richly deserved. The sheer brass neck of them & suffering they’ve caused re: fraud overlooked & missed. There are far worse crimes re: ‘criminal’ memoir out there, it seems, as he sees it. Perhaps?

This is why whether Grant was really Warren etc & other minor changes are not really worth the air time on the Doc IMHO. Who really cares about the wedding details? I think understandably people are cautious about going for the elephant in the room, the medical jugular…Currently.

It is not vague in the slightest. It is brazen. IIRC Chloe H covered it in the original exposé.

OK I'll see if I can find it in the paper.

Thanks for the Knox article. I'm glad he said this:

It is not difficult to find reasons for those who loved Winn’s book to feel that they have been deceived and manipulated both by Winn and by her publisher.

Not sure if this will work as I don’t usually upload photos on here.

The way she says that! As if she hasn’t got a clue why they’d have a problem! The woman is made of brass! Victim, my butt. This is no shell-shocked, husk of a woman terrified of her own shadow or husband, far from it. I’ve also been at the receiving end of NPDs, my ex and an ex “best” friend. The recovery from both is still ongoing. Sally would jump at any opportunity to be a victim so let’s not hand it to her on a plate. The pair of them have been co dependent but I can’t see the relationship surviving now that Tim’s extrovert social needs have been cut off. Fur might fly during this period of cabin fever.

Thank you so much - I can't believe this, it shouldn't be allowed. There is no way people can just say "but it's a lovely read". It is wrong.

Others have profited from more heinous scams & memoirs it seems so…

Interesting - is there much proof he’s a social extrovert though? They had no social group or friends (?)

Quite reminiscent of the line in statement 1:

"And to the man in the garage, who says I owe him money - if I have missed a debt, please contact me."

The public?

He’s hidden away from them (?) I remember Ray announcing he was undercover in talk audience & he was apparently bashful when pointed out.

No, just ‘the unnatural atmosphere of yet another hospital’, and ‘a consultant’, male, who is ‘animated, expressive’. No indication of exactly when, whether he’s the same guy who diagnosed TW, or someone they’ve seen regularly, or a total stranger. But that doesn’t mean anything, of course. SW doesn’t use her own literary agent’s name in TWS when she describes them going to the PRH meeting, even though she’d have known her pretty well by that point — she doesn’t even say ‘my agent’, just ‘the agent’.

This consultant, as represented by SW, behaves rather oddly, appearing unmoved and not particularly surprised by TW telling him he’d just walked 1000 miles, and then, rather than just reading the DAT scan, asking him ‘What do yku think you’ll see? What would you like to see?’

And when he finally shows the screen, miraculously lit up like a Christmas tree, SW is off into images of the light over Sheigra and a ‘wild landscape of radiance’, and how we used to think the earth was flat and knowing that ‘neuroplasticity exists’, and how TW’s hand first held hers when she was a teenage girl in orange trainers and his plait was blowing in the wind.

Very last chapter of Landlines.

I suppose SW gives that impression from her multiple accounts of him mesmerising everyone with talk and stories at the drop of a hat, and him continually initiating conversation with hostile, uninterested, or threatening people and disarming them. When they meet Anna, who rents them the Polruan flat, TW ‘spun a story’, and she listens ‘mesmerised, caught by his stories as people always are’.

Thank you @SlightlyFeckless it doesn't read true does it, I can't imagine the clinician behaving in that way, she makes them sound like a game show host. Making false health claims, it's pretty serious @PinkPanther57, more so than pretending to be someone else. The lying about walking, what does it matter, except we are supposed to believe that walking is reversing a neurological condition, these kinds of lies should not be propagated. I'm still not sure how misrepresentation of a medical diagnosis for financial gain, stands in the eyes of the law.

You can see that Moth enjoys attention, as @HatStickBoots points out, Moth did enjoy interacting with people, who found Moth to be warm and personable. I think the planned wellness retreat idea, would have brought people for Moth, for him to interact with, the type of people he wanted to interact with.

It is true that Tim has been less public than Raynor (until recently) but he wasn't as ill as he should have been, we don't know who he was hanging out with, back at base. They might still have a gaggle of believers, who are with them now. A wellness retreat would have allowed Tim to socialise and not appear in public. I think they had a longer game plan, with more money to be made from the health claims.