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

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What a very strange thing to do, if PRH are still intending to publish OWH, do you think someone told Salray that she had better put a Christmas greeting out, for anyone they are hoping will buy her book, if it ever gets published?

Just seen your comment @Peladon, she's all heart that woman.

Object is an old wire fence post made of iron. A reverse image search suggests somewhere coast to coast walk.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/GoodHousekeepingBookRoom/posts/4134190660203718/

I think she’s just doing the classic ‘never apologise, never explain’ thing and fronting it out with landscape photos and bland goodwill — surely the ‘pure soul’ who posts such nice photos with festive wishes in the caption could never have stolen large sums of money, including from her own mother, created an elaborate tissue of profitable lies involving false claims of homelessness and terminal illness, and pulled off a major literary scam?

I’ve said it before, but I’d be having all my food tasted if I were TW, and walking far away from cliff edges. I’d probably hire a bodyguard. It would be so much easier all round if SW were able to say ‘I told you he was terminally ill!”

I agree with you about Tim @SlightlyFeckless . I know you’re only joking but she seems so determined to keep Raynor Winn intact and she does love controlling the narrative. She probably indulged Tim’s crackpot financial decisions because of her love for him but holds him responsible for the fact that she started stealing money in the first place, to cover his arse after he lost their money. She had a respectable job and a serious personality. Her only folly was having her eye turned by his flash charm, so different from the farmers’ boys, loving him to an obsessive degree and enjoying being taken out of herself and into his world. Now, many years later she’s trying to cling onto her alter ego that has been so carefully created and sees that all the prizes and acclaims no longer mean anything in the literary world and she is about to crack. It’s possibly a PR person who sends out the neutral IG posts now because Sally is angry and upset. She actually fulfilled her lifelong ambition to be a writer despite the underhand manipulations of the truth and it has all been for nought because of the fuckwit Tim not being as ill as he purports to be.

Very interesting. Couple of North Walians on there saying everyone knew. How on earth did they think they'd get away with it?

I increasingly think she might be able to ride all this out, people have very short memories & she’s denied everything so far.

Username Patricia Parrish has posted about TSP on a few sites.

Can see those who don’t approve here but not ‘everyone knew’.

It certainly wouldn’t be the case that ‘everyone knew.’ Of course there would have been some gossip in the local area but people who only knew SalRay in passing wouldn’t have known the full facts, would wonder if things had become embellished or exaggerated…

The point is, Sal bought Martin Hemmings’s silence. He knew the full facts but couldn’t speak out, probably similarly with the family members who’d been duped. There’s often a degree of shame and certainly in Martin Hemmings’s case, professional embarrassment at having been shafted. Another example of the hurt inflicted by Sal.

I think (and all these threads back this up) that many people suspected there was some events in the book which were tailored to some extent - I never believed losing the house happened exactly as TSP portrays; I assumed they’d made some crap investments and weren’t business savvy and were embarrassed to admit it. But I never in a million years would have thought Sal was a prolific thief, or that Moth’s diagnosis was fabricated or that they’d never actually been homeless or walked the SWCP.

the truth is so extreme and disgusting that it could only come out after CH did a fabulous job of painstakingly researching and fact checking which clearly took a long period of time. So I can see how once TSP became a best seller and it all took off (which I don’t think Sal ever expected in a million years to happen!) it was nigh on impossible for anyone in the family or who’d known them well in the local area in Wales to speak out. It would have looked like sour grapes, envy, or a family feud…

As someone beautifully put it earlier in the thread: ‘Sal, you’ve been seen.’ The truth is out there now and no amount of ‘peaceful new year to you all’ platitudes will change that.

Whilst your points are excellent & well made I honestly think with good PR she’ll ride this out.

'plenty of us who live in Pwllheli have known about this for a while. Believe me the allegations are true'

Thanks - on Good Housekeeping article comments?

Yep. And another saying friends in North Wales alerted her.

Can any who recall Salray interviews direct me to the one where she mentions a book she’s currently reading? About a prisoner on the run - WW2 setting, Channel Isles (?) Something I want to check.

I don't remember anything about the Channel Is. but I think you mean Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby. Hope this helps ...

Many thanks. That looks interesting - was it one Sal flagged in interview? Will have a look.

Great post @crossedlines , I completely agree. I feel the same way about Martin Hemmings. I can quite see how Sal with her cute appearance and desperate tears used those things to her advantage but she is so steely underneath! Even at a young age! Running away from the law, gagging Mr. Hemmings’ right to speak with all sorts of manipulative emotional blackmail, one can only guess. The power she thought she had! Is this woman as hardy as a cockroach and as @PinkPanther57 suspects, able to survive this shit storm?

I have not seen this article before and I hope the author: Winn did not land a decisive punch in the summer, leaving enough doubt and a sufficient weight of unanswered questions that the affair has rumbled on through the second half of the year.

and the heading, are correct:

The Salt Path author's non-apology strategy is making everything worse

In the digital age nothing goes away. It’s hard to imagine these issues not being raised if OWH is ever published. There’s also CH’s podcast to come and probably more from other news agencies. As an earlier poster said, Sally has been seen and that glimpse of her true face won’t go away.

Excellent piece and spot on @BemusingBrandy thanks for sharing.

Yes @SimoArmo, she has been seen.

Thank you. It would have been brill if HNTDDD - was in article too & on author’s radar.

Private Eye

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16bUtVV8zw/

Brilliant - if anyone doubts her sniffle, she has a doctor’s note! Repeatedly mistaken for Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath :)