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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@SimonArmpit Am I missing something here?

No, you have set the situation out clearly. I find it extraordinary that the Wikipedia page for TSP includes the following:

Praise:
Rhys Davies, in Advances in Clinical Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, comments that the journal did not often review bestselling books, "still less travel books", but adds that The Salt Path has "a neurological twist", given Moth's diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration
Dispute:
She (Chloe Hadjimatheou) also reported that the "nine neurologists and researchers specialising in CBD" she spoke to "were sceptical about the length of time he has had it, his lack of acute symptoms and his apparent ability to reverse them"

Probably been posted already but here is the statement from PSPA about why they ended their relationship with the Walkers. PSPA's response to The Observer article - PSPA https://share.google/bo2xZDQJz60wIGMEq

I have no answers but these are all very good questions. To add, putting aside for a moment whether Moth's consultant is or is not Rhys Davies, what I find odd is the mere fact RD wrote that book review as a man with over a decade of clinical neurology experience and a scientific mind.

Someone previously suggested his review was merely a harmless, light hearted take in an academic journal and that RD had a "disclaimer" because he wrote in the review that "Raynor Winn's (et al!) claims were not scientifically irrefutable. While that may be, I struggle to square how RD did not question the veracity of the CBD claims in TSP. Did he not have an inquistive mind like most of us finishing the book to find out what became of Moth? Did he not realise Moth was alive and well in 2020, 7 years after TSP events and not raise an eyebrow like the neurologists CH contacted? Ultimately, how on earth did RD buy into the book's account hook, line and sinker without question?

Did he skim read, or even read at all beyond a summary, but want to support?

@FierceSilent I suspect they've already got the MS. Unless Sal has had to majorly rewrite it (and PRH says they are holding back publication because of the author's distress, SURELY they aren't going to make a distressed author rewrite a book, are they?)

She will have subbed it possibly up to a year before its initial publication date (which was, I think, last October? Perhaps to cash in on the expected success of the film?) And bearing in mind that Sal is sticking to her 'I told my truth, Tim is ill, my family has it in for me' story, there's not a lot of rewriting that she could do without having to backtrack on what she's already said, which is going to bring the knives out even more - after all, why should she need to change a story that was true?

So unless she's doing a complete and total rewrite, avoiding all mentions of CBD, house repossession, hiding under the stairs, 2013, and just concentrating on her own thoughts on a long walk avoiding thinking about all those things - then I think PRH are just waiting for the fuss to die down before they bring out the book. If they've done the blurb (or, as looks likely, Sal wrote it) and put it up on the site, then they can't change the contents TOO much anyway.

Oh and @TonstantWeader How is our Wild Pooing Correspondent doing?

I know, it’s baffling and very frustrating. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to read if the original neurologist had been gagged, bound and held at gunpoint while a decoy was wheeled out and programmed to smile and wave, give a little chuckle and behold the miraculous marvel that is Tim Walker who against all odds reversed his symptoms and cheated death. Let’s give him a round of applause. No second opinion is necessary. Nothing to see here except a man who can walk on water.

Or, of course, the neurologist did what many many people do when given a book and asked to do a review for it to give it a bit of credibility - they pass the book to an underling who hasn't read it and doesn't want to, and say 'pop in a review for this, would you and make it sound like it's from me'.

As an aside, I thought I’d let you know that Mr-thelandsthatmustnotbementioned is winding me up by stomping around in the snow, declaring (with deliberate emphasis) that he is going to SALT the PATH. No fudge or cider for him. Noodles for dinner.

Bear in mind as well that in TSP SW makes far less definitive claims about TW's illness than she's made in interviews (and in the two subsequent books, especially LL with its miracle 'lit up like a Christmas tree' DAT scan) -- in TSP she doesn't represent the consultant as giving a firm diagnosis, for instance, and all the 'at death's door', choking on his own saliva stuff is carefully placed in SW's narrative POV as potentially the panicked overreaction of a loving spouse, and not what the consultant is given to say.

In fact, it's actually really interesting to look back at SW's account of that consultation near the start of TSP, in light of the subsequent 'walking as miracle cure' claims made by both Walkers in the media and in TSW and LL.

The consultant only says he' believes' TW has CBD. He specifically qualifies that with the rider that no test is available, and that a firm diagnosis is only possible post-mortem. TW asks how long he has. The consultant says 'Normally six to eight years, but yours seems to be very slow-progressing, as it's already been six years since you presented with a problem.' The only other statement directly attributed to the consultant is 'Physiotherapy will help with the stiffness.'

So, if we overlook the probably rejigged timeline, all we have here is (1) a very tentative diagnosis and (2) the immediate qualification that TW's condition, if it is CBD, is atypical and unusually slowly-progressing.

The problem comes with the way in which the tentative diagnosis is turned, by the Walkers, into a firm diagnosis and an imminent death sentence, its date retrofitted by two years to make a redemptive narrative arc for a supposedly true memoir. And, when the general public enthusiastically believed this version of events, the diagnosis being massively inflated still further in the media.

What I'm trying to say is that for a consultant skimming a book by one of his patients, or one of his colleague's patients, there's probably nothing to particularly alarm in the representation of the actual consultation. And that reviewer is not necessarily going to be aware of any media circus, or inflated claims in the press.

(Though amusing to think of a consultant (or indeed his underling) dashing off a cheery review of a book in which he is represented as having 'smug, tight lips'.)

Nailed it. I’d bet my mortgage this is precisely what happened & we’re all overthinking this.

The airy almost flippant tone is because, IMO, the consultant didn’t have Tim pegged as a terminal or even seriously ill patient.

@FierceSilent , yes indeed.
It’s an interesting idea @Vroomfondleswaistcoat but knowing there is a personal connection to him in the book, I think he would have wanted to read it out of curiosity at the very least and at most to make sure he was accurately represented. As you say @FierceSilent Sally Walker writes all of Raynor Winn’s dialogue to the reader as though everything is catastrophic. When I read this for the first time it was plain to me that she was not listening to the consultant. I interpreted her hostility in exactly the way you’ve described. When someone is having hysterics and has lost all rational thought in the process, it’s easy to explain why her hatred on the page towards the “messenger” is so strong. < Sigh.. > all that written hysteria was fake and we have seen this pattern in everything she’s written. I’m concluding that the neurologist who wrote that review noted that what he was written to say was correct and had the intelligence and kindness to feel sympathy towards the couple by recognising that stress does awful things to a person’s judgment for example. It seems it didn’t occur to him that he had missed anything because he believed in the book and its author.

To reiterate what was posted, yesterday, the consultant says, in his review:

We don’t often review best sellers in ACNR, still less travel books. But ‘The Salt Path’ is a bestselling travel book with a neurological twist. It is written by a woman married to a person recently diagnosed with Corticobasal degeneration. And for good measure, they have just contended with legal and financial catastrophe too.

I beg to differ that RD got some underling to write the review. With experience of scientific publishing environments i think it highly unlikely he would have given himself a byline without writing the review himself. He is the journal's book editor and this book was an anomaly given other books reviewed in this journal are academic and relevant to clinical neurology. Other reviews in the journal are written by other people, who appear to be medics and neurologists themselves from the few i have looked up. I think he simply naively chose to include TSP as a book he wanted to review himself. Meanwhile, in it he clearly states that the husband of the author was "diagnosed with CBD"...he has not picked up on anything tentative, even though @FierceSilent rightly points out the consultation in TSP does present a degree of uncertainty regarding the diagnosis.

Thanks. I am no expert in area.

Just while I'm thinking about it, I now recall my impression of finishing TSP (apart from being glad it was over) was that "I guess Moth didn't have the disease after all of that."

I was unwilling to entertain the miracle cure and it was obvious a lot of the disease "drama" came from RW's aforementioned inner despair. I fully expected to look up Moth on google to find that he had been misdiagosed or whatever. Instead I found 2 sequels in which he still had CBD.

To me, TSP would have made more sense if CBD was subsequently ruled out, which she could have done based on how vague the diagnosis was. Who knows, perhaps they'd have got away without the media and publishing scandal by writing sequels based on simply "rewilding" the farm and long walks in nature simply because they found a new found appreciation for life. Though I suppose the embezzlement may well have still come out to unravel the SalTim's shady past.

Drawing my own attention to this again - by underlining it - it is weird to say 'recently diagnosed'. In TSP it is retrofitted to 2013, the first consultation letter is 2015 - but this review is 13 April 2020.

It is as if by saying 'recent' the other professional readers won't think it strange Tim Walker is still going strong ...

Fair enough, my suggestion that the consultant got someone else to read and leave a review is mostly based on the fact that I get at least half a dozen books sent to me every year; 'could you possibly do a cover quote?'

I don't have time to read the books and tend to do a very quick skim read, leave a fairly generic review for the editor, out of which they can pull some lines to use as a puff quote on the book's cover. 'A lovely, life-affirming story, with strong realistic characters and a satisfying ending.' That's the sort of thing I'd write. Having not read a word past maybe the first chapter and the last paragraph.

There you go, you can have that one on me and put it on the cover of your next book...

That's a very good point @BemusingBrandy, I hadn't spotted that.

When Salray was writing TSP, by this point the 2015 consultation had taken place, Moth had been waiting for this consultation, a referral had been made, apparently one referral had gone astray. This was an appointment to try to find out what was causing Tim's unexplained symptoms, it was not a routine appointment, it was a long awaited specialist appointment.

So after this consultation the idea to retrofit the diagnosis must have taken place, was it Sally's idea or Tim's, we don't know. We don't know if Salray had started to write TSP in a similar vein to the raffle book, and saw this opportunity to add an emotional hook that would transform the whole project. She had Simon's book for inspiration, and it was very clever to place themselves walking ahead of Simon, it gave credibility to the timeline and with being ahead of Simon, phychologically it doesn't feel like she could be copying him, even though her book is written after his has been published.

I have thought long and hard as to why Salray had to have it all, homelessness and terminal illness, she might have wanted to move the house repossession and place everything in 2015, but knew that this could be easily checked by anyone with the knowledge and desire to find out. Tim's health is protected information, she probably didn't think she would ever have to prove it and patient confidentiality would protect the lies.

Even now, the letters are there for everyone to see, the evidence of deception is there, but most people are still not seeing it. Just looking at the first letter 2015, Tim has either withheld the fact that he walked the SWCP, rather important information for a man who is complaining about an impairment of his walking, or it never happened. Yet that was missed by us for months, also his plan for a future walk, both spotted by @SimoArmo.

The diagnosis given was tentative and certainly not as Salray has portrayed it. As for the book review, whether or not Dr Davies is Tim's diagnosing consultant, he is a neurologist at the Walton unit, CBD/CBS is a rare condition and a book with it as a central theme would be of interest. I do believe Dr Davies wrote the review himself, I believe him to be a very intelligent but unworldly man, I also think the Walkers have played him, Tim and Sally have manipulated people all their lives.

The fact that they haven't given the consultant any information about walking at the 2015 consultation, proves to me that they did not walk the SWCP, they went on some walks. In this first consultation, Tim is giving the impression that walking is a problem for him, unexplained and mysterious, along with other symptoms in the left of his body. The consultant is seeing Tim with the knowledge that Tim has been having these symptoms, that so far do not seem to have a physical cause, for instance injury (falling through barn roof not mentioned).

As far as this consultant is concerned Tim has these unexplained symptoms, his colleagues at the pain clinic have not found a cause, so the neurologist is looking for signs of a neurological cause. The only thing he finds that has significance to him are the datscan results and the examination of Tim's eyes, he makes a tentative diagnosis. But as @ThisQuirkyRaven pointed out in an earlier post, both of these results can have other causes.

I think the reason Salray wrote about the consultation in the way that she did, in TSP all the, no you are wrong, she was trying to future proof, when Tim didn't turn out to be dying, she could say that she never believed the diagnosis, she was reluctant to accept that Tim had CBD, it was the consultants fault, the reality of the 2015 consultation is very different. Once a patient has reached a neurologist, the neurologist will be looking for some evidence of neurological issues, if the consultant had been of a different specialism these test results could have been interpreted differently.

It's not just other illnesses either @Freshsocks. I used to be on medication that would have affected a Datscan.

Yes quite @ThisQuirkyRaven, there are many medications that can affect a Datscan, and surprisingly the eye results can have other causes including some ear conditions.

Were you advised that you would have had to stop your medication prior to the Datscan @ThisQuirkyRaven, if one was needed?

My apologies @Freshsocks, I never had a Datscan. I was intrigued and researched what medication could affect one. SSRIs as it happens, amongst others.

All very well put. The last bit about Salray possibly framing TSP so she could later plead ignorance/faux despair/joy if CBD was subsequently ruled out ties with what I posted earlier and how it could make more sense for readers when later learning Tim is alive and well. Just the CBD "diagnosis" persisted (in the 2019 letter anyway) so she/they ran with it for subsequent books.

Incidentally, this got me thinking about, and looking into, dates. Is it intriguing that TWS was first announced as a book in the offing on 25 Sept 2019 (at a PRH showcase event), just days after the WW's returned from Iceland (as featured in TWS) suggesting much of it was still to be written at the point of announcement...note the announcement soley focuses on the rewilding angle. Meanwhile, this announcement was a mere 2 weeks before the 2019 consultation dated to 11 Oct 2019...(the consultation whereby we learn a former DaTScan post 2015 has shown doperminargic depletion). Again, no mention of arduous hiking and recovery this time in Iceland. Was the consultation timing close to the book announcement mere coincidence or was there an ulterior motive to get Tim seen for book writing purposes?

I have some knowledge of brain chemistry and it occured to me that different medication can affect neurotransmitter levels in the brain.