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

Interesting to see in the article quoted above about the Hemmings family, it mentions that Salray claims to have had to sell some of her mother's things to raise the £9,000 that she originally offered back to Martin Hemmings at some point before 2012.

But we now know that Sal's mother was still alive at that point. So did Sal invent the bit about selling her mother's stuff for added pathos in her story to the Hemmings family - or did she actually steal in those earlier years from her mother's personal possessions while her mother was still alive (as well as later, from her mother's bank account, as it has now emerged) ?

Pretty Little Sally goes walking down the alley
Displays her clever statements to all of the fam
They all know she’s lying but what’s the point in crying?

Right. As I said the other day that the breeze had ruffled what is left of my hair into a fair approximation of Timoth's coiffure, I decided to try an experiment to ascertain if gel is indeed involved and the results are in.

After careful arrangement (during which I looked utterly ridiculous and was glad there were no horses around to scare) without gel, hairspray or any other product, it went scalpwards in under 5 minutes (apart from the odd sticky up crown bit that has annoyed hairdressers over decades) I posit that gel or maybe some sort of cream is indeed involved, OR that his hair is naturally wavy and when shortish grows vertically. I suspect maybe the former.

I expect at least a nomination for the Nobel Prize for Physics for this rigorous scientific undertaking. Thank you.

The Lantern Men! Big Elly Griffiths fan here.

If any charabancers are into cosyish crime fiction and/or archaeology, and/or love Norfolk, highly recommend. Friend came with a pile of them while I was incapacitated and they were salvation.

They are also fiction and don't pretend otherwise unlike certain other literary offerings.

I need a notebook to write down book suggestions in. I could use the notes app on the phone, but it’s not the same.

@Uricon2 i can confirm that some “very strong” hair can grow vertically when cut short. My grandfather’s used to stay upright with Brylcream and my own will do it with any light-hold mousse. If Tim is blessed with “strong hair” he may be able to achieve the look with similar things. Or he might just have to face into a brisk coastal breeze at all times.

I still think he’s a wrong’un, mind. Even if his hair is similar to the late lamented Val Kilmer’s.

@SimonArmpit
All good, but SimonArmpit has a frank simplicity that I like. I’ve also had quite a few usernames but most are lost back in the Palaeolithic and Jurassic eras of these threads.

@DisappointedReader or anyone else who knows .... what does it mean, in Private Messages above, if it says Mumscnet Verification all Messages have been deleted by me.

I haven't sent any PMs. Is that the point? But how can someone pretend to be my Username?

I have been wondering if the need to find £9000 led to one of the thefts, perhaps the one from Tim's parents given they lived nearby in Criccieth. Hard to know though as the timeline of events in this period seems a bit uncertain, we don't know if Sally emptied the accounts in a oner or in dribs and drabs, and new Observer piece and doc haven't really told the sequence of events.

I wondered about that too @SimoArmo, wasn't it £10,000 the amount, taken from her mother, but that must have been taken, as you say in dribs and drabs, because she said that she had forged the last eighteen months statement's. I'm not sure about time frames either, the £25,000 transferred to Tim's account, she says it was taken when the bank was seeking to repossess, in the confession letter, I think.

I'd check it out with MN by email @BemusingBrandy , probably a system thing though.

I've always wondered whether they were indeed on their beam ends as described in TSP

• were they really receiving WTCs of just £48pw in 2013/14 or was Moth getting PiP? At the higher rate these could have reached £132 pw. WTCs and PiP were paid every 4 weeks, so I suspect the weekly payment jeopardy in TSP (£48 or £30 depending on where and when) was purely for dramatic effect

• Sal seems able to remember the exact amounts that were left in her bank a/c with extraordinary powers of memory: £1 at Bude and £2.50 when they reached LE (not enough to pay for bus fares so they can't really have been on the horns of a dilemma about whether to continue or finish at LE...)

• if, as the documentary claims, Sal quit sheep bagging at Polly's after 2 days, where did the £1,500 come from which they left Polly's with?. Inheritance from Sal's mother who died in Nov 2014? Moth's accumulated PiPs? Either way, they put money aside for a month's deposit before they set off from Poole in July 2014 ( more probably 2015) so would have had the month's rent that was in their bank a/c as a buffer to draw on by the time they met the Parsons at the FAC in Aug 2015.

• if they did do any of the walk in 2016, Moth could well have been receiving his student loan payments as well as PiP. They would have been able to afford luxury campsites and several pasties a day as well as the pricy mackerel salads at the Lamorna Cafe mentioned in the margin comments of PD's SWCP guide!

@SimoArmo, I just looked at the article, it doesn't mention £10,000 as the sum taken from her mum, sorry mistakes again, just that she has been talking money.

I’ve home baked some scones and delights, already for the esteemed visitor Mr Pitt heading this way! I hear he’s really famous in Hollywood but I’ve no idea what he looks like, apparently his first name isn’t really Brad, it’s Simon. I do hope I haven’t missed him!

I think there is a certain thrill to "hiding in plain sight" and knowing that people can't/won't come forward - it was probably almost a "up yours" to the Hemmings knowing that they couldn't say anything due to the non-disclosure agreement in paying them back.

It's amazing how even when people do this, others are reluctant to step forward. Person I knew would do things blatantly, and even then people would be giving the benefit of the doubt.
There's also the aspect that when it's so blatant, that people think that someone else wouldn't be so obvious/dishonest etc so they assume that it has to be a mistake, and the more dreadful the crime, the more people think that.
Think of the bit in Matilda when she asks how the Trunchball gets away with things like throwing a girl by her pigtails. She's told that no parent would believe a head would do that, so they assume they're making things up. That's her secret. Be so bad that no one would believe it.

In the same way by writing it, people would think "no one would be so stupid as to write a book detailing how they stole from their employer when they really did".

Sorry I know it was ages ago but I think someone was asking for a clearer photo of the ‘wedding’ from the article.
So here it is, if you zoom in you can see the buffet on the table behind.

I think it’d be very clever if GA and JI made a new film playing Sally and Tim but about their undoing and possibly the true story of their seemingly chaotic lives pre TSP.

Also someone really should take the username Jacquie Gammon.

The man on the left of the photo is posing naturally, with his arm around his wife (assuming he's the dad). You would think that Tim would similarly have his arm around Sally, and be standing slightly behind. Instead, Sally's standing demurely back, while Tim seems to have a controlling hand on her... but who knows!

@BemusingBrandy I agree with @Uricon2 that emailing MNHQ is your best bet and it may well just be a system thing. I do know MNHQ will delete PMs received for a few reasons, including at the request of the author, if the author deregisters from MN or if the author is shown the door. Usually it would say 'all messages deleted by admin' in those cases. Journalists are meant to go through MNHQ rather than send PMs to users so they may be deleted too. I'm not quite sure what has happened in your case but it does seem like a good idea to check with MNHQ. Nobody should be able to use your name, so to reassure you I don't think that is what it means.

Oh yes @Uricon2, I have to agree with you about the Dr Ruth Galloway series with Cathbad and Nelson. I've walked in a few of her footsteps in lovely Norfolk. Elly is resting Ruth at the moment but I hope she'll write another one before too long. A TV series is also meant to be in the offing.

Wedding reception photos are snaps of my television, replaying the documentary.

The interview with Tim’s niece, Cecille, another relative of Tim’s, “Fiona”, and Sally’s niece, “Anne”, who has the typed confession letters from Sally that were put in a box by her grandmother and given to her mother, and told to keep them as one day she might need them.

CH: What was it like in your family, when you were young?

“Fiona”: We were fairly close. We used to love going over to Wales. Tim and Sally’s house was like a meeting place really, we used to see them quite often

Cecille: I have very fond childhood memories. They were the fun uncle and auntie, they were always trying to make you laugh

”Fiona””: Especially Tim, he’s got this… character. Sally was desperately in love with Tim, there was that desperation to do everything she possibly can to give Tim what he would like. But I think they have this symbiotic relationship

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

CH: When did you hear about CBD?

Cecille: I took what Tim said with a pinch of salt

“Fiona”: We never worried that he was ill, but he always made out he was ill

CH: You didn’t believe much of the book, then?

TW’s relative: 100% no!

That looks like a proper wedding reception, not dressing up afterwards for the parents? So was it a planned wedding in Scotland, not an elopement. I think someone on here found marriage records from Scotland?..
Thank you so much for posting that YourWinter

Neither outfit looks squashed into a rucksack & hidden on train.

Can’t imagine Moth allowing himself to look less than immaculate on HIS big day

Depressing. Seems like there will still be avid readers of OWH and any follow ups despite all the revelations by CH.

”Fiona””: Especially Tim, he’s got this… character. Sally was desperately in love with Tim, there was that desperation to do everything she possibly can to give Tim what he would like. But I think they have this symbiotic relationship
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

Thanks @YourWinter

Sitting over here with my mug of mulled cider, my lips pursed knowingly, nodding along. This all backs up my personal theory about Moth!

Mind you, if I were a fictional detective, all my suspects would be male narcissists. I may have had personal experiences which prejudice me towards this line of thinking!

I don’t know — SW’s dad isn’t dressed up, and it looks like a room in a house, rather than any kind of wedding venue…?