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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I guess they never expected it to be so successful. Maybe if it had sold well, but not been a blockbuster, the family and others would never have heard of it. But Sally would have been able to call herself an author and make some sort of career out of it without anyone ever knowing the truth.

Even if they continue to do well the stain of all this will surely follow? If Sal has managed to convince herself lies are truth. She doesn’t even think she’s guilty re: Hemmings fraud. ‘I was NOT charged’…When these characters are forced to admit guilt things don’t tend to go well. Living with millions in isolated denial any fun? A well Moth having to hide?

The letter fessing up is particularly damning I think.

‘Tim became depressed’ ‘my quest to keep the REAL Tim alive’. That’s interesting language isn’t it?! The REAL Tim?

Did Tim always have some illness on the back burner to get out of work & they simply saw an opportunity…

Re: the transferring of funds from Tim’s parents - surely that would need Tim’s direction, oversight & involvement?

I think that the strong similarities in style with the extract from HNTDDR suggest she did write TSP and its sequels herself — some agent input would be quite usual before it’s sent out, at the level of ‘I love the voice in this passage, so can you lean into this more elsewhere?’ (So SW dials up the purple prose and saltiness) or ‘How is Moth feeling here?’ (more description of dragging footsteps and tremors). Or, possibly, ‘We need to know more clearly the reasons why you found yourself homeless, so I think you need a bit more background at the start’ (the invention of ‘Cooper’).

I think what strikes me editorially still is what struck me when I first read TSP, how bitter and hostile SW is, even towards people like Polly and Jan, who helped them, and towards random strangers on the path.

I was interested even then that this had survived the editing process, because it makes SW seem not very nice. I would have expected an agent/editor to at least raise it as a potential issue. Though it’s possible that they thought, as I initially did, that SW was bravely not censoring her own bitterness at financial ruin and her husband’s terminal illness, so leaving it in was more honest, and increased reader admiration at her gutsy admission that she resented other people.

I suspect Moth’s input & borrowing from elsewhere NB: WW2 out-of -print escapee walk epic she’s flagged elsewhere. She has a bank of ‘stock’ type phrasing I feel.

I think this is precisely where the "unflinchingly honest" tag line comes into play. This bitterness etc imo is what its reference point was.

No financial reward or literary success ( not that I would ever describe TSP as literature) can ever compensate for a clear conscience and the knowledge that you have treated people in a fair and decent manner. And if we have not, then to admit one's past failings and somehow make amends/do better. Grifters seem unable to do this. The lack of conscience in a grifter is quite chilling.

But from the point at which the books had become so successful that they were making a film - surely at that point it must have dawned on Sal and Tim that their chickens were flying home... and when the Observer got in touch they must have known the jig was up.

And yet they've hung on in there. If I had been them I would have headed to Australia or somewhere by now,a long way away. Taken the money and run, basically (not that I am in their position of course). Unless they have, of course...and we just haven't found out yet.

There’s more £ to come & they’re not done yet.

What a way to live indeed. All the guff about it “This is like something outside of me.” in the confession letter and 'hearing voices' when challenged about the thefts are just more smoke and mirrors to try to disassociate from her misdeeds and (maybe) to feed a delusion that she is indeed a 'pure soul'. She was more than up to planning and executing various methods of stealing from multiple people, forging bank statements and lying to the Hemmings' accountant to cover it up and that's before we even get to lots of other stuff. Timoth just as complicit, of course, in my belief.

Yes definitely. I think its no accident that by that point they'd already moved to a private estate with lots of land surrounding it where they couldn't be accessed.

I thought it was a bit disconcerting in docu that no one should look or delve ‘don’t come looking, it’s all gone’. Taking this in combo with the ‘REAL Tim must grow’ & be allowed to flourish. It feels very Voldermort.

Although having said that, wasn't she due to start another tour with Gigspanner, and open some kind of Wellness Retreat? God, the hubris!

@SlightlyFeckless I think that the strong similarities in style with the extract from HNTDDR suggest she did write TSP and its sequels herself

Yes whenever I dip into it, like today to look up something, I am struck by the same things always.

Today the extract was: Whenever we reached a trig point Moth would jump on and plank for a photo, lying on his stomach on the column and pretending to fly, anything to cheer up kids who were ready to give in. It became a family tradition, so the sight of the Golden Cap trig point was too appealing, CBD or not.

This seemed very inauthentic because surely the children would need encouragement on the steep bit up - not once you've got to the trig point. I never believe what she writes - before it was swimming with dolphins.

It is how marvellous Moth is - nobody else is going to write that ... oh, wait a minute ....

The other thing is the repeated casual references to CBD. Who else would so nonchalantly refer to this serious condition?

Having renewed my interest in this pair in the wake of the latest revelations, I think some of the comments here are straying into fiction. "Moth has NPD, Moth is a bully, Moth is controlling Sally, Moth has been isolating Sally, Sally is his victim, TSP is SW's cry for help". So far as I'm aware, all the reliable evidence put into the public domain by CH is about SW, and places the blame squarely on her.

I certainly don't want to downplay TW's reliably attested wrongdoing. We can safely assume he was at the very least an accomplice to SW's misdeeds. Whatever his health condition (a medic in one of the early threads here gave the view that he probably has something, noting that the first medical letter cites some objective evidence), he's gone along with SW's grotesque exaggerations. He's gone along with her lies about the timing and events of their walks. And we now know SW transferred his parents' money into his account rather than hers - he must have seen that and yet kept silent, which makes him an accessory after the fact.

But all this is a long way from casting him as the ringleader, and portraying SW as an assistant, or even (gag) a victim. This is after all a woman who stole money from her adoring mother, leaving her struggling to pay for food and heating, and faked 18 months of bank statements to cover her tracks. That's cold and calculating behaviour. All the reliable evidence suggests SW is a deeply unpleasant person and a habitual liar, and seeing her portrayed as a victim frankly makes me queasy.

They’ve managed to talk themselves out of a lot of tight spots before now.

Someone always picks them up, lends them money and the services of a good lawyer, puts a roof over their heads, doesn’t prosecute because of TW’s illness r SW’s MH issues, buys their ‘unflinchingly honest’ memoir for a whack of cash, makes a film of said ‘unflinchingly honest’ memoir, also for a whack of cash, pays to have SW’s whispery vocal stylings in their folk band etc etc.

As @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, they must have been expecting this for a long time, but whereas the stress of that might have almost killed other people, the Walkers are clearly very skilled and experienced at deception and also at fronting it out when discovered. They’ve been found out several times before.

I mean, I’m trying to imagine continually going on tv and appearing at festivals and showing up at film premieres promoting a memoir that a significant number of people know to be substantially untrue, people who also know about my criminal past. I’d have been continually expecting to be heckled, expecting someone from my past with every reason to wish me ill to show up at a Q and A, or to sell their story to a paper, waiting for Ros Hemmings to show up at the stage door of a Gigspanner gig.

Clearly SW is made of sterner stuff.

Hard to argue with this, it’s possible both are true. Tim’s swerving interviews, star guest appearances & ‘unusually good days’ make me raise an eyebrow.

The siphoning of money from Tim’s parents account must have needed his express input & permission. Didn’t they have enough £ by then ? Not sure when this happened in all the criminal chronology (?)

According to the Observer, the siphoning happened between the Hemmings Discovery (2008?) and the Court Case (2013), when the Walkers had no money coming in and were trying to pay the mortgage. Around the dame time as the House Raffle. According to the Observer, TW's mother wanted to make online purchases or bookings, didn't understand the process, and naively/unwisely asked SW (not TW) for help. This supposedly required access to the MIL's bank - which immediately rings alarm bells, because making a purchase via debit card shouldn't require that kind of access; one imagines SW lied to her MIL about what was required, seeing an opportunity.

Quite why SW then transferred the money into TW's account rather than her own is a mystery to me. However in my experience banks sometimes asked for verification via a card reader when making a transfer to a new payee, but no when making a transfer to an existing payee- if that was the case here, SW may have used TW's account to make get around the card still being in her MIL's possession. But one has to assume TW saw the money in his account once it landed there.

I completely agree with you @FloreatAmbridge

Their family describes their relationship as symbiotic.

Giving Sally ideas on how to portray herself as a victim when she was a perpetrator doesn't strike me as sensible.

When Sally disappeared, and a sobbing Tim went round to the Hemmings, he said something about 4 credit cards in his name. She is very practised in spiriting away money, by then.

Was he saying he was totally unaware of her ways until x4 credit cards?

Yes, this is the bit I can never get past in cases like these. How can you just sit on a pile of money and not be bothered about the people you cheated or pushed aside in the past? Or not have the urge to pay it all back at the first opportunity? Or just think about giving some to some random people in need? How can you just go about daily life, have breakfast, read, chat, all the while knowing what you did?

I can imagine committing some crime or doing something unethical in a desperate moment, on impulse, but sustained, calculated embezzlement or whatever? My imagination completely fails.

I’m not just thinking about the Walkers here, but people generally who seem untroubled by their consciences.

I’m not just thinking about the Walkers here, but people generally who seem untroubled by their consciences.

I think it's the sense of unfairness and entitlement.

It's not fair that those people have money, we're entitled to money, we're better than them, we need it more, we should have it.

That sort of mentality where the two them are perpetual victims.

@FloreatAmbridge the medical letters do give objective evidence that Tim was suffering with aches and pains, as noted in the medical history, things that Salray thought were caused by work, life and falling through barn roofs. The diagnosis that first mentions any possibility of CBD is in 2015, not 2013. It doesn't matter what he was suffering with before 2015, he was not diagnosed with CBD or a terminally ill man in 2013.

She has said any fam member that has a problem ‘can take it up privately’ but, yes (!)

So what about ‘the routine medical appointment that turned out to be anything but’ - pre or post miracle walk?