Thread 22 : 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]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 21 IS FULL

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?

Links to threads 18-20 can be found in the OP of Thread 21: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5460943-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?

Most recent:

• 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

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 6 months we have done amazingly well together for 21 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.

After 21,000 posts there are still new things to look out for on the path ahead:

• 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, 13th January 2026
• BBC Podcast (NB Not involving Our Chloe)

Keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 21 IS FULL

17-18 months from Sept 2013- Jan 2015. Then on to Sal's mother's house for 6 months until July 2015 when they set off again walking west on the SWCP, bumping in to the Parsons at FAC on 8 Aug.

Are you SimOArmO?

MaybeO

Print copy 14.12.25: Anne says that after their eviction, Winn and Moth stayed with three family members before turning up on her doorstep and stayed for close to 18 months.

Yes it was AllOThereO

So from the eviction, June 2013 to starting Uni in autumn 2015, there was poss 18 months at Polly's (do we know where this came from?) and 6 months at her Mum's cottage plus the walk. Going from the walk directly to the Polruan flat seems unlikely, if they spent that amount of time at the cottage.
Also, "Moth was only a few days into the new term" (TWS) when she was notified about her Mum's illness in "the dark cold of a late January", but her Mum passed on 22nd January and Moth didn't start Uni until the following autumn!

Cross posting!

I assume the 3 family members would tie in with sofa surfing thanks to the family names mentioned in TSP acknowledgements and book itself. First staying at Tim's brother in north wales (as described in TSP), then Jan, then "Su & Steve".

I think this is part of the reason of Sal's success. She plays in to the Middle England perception of the countryside as slightly threatening, slightly unpredictable but essentially wild untamed gorgeousness filled with cheeping and baaing. Not as someone's workplace; a potentially dangerous place where people are clawing a living essentially shovelling shit.

She does a fairly sanitised feelgood pathetic fallacy/nature as redemptive shtick, designed to appeal to people who live in suburbs and watch Escape to the Country (I'm not denigrating them, incidentally, but just saying that's a lot of her market).

Agree with this @Vroomfondleswaistcoat and @OnlyAfterwards . The weird thing about it though is that she actually grew up in the country, in an agricultural setting and lived there for a significant proportion of her adult life, even if as we know her own 'farming experience' extended only to the benighted Smotyn and a few hens. Maybe she just doesn't have the literary skill or imagination to do anything outside cliche or perhaps it was a concerted effort to appeal to a certain audience.

There's a photo I treasure of my gt grandfather with his arm around the neck of a horse at the end of haymaking on the family farm sometime around WW1, horse wearing an eyeshade and the Best Brasses. Gt grandfather, who was in his 60s at this point, looks knackered but triumphant. I grew up knowing the haymaking if successful was an absolute celebratory point of the year but it was still incredibly hard work that everyone mucked in with. Farming is difficult in all kinds of ways and the countryside is not bucolic fantasyland.

There are circumstances where you can apply to the court for enforcement after the six year limit but that would have to be supported with evidence as to why the judgment hasn't been able to be enforced. You would need to prove to the court that you have been actively chasing the debt for starters. After twelve years with no attempt at enforcement the prospects of a successful application would be non-existent.

Yes, the timeline of the death of mother was fiddled, RW's calling card.

Except they have paid up - CH would not have reported it otherwise.

I don't think anyone has highlighted that we don't know who are Sue and Steve? It is not the middle brother - he is the author who has restored the chateau. I even thought they sound like Ju and Dave but it was, quite rightly, pointed out that they are mentioned in the thanks, further down.

Sorry, when did CH report that they paid this? There was nothing preventing SalRay paying off the debt when she came into the TSP windfall but there was no legal requirement only a moral one.

Sue and Steve are SW's sister and bil

We do know that there were letters still being sent to their former address but they had gone to ground. Their neighbour described them as being on the run. No one needing to be repaid knew that Raynor Winn and Moth were Sally Walker and Tim. Chloe said last night "they reinvented themselves".

OK thanks .. I didn't know that. Well she was treated poorly, from what we heard.

I think there was no "walk". It was just going on walking holidays from wherever they were staying at the time.
Before my brief chat with CH after the event last night, she was talking to someone else about the entitlement to benefits or not (that person's area of expertise and what had jarred with them on first read). CH commented that they 'used that money to go on walking holidays ' or words to that effect.

And going back to hidden homelessness, I thought I had read a link from someone, and while 'sofa surfing ' and short term stays at others' would still count as hidden homelessness, a more settled stay would not. And so a near-18 month stay at Polly's (the sister's who they are calling Anne), as well as 6 months in her mother's house, most definitely would not.

Reported in her recent article as I quoted yesterday. Thought you had seen my post...i will try to find again.

@PrettyDamnCosmic here is my post. I don't have the article link to hand but probably at start of thread.

I think you are SimoArmo @AllFrothNoMoth, it's so confusing when everyone keeps changing their names, I can't keep up with who is who :)

The creditors say that, prior to The Observer’s initial investigation, they had been unable to locate the Walkers because they were using the aliases Raynor and Moth Winn, and have since requested and received payment for the loan.

Got it! I must have missed that throwaway remark. I'm surprised that more wasn't made of this by CH or even by SalRay in her more recent statement.

Clearly hidden rural homelessness is a big issue but I wonder whether Sal's encounters with these individuals really took place.

In TSP they meet John and Gav on the beach in Weymouth, with rucksacks laden with shopping. They get chatting and are then whisked off to a tented village in a pine forest close to heath land where 18-30 people are living in tents. John is a former farm labourer who chooses to live in the countryside because he can't stomach life in the big smoke but can't afford to rent locally. They are then given a lift back into Weymouth the following day in John's van on his way to work.

English Rural | A Place to Call Home: How Housing First Transformed Chris’s Life in Rural Dorset

The creditors say that, prior to The Observer’s initial investigation, they had been unable to locate the Walkers because they were using the aliases Raynor and Moth Winn, and have since requested and received payment for the loan.

In paying the creditors either SalRay thought morally obliged to pay her debts or took the pragmatic approach that she needed to pay off the debt if there was any hope of OWH getting published. Even if the creditors successfully applied to court to extend the normal six year limit they are still only entitled to interest on the debt for six years.

According to citizen's advice there is no time limit once a court order is issued (which happened in 2013).

Almost as if Sal remembers reading Hardy's The Woodlanders, rememebrs they are in Hardy country and comes with an idea about homeless folk in a woodland. She even mentions The Woodlanders in the passage with John and Gav!