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

I will get in touch with them and see if I can set it up.

I see your Citizen's Advice & raise you a Shelter😀

IANAL but I think the Shelter article is just reiterating that a creditor needs to apply to the court with evidence as to why the judgment wasn't enforced within six years. It would not suffice to say the creditors didn't bother chasing the debt because the debtor was penniless but now twelve years after the court order the creditors discover that the debtor has become a wealthy author.

england.shelter.org.uk/professional_resources/news_and_updates/enforcement_of_court_judgments_older_than_six_years

So no 600mile walk (nor even the 300miles undertaken continuously from M/head to LE) , no real homelessness and no desperate shortage of cash! So TSP a novel pure and simple. (But then, had the TSP story been published as fiction, I would not have received it as a gift, so would have missed out on all the fun of a charabanc trip!)
Tried a while ago to "analyse" the commencing section of the walk in TSP - from when they were dropped off in Taunton, "in the pouring rain" - so had to take the bus to Minehead. (A journey which I have made many times.) Can't prove it unfortunately, but the account is i.m.h.o. a complete fabrication. As is also the story behind the origin of TSP - that it was written and compiled for Moth, as an aide-memoire of their adventure, necessitated by his failing memory.

But the court order was enforced within 6 years. Then the creditors lost contact because the Walkers went off grid. Sounds like they only chased it up after CH uncovered the true identities, not because Sally was now a wealthy author. Maybe the podcast will shed more light?

Pity she didn't lean into the more enjoyably lunatic bits of Hardy, like the scene in A Pair of Blue Eyes where Elfride Swancourt saves her suitor Henry Knight, who has fallen over a cliff while trying to save his hat, by lowering him down a rope made out of all of her underwear. All this somewhere near Boscastle!

(Though in fairness, modern day underwear isn't going to help much -- Elfride's plenteous Victorian petticoats, long bloomers, vest, and corset, all torn into strips and braided, apparently make a rope seven yards long! A pair of M and S bra and pants are clearly not going to fit the bill!)

That would be great, @OurChloe, if indeed this is Chloe Hadjimatheou!

I do actually also recognise that you probably have other journalistic irons in the fire...

I do hope that you are Our Chloe and not just teasing us :)

I need to get this podcast over the line - episode 7 might come out slightly later than the rest. But any day after Tuesday I am happy to jump on and answer questions - although I am sure some of you know as much as I do at this stage!

The original court judgment is the order that SalRay pay the debt. I'm not sure if after the sale of the house & the mortgage being paid off whether there was anything left over to pay off any of the debt. There was twelve years without contact. In order for the debt to be enforced when out of time the creditors would have to show they had made efforts to enforce it during that time. For example by showing the efforts they had gone to to find SalRay during those twelve years.

It appears that SalRay paid the debt voluntarily as I don't think that there has been enough time since CH first article for the creditors to apply to the court for the judgment to be enforced when out of time as it would require a hearing.

So walking is a cure and it does heal. It’s being claimed here. That’s interesting. In the past it was inferred. What are readers supposed to take from this? Hardly seems figurative. I wonder if this was the precursor to the launch of the wellness venture.

Good afternoon all. I hope you are all well today. Just catching up...

I doubt if there was going to be a documentary as SW would have been shouting from the roof tops about it. Even if they were simply going to make something for YouTube they would have needed a target audience and viewings.

I admire your time management. I am having a disagreement with my agent, a wrangle with a Guardian editor who said she wanted something and has changed her mind now I've given her exactly what she asked for, and am trying to get started on something new. With a house full of builders and a moody teenager.

Which is obviously why I'm here, procrastinating by doomscrolling and musing about whether the Walkers ever did reimburse the people who booked their barn conversion, and if a geosurvey of Pen y Maes would in fact show evidence of a lovingly buried sheep carcass.

It would be lovely to have you jump on the thread when the podcast is put to bed! And when I will have magically resolved all my own stuff.

I think the now thankfully not happening wellness venture was the driver for quite a lot of the more confident claims around the healing power of walking.

I'm not sure what they hoped to get from said enterprise, though (we know it wouldn't be inspired by sheer altruism) They're 60 odd, they've got money, prescandal Salray could have churned out the odd book to top it up and of course we have the wildly fluctuating in health (allegedly) Timoth. Seems an odd situation in which to start a business initiative, with no previous experience.

True. We could all be anyone. The only evidence any of us is who she says she is is @OneThousandThreads appearing to genuinely be at the event last night wearing her charabanc badge!

I could be a lonely lorrydriver in a layby in the Netherlands.

As I know to my cost, having written about the countryside and nature myself, the General Reading Public (the people that Sal has mostly targetted with TSP et al) don't want to know about the realities of life in the countryside. Most of them want to read about the pretty side of it. If they read about farming, they want a sanitised version that plays in to what they think they already know about it. They want lots of cute animals, all muck to be 'comedy muck' (falling over in cowpats is popular) and even the poverty to be of a noble and self-sacrificing kind. The real, grim relentlessness isn't what they want to hear, I can only suppose because so many secretly want to have a little smallholding with a few hens and some picturesque sheep and a frisky goat - they don't want to know about movement regulations and dagging!

My understanding differs.

• The judge issued a court order.

• The claimants had 6 years to enforce it.

This is usually achieved by applying for a possession warrant to instruct bailiffs to evict the debtor (as per the Shelter link you shared), which they must have done given we know the eviction took place.

• At this point the judgement was enforced.

• The sale of house was not enough to cover both mortage with bank (which gets first dibs) and the loan, thus the creditors were still owed the debt (as confirmed in Daily Mail reporting after original expose who interviewed a creditor).

• There was no time limit for them to recoup this as they had already enforced the court order judgement (as per info from Citizen's Advice). Because the court order had been enforced it meant the debt was NOT statute-barred (info from Step Change debt charity).

• Once CH unveiled the Walker's identity, the creditors were then able to continue action to get the money they were owed.

• Clearly it was settled out of court, but no doubt via respective lawers to avoid it ending up in court again, something which the creditors were legally entitled to do because the debt was not statute-barred. This is most likely why the Walkers decided to pay up than argue a lost cause in court with no hope of finding any bits of white paper of truth and a hefty legal bill to boot.

Your honour, I rest my case.

No evidence that anyone is who they say they are, it's true that so far we have only seen @OneThousandThreads out themselves big style as riding the charabanc. The badges are great, I am going to have to print one off, I can wear in my cab even if nobody can see me :)

Although she is an introvert, I think SW has gotten used to the feeling of people listening to her and wanting to know her views - the aforementioned guru adulation.

I'd love some guru adulation. If it could be channeled in a useful way, like having a crack team of disciples ready to unload the dishwasher. Sadly, I suspect mine would be awkward skeptics and would require me to walk on water before they did any housework, or indeed provided any adulation.

Wasn't the wellness venture in partnership with an existing organisation, or am I imagining that part?

I was vaguely thinking of SW showing up to take participants on a bracing walk and do a bit of journalling in nature, while someone else organised the catering and accommodation. TW might show them how to build piles of sticks or something, too...

So Penguin used this to market Landlines: Raynor knows that her husband Moth's health is declining, getting worse by the day. She knows of only one cure. It worked once before. But will he - can he? - set out with her on another healing walk?

Being one with nature saved them in their darkest hour and their hope is that it can work its magic again.

I have to presume that it will be the strengthening of 'nature' as they let go the previous healer 'the walks'. She obviously wanted to launch OWH in the Autumn and then that would lead into the spring Gigspanner tour, followed by the concentration on wellness. This is part of the blurb for OWH:

Despite 45 years of walking together, setbacks in her husband, Moth's, health have led him to see his decline as inevitable, which Raynor refuses to accept.

Her even stronger communion with the 'natural world' through her much-hyped solitary walk would have presumably given her the edge over other healing gurus ..... and so on, ad nauseam ...

I agree that would seem to be a very reasonable explanation, like the writing workshops I suppose. I know all of us would rather spend £££ on almost anything other than hearing Salray wittering on breathily about the power of perambulation, but she had a fan base.

The original debt plus six years of interest on the judgment would be substantial. It's nice of SW to have paid the credtitor in order to live up to a moral expectation, without any legal obligation to do so, if that's what she did.

Primark ones wouldn't bear the weight, for sure.

Is "OurChloe" actually Our Chloe? Yay!