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

Less than 10 months now though till OWH is supposed to be published. They can't fence sit for too much longer.

Thank you for raising this important aspect of this controversy. I am not informed on this issue, personally, but have previously shared this article by law students that includes :
Publisher Liability and Duty of Care

The Salt Path Scandal - The potential legal repercussions for factual inaccuracies in memoirs — The WS Society

Yes, though TWS seems to have gone right up to the wire (and was delayed a bit, I think?) after she clearly struggled to write it. The clock is definitely ticking, though, but it depends to an extent, I imagine, on what form OWH is going to take. Presumably at this point PRH have said it can't simply appear as it would have if it had been published before the first Observer story last summer, so it's a matter of what a new version would look like. And the extent to which every statement is going to need to be pored over with a legal finetooth comb and corroborated with everyone else who is mentioned ahead of publication.

I remember someone linking an article, possibly in the Guardian, by a UK writer whose first memoir was being published shortly after the A Million Little Pieces scandal, and his publisher's legal team was all over every incident, and he was tracing people he hadn't seen in years to check they were ok with how he'd represented their relationship or whatever.

The issue is with OWH is that if SW, in it, is sticking to her story, that she didn't steal anything from anyone, ever, apart from a little 'mistake' at the Hemmingses, that they lost their house because of 'Cooper', that TW has CBD/S and had it before the SWCP walk, that her family are lying about her thefts from her mother and her PILs, that the 'confessions' are not by her, and we're all terrible meanies etc etc -- then surely it can never be published?

Because none of it would pass muster with a legal team required to see corroboration of everything by documentary evidence or someone supporting a claim.

Even if the original 'due diligence' on TSP involved, as I suspect, a cursory box ticking exercise, a glance at a medical letter that identified TW and mentioned the correct illness and some paperwork that established their house was legally repossessed (without anyone looking into the detail of why), that won't pass muster this time around.

But even if she rewrites OWH (the blurb of which has been up online for ages, so would likely need changing too) - what can she write about? Bearing in mind that nothing is her fault, that she's told 'her truth', but she might well have been told to avoid mentioning anything which is currently under contention..what is she left with?

She can't talk about Tim and his 'illness' (despite the fact that her story is that this is what means she has to walk alone) and she can't contemplate is increasingly approaching mortality. She can't talk about the sad loss of her much loved home (which also doesn't explain why they haven't bought a new property, but continue to rent) or any of the past walks. Everything that she might be expected to be ruminating over as she walks her sad, solitary walk, is up for grabs currently as to the truth. So it's all out of bounds.

All she is left with is the actuality of a walk in winter. Lots of descriptions of landscape and day to day happenings. Which is not exactly award winning stuff and, given Sal's literary talents, are going to be bland, obvious and cliched.

In October 2021, Moth allegedly told Cole he’d been told he only had months to live. Yet in her third book, Winn writes that in the winter of 2021, a neurologist had told Moth his brain scan was “normal”. Penguin claims to have conducted due diligence. Really?

From ‘The Salt Path’ to my fake columns, we can't recognise truth anymore

@AllFrothNoMoth But this doctor was the top dog, head of his field, the real deal

Once again though, SW does not say what field he is top dog in, letting the reader's mind make it's own conclusions. According to TSP they were there to find the cause of Moth's shoulder pain and if it was ligament damage, but surely all that would not been overseen by a consultant who was top dog in the field of diagnosing CBS/CBD? If I was doing a 200+ mile round trip to visit the top dog, I think I would make myself aware of what their field of expertise was.

Just had an email to say James (@ The Observer), has re-raised the issue with the team who are now back from their break. Hope they make it a priority with only a little over 48 hours to go otherwise there will be some serious sulking on my part if I miss it😒😤

OK, thanks ... I wonder how many of us have a problem with this? Thanks for letting me know.

Thank you for your informative post @Raymothquestion, we also now know that Tim didn't tell the consultant that he was planning to walk as well as study, it's almost as if he didn't want to know what was wrong with himself :)

We have read the references to CBD, but I don't think anyone has laid them all out in one post, also all the references to dying made by Moth and Salray, all this from a tentative diagnosis, given two years after the date claimed by Salray. It still mystifies me why PRH published without seeing medical proof, I know it's because Salray would have signed something to state that it was the truth, but that obviously isn't enough. I wish someone had dispelled these lies, before two more books were published and a film was made.

I agree. What you get from Sal is over dramatisation and hysteria.

Well, there are obvious ethical difficulties involved in challenging Moth’s health status and the Walkers obviously see this as their trump card. However, one doesn’t have to tread on the ethical concerns to highlight the discrepancies between the diagnosis / advice presented in the 2015 medical letter and the very different account in the TSP. And the sheer amount of falsification of the facts in the TSP is very striking. So much so that without it, the book has no emotional pull at all. I think Penguin knew this.

Some great posts I'm slowly digesting and thank you @DisappointedReader for the Orca 2 (22)!

I remembered today an anecdote by Stuart Maconie (writer, broadcaster and longstanding friend of Our Simon) that started as a joke and grew legs. I think he was on the NME at the time and when a concert for Nelson Mandela ( who he greatly admires, to the point of moving his books away from NM's in shops as he feels Unworthy although they are obviously close alphabetically) was planned, Stuart put out a 'quote' of NM questioning why there were no represention of the then current 'Madchester' scene at said concert, more or less "Where are the Happy Mondays? No Inspiral Carpets? " etc, as if NM was a massive Madchester fan.

Significant numbers of people believed and requoted this and despite his attempts to squash it, because it was just a joke he thought everyone would get, it persists.

I think this demonstrates the persistence of inaccuracy, somehow, in this case utterly harmless but once ideas about stuff is in any way fixed, its hard to dislodge. We've still got the ads for the Scam path on here, PRH still have the (overwrought) blurb for OWH up. Stuart M tried hard to tell people that this silly fun was made up because he is (IMO) respectful of honesty, but a major publishing house stays schtum and hopes the money will continue to roll in.

Not good, is it and that's how it looks.

Absolutely @Uricon2. I think it was also Stuart Maconie who created the myth about Bob Holness playing the sax solo on ‘Baker Street’ and again, has spent his life trying to dispel that one. Btw, I would heartily recommend his ‘Cider with Roadies’. I laughed until I cried reading that one and we still talk about ‘the wild dogs of Skem’ in this house.

huge thanks for the Orca 2, @DisappointedReader . I’ve managed to scuttle on and am now on the back seat flicking the vs at lorry drivers. Possibly <coughs>

and also to @Raymothquestion for that deconstruction of the letters. I agree that one of the reasons why that timeline & inconsistencies have not featured more prominently is that it’s the bit that feels trickiest of all the saga. Questioning someone’s health claims is really uncomfortable even though all the evidence points to the clear conclusion that the claims aren’t true.

It is the emotional hook @Raymothquestion, that sold the book. I can't remember who said, that without this element, the book would just be two people grumbling along the SWCP. The consultation letters have been put on Salray's website for us to read, we can't help it if we see huge discrepancies, the problem is as @TonstantWeader says, it is uncomfortable even distasteful to most people, to question the health claims, this has allowed the deception to continue for so long.

A very good illustration of what can happen, even when you don't mean to create deception @Uricon2 and these myths get perpetuated.

@TonstantWeader I love 'Cider With Roadies' and also recommend it thoroughly. It was passed on to me by a then 93 year old family member who had been given it as a present (???) and said " You'll know who all these people are dear, I don't but I think he seems a very nice man".

Hope the Wild Pooing Correspondent is OK, everything crossed.

ETA it may have been passed on in her book club, TBF.

I was wondering what was going on up the back @TonstantWeader, I'm surprised we haven't had anyone mooning. Hope the wild pooing correspondent is getting a bit of weight back on. I haven't checked on sick bay since boarding, hoping to find all well, but malingering for extra fudge rations :)

Be kind.

I hope that the appendage in question was his head and that he hasn't lost anything else.

Also, it seems a bit (ahem) odd to travel to see Liverpool neurology unit's "top dog" expecting him to say that the issue is a bone fracture.

@ItsNotYourUsername I was also wondering what led the Dream Team to enter the wellness business idea. Couldn’t Tim potentially be the best proof of how well their “wellness retreat” is working? By conning people saying “look at me I’m still alive and in good health 20 years after my initial CBD diagnosis, all thanks to our wellbeing treatments…” this is just a speculation but they couldn’t have possibly keep going for walks forever and claim that’s what “fixes” Tim.

I do not recognise either of the above user names but what I do know is that we have had some very apt and incisive contributions today, thanks.

I have no intention of buying OWH if it is ever published. I do hope that it has been decisively messed up by the exposure of this greedy couple. How SalRay sadly walking by herself, because of the inevitable decline of TimMoth, was going to lead to another miracle cure - I don't know. She previously has switched on his heath and appearances to what suits the current narrative. She has even said, at a literary event, that if he walked for about 100 miles then the good effect lasted about a year.

It is just old-fashioned quackery. The concentration on 'nature' would have to have taken on a bigger role in his restoration at her instigation - in order to bolster up their 'wellness' credentials. Hopefully we'll never know.

SalRay’s accounts of things seem tome like those reading tests/amusements, where words are misspelled or have backwards letters yet somehow you can still read them. It works because we go beyond spelling each letter, and come to recognise words from their shape, position in a sentence etc and so something very similar will be adjusted by our brain as being the right word.

SalRay takes a situation like seeing the consultant and throws in shapes we recognise - he’s the top guy, they have to travel to an appointment, problems happening for years, anticipation, worry and them…boom, devastating bad news. We can all relate to that. Yet, when you break down the component parts (as above) it doesn’t really make sense? It kind of sounds like something that might happen unless you really pay attention.

I was just thinking of "Moth" (1) having a brain scan which lights up like a Christmas tree of glowing health and (2) being in "inevitable decline". Does SW provide any explanation as to how these two stories (which don't seem to me to be entirely consistent) fit together, or not bother?

Yes, what I’m saying is that we don’t have to question what Moth’s actual health status is. That is a different question. We can see from the 2015 letter that they were told by the consultant that the condition was not as severe as they claim in TSP. So in TSP they lied about the diagnosis, It is a fine line but we don’t need to talk about Moth’s actual health at all to see that the TSP account is false.

Regarding OWH - this is the real test of PRH. There is no room for plausible deniability with this one. How they deal with it will tell us whether they have decency or just avarice.

I do agree with you @Raymothquestion, if you are looking at this question, for me the fact that the dates and diagnosis do not correspond, is enough to expose the lie of TSP, read the contents and it is irrefutable, I think this has now been proven. We can't say much more about the 2015 letter, without bringing Tim's health into question.