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]

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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?

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

From what I recall of SW’s Instagram feed the unappealing batch cooked meals were before she went off on the C2C walk. At the time I thought she’d made them because Timoth lacked skills in the kitchen.

Ooh - make sure to add in lots of times where people mistake you for the famous Raynor Winn, and offer you lots of tasty treats made specially for her ;)

I'm making a note of that @Stoufer . I expect lots of royal icing (for Charlie) and marzipan.

The fact that I currently have cropped sparse grey locks, not flowing blonde ones ala Salray shouldn't put them off. After all, they thought Timoth was Our Simon, didn't they?

Eta- they never did.

Right-ho. I’ve now read the first 67 pages of TWS and leaving out the copious amount of ‘flashback’ material this is what I have gleaned. Ray and Moth are cooped up in Polruan missing the wild, wide-open spaces. Moth has started his course but is so disoriented that he has to be told to phone Ray every time he reaches uni in the van in case he has forgotten where he is supposed to be and has driven to some random location. Then, a few days into the January term she gets a call (from whom?) to attend to her mother in a Staffordshire hospital. Ray immediately shoots off in the van. Her mum’s condition worsens and Ray is the only person there to look after her mum and having to deal with massive decisions about her care (that’s what it sounds like anyway). But she doesn’t want Moth there a) because her stricken mother doesn’t like him and b) because she doesn’t want him to be confronted with someone close to a death that could occur in the same way (choking) as they have never actually been told will happen to Moth because they have not yet received a CBD diagnosis. And despite the fact that when the diagnosis happens 5 months later it is explicitly explained to them that the most severe aspects of CBD probably don’t apply to Moth. Meanwhile, in Polruan, because Ray has taken the van, Moth could either lie in bed all day or walk the entire distance to uni, which could miraculously lead to an improvement in his health. Which will it be? Answer (p64) ‘(Ray) picked the phone up again. “You’re still in bed; I know you are. Get up - you have to.”’

To be continued (or, probably, not)…

@Raymothquestion following your summary above 😉I thought it would be a good time to re-share a small article about being genuine. Originally I think it was thanks to @Uricon2 - so for anyone who missed it - here is Our Simon:

archive.ph/www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2025/08/my-fearful-obedience-to-the-sun

Thanks @BeaveringBrandy

When I pointed out to the producer that I wasn’t the poet laureate when I made the trek, she said, “It’s not real.” To which I replied, “But I am.”

Magisterial. Honestly, Our Simon should be wearing a toga in the Forum for that, it is so good.

@Raymothquestion Meanwhile, in Polruan, because Ray has taken the van, Moth could either lie in bed all day or walk the entire distance to uni,
But he does go to Uni (ch 7), the lecturer shakes him because he has been staring out of the window for ages; then he couldn't get up so someone drove him back to the chapel. It is at least a 23 mile round trip to get to the Eden project so 1) I can't see anyone doing this without a vehicle 2) someone who sometimes can't stand, can't always remember where he is going, yet they consider it's okay to drive alone.

I’m amazed he still had a licence.

I just watched the Chloe Hadjimatheou documentary. Excellent, thorough and evidenced.

A cynic might wonder if the Coast to Coast walk was chosen by Penguin to create a relevant marketing hook due to this official status as a National trail, and not by Sally because it was the first walk Moth told her he wanted to do, or whatever her breathily delivered reasons were.

Poetic licence.

If he didn’t have a CBD diagnosis then why was he terminally ill in the previous book?

Poetic licence involving a rejigged diagnostic timeline and a catastrophising exaggeration of a condition that in the 2015 consultant letter is specifically described as atypical and unusually slow-developing, all for dramatic effect.

I think Sally decided that her mother didn’t like Tim so that it was easier to justify stealing all her money, because she probably deserved it. Horrible, evil thing to do.

And perhaps brush up on some foot-or-royalty related poetry, in case you need to raise a few quid for a pasty along the way. I don't think Beowulf is going to cut it with your intended audience.

I'm still here, quietly imbibing cider at the back, beginning to feel a tad inebriated..
I read the above and thought Oh My Golly Gosh, everything, all of it, the whole caboodle is completely full of holes! Even the smallest details fall apart when examined.
So Moth is having a bad phase, Salray is away ministering to her dying mother. How exactly is Moth getting to the Eden project? Surely, medically, he is going to be a danger on the roads if he drives?
But then again, and I lose track of all the timing of everything, isn't it true that when Moth was doing his degree he hadn't yet been diagnosed? Please correct me if I'm wrong, it's all very convoluted. And if he hadn't had the CBD diagnosis, why isn't Salray rushing him to doctors? If he's as sick as she claims at this time, you'd expect her to be extremely concerned...

I, too, am inebriated enough to have got the entire timeline in a kerfuffle. I think it's best if we just regard the whole thing as completely made up and don't sweat too much about it.

Theoretically Moth could have got to the Eden project by taking the ferry to Fowey and the bus to St Austell!

As regards the degree, he started in Sept 2015 after the first diagnosis in June 2015 when the neurologist told him that it was fine for him to do the degree course in garden design. Presumably he wouldn't have told him this if he thought he was in imminent (ie within the next 3 years) danger of dying.

In the fictional timeline of TSP and its sequels, TW had long been diagnosed, since the week they had their house repossessed, but his illness only appears disabling or dangerous when required for dramatic effect — never when the ‘plot’ demands SW is away from him (as she has to, in order to use the account of her mother’s deathbed she took out of subsequent drafts of TSP), or when the latest book needs promoting.

For instance, when SW needs a new book-length walk in LL, his condition worsens to the point that driving a dying man to the north of Scotland to walk a notoriously tough trail that will turn into a 1000-mile trek, is presented as the mercy mission of a devoted spouse, not a writer in search of material.

@SmallWoodlandCreature I read the above and thought Oh My Golly Gosh, everything, all of it, the whole caboodle is completely full of holes! Even the smallest details fall apart when examined.
@Vroomfondleswaistcoat I think it's best if we just regard the whole thing as completely made up

I couldn't agree with you both more.

There are no facts that are not up for being moved to further Sally's delusional fairy story. She contradicts herself in her books - and this is not an issue for Penguin. There is no terminal diagnosis but on Penguin's website they are still using that tag to promote the Raynor Winn brand.

This is why I am now just regarding all the books, interviews, etc., just as one extended false narrative.

This is why I think that the things to concentrate on are the ones that cause harm, rather than the ones that just enrage us and make us want to hold Sal against a wall with a wagging finger in her face.

The 'encouraging people who are seriously ill to walk as a cure' and 'swindling people out of money, stealing and embezzling and possibly falsely claiming benefits'.

I mean it's becoming blatantly obvious that the whole series of books are lies so thin that we can see through them without trying. Trying to make sense of it all will drive us demented (or more demented than the artisanal cider is already making some of us) because none of it makes sense.

But the things that have harmed people - the 'Tim is terminally ill' claims and the taking of money without ever facing charges for theft - are just sitting there waiting for any right-thinking person to come to the belief that Sal is a grifting swindler. And her publisher really should start performing some mitigation, even if it's just accepting that these books are not the 'unflinchingly honest' portrayals they are made out to be.

And I'd like an investigation into the CB prize too, but that's just me (and might come down to small print).

Why did they move to Polruan? It’s not a very convenient spot. If Tim was doing a degree at Eden why didn’t they move to Par? Or st Austell? What was the attraction of this tiny place?
That she has used her mother’s death as a plot device is absolutely disgusting. But then she’s done the same with whatever vague symptoms Tim has. If a forensic literary analyst went over these books, or a good barrister preparing it as though for a trial, it would fall apart so fast. I wonder if the publisher is doing this behind the scenes?

Why did they move to Polruan rather than Par? Probably for a couple of reasons - it's picturesque and on the SWCP. Par isn't as picturesque! They also got the offer of the flat in Polruan from Anna. This does appear to have happened although the exact circumstances, where they originally met and when exactly they moved into the apartment in West St, remain unclear.

And her publisher really should start performing some mitigation, even if it's just accepting that these books are not the 'unflinchingly honest' portrayals they are made out to be.

She certainly doesn't flinch from creative licence, if I'm to be polite.

I fear that the publisher is just sitting back and enjoying the free publicity! People will be buying the books to find out what all the fuss is about and that is their bottom line. The truth or otherwise isn't anything to do with them, they can shrug and say 'well Sal said it was true, we accepted the books in good faith'. Printing some kind of mitigation might be a move forward for them though.

And I would LOVE to hear what's going on behind the scenes. I would guess agency (who will, after all, still be earning VERY nicely out of the books) are standing between Sal and publishers but maybe she is dealing with editors directly? Because I would expect some very stern words to have been had by now about claims made, even if the publishers are publicly supporting her.