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

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat very true, and the former Penguin senior employee in the documentary (can't remember her name) said that very thing.
DH and I only watched the film because of the controversy as it's not something that would otherwise have interested us much. And here I am talking about it.

I am glad for the sake of her victims (and even people she has unfairly slated in the books) that the truth has come out though, as I can't imagine the frustration levels of seeing her lauded unquestioningly.

See, I think it would be interesting to get your take on it as a novelist.

If your main character's spouse/partner had a terminal illness, you'd have given it to him for a reason, right -- to raise the dramatic stakes, to deepen the level of pathos, to show your gruff main character's softer side, to wring the reader's emotions, to enhance the urgency of the plot etc. Eg Will X and Y manage to complete their mission/solve the mystery/achieve the goal before Y succumbs to his illness? Or how will X catch the killer while torn between being by Y's side and her professional duty?

But Y's illness still has to serve the plot, right? So, if this is, say, a police procedural, the mystery still has to get solved, so Y's illness can't actually prevent that from happening the way it would in real life, unless it serves the plot.

So, if it heightens dramatic tension for X to get a call from the hospital saying Y has collapsed and is calling for her while she is actually closing in on the killer, that could work well to raise the stakes and show X torn between love and her obsession with her job. But Y's illness is never going to mean that she hands the case she's been obsessed with for years to a colleague, takes compassionate leave, and we spend the last ten chapters in a hospital with no crime plot resolution, apart from X getting a text saying 'We caught him.'

I think SW rejigged the diagnostic timeline to strengthen the 'hook' of TSP, but at the time she almost certainly thought of TSP as a one-off.

Its success and the public appetite to know what happened next and whether TW had survived meant that she then had to contend with writing two sequels where she now has to figure out how to circumvent the supposedly terminal illness with a short prognosis she gave one of her main characters.

She can't kill him because this is a (technically) memoir, and he's still alive and comparatively well, and anyway, their devotedness is part of their USP, and she can't give him a miracle cure without the original diagnosis looking like a misdiagnosis and retrospectively lowering the stakes that made TSP such a success.

So she has to 'continue' his illness and put him closer to death, but that can't get in the way of the other USPs of TSP -- (1) musings about salt air and the natural world and healing, and (2) walking.

So he's dying, but only when it doesn't get in the way of (or when it actually promotes), the other stuff the reader expects from the Raynor Winn brand.

Hence in both sequels TW is ill enough to need to be rescued again by another healing LD walk, and both times is ill enough for the helpful Greek chorus of Dave and Julie to express severe reservations about his ability to complete either, but not so ill that he needs to be helicoptered out of mountainous territory to the nearest hospital and risks making SW look irresponsible or cruel. .

The 2015 letter is regarding a first referral to the neurology department in Liverpool which is why the letterhead says 'NHS Foundation Trust'.

The 2019 letter is a follow up in neurology outpatients in Wales which is why the letterhead says "Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board". There will have been other letters since 2015 but these have not been produced. Dr Davies is based in Walton but presumably does a regular outpatient clinic in Wales. This is not uncommon.

I agree that Sal only set up the plot premise for one book. 'Tim is ill, we are driven to walk, it makes him better.' And she's now stuck with a Schrodinger's Husband', who is at the same time either alive and well and capable of carrying out such tasks as daily life entails, or critically ill and depending on her to survive.

Whilst that was sustainable for one book, she how has to keep opening the box to show us glimpses of Tim, either well or ill. She wrote herself into a corner in her attempts to engage our pity. She made the essential error of going wider not deeper. She would have been better off going deeper and mining her own thoughts and worries about her relationship with Tim and her fear of what her life would look like without him, rather than going wider and losing control of her plot. She's also stuck with a Tim who doesn't seem to want to play the game and appears hale and hearty on all public outings.

If she'd wanted to go the 'ill husband' route, she would have been better off narratively ending TSP with how the CBD diagnosis had been proved wrong, how relieved she felt that he wasn't dying, the mixed emotions she was now dealing with and their hopes for the future.

Instead she now has to deal with the Husband In A Box.

And she's now stuck with a Schrodinger's Husband'

Oh, that made me laugh. And is absolutely right. It deserves to be listed with the other (kind of) coinages of these threads, 'glumwashing', 'cosplaying homelessness/terminal illness' etc.

A Schrodinger's moth.

@OnlyAfterwards I think SW rejigged the diagnostic timeline to strengthen the 'hook' of TSP, but at the time she almost certainly thought of TSP as a one-off.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat I agree that Sal only set up the plot premise for one book.

Yes, I also think there is only one book. For me, it is the story in HNTDDD which was then developed into the original text of Lightly Salted Blackberries.

It would be so good to see the text of both of the above.

The other books are just stretched out extensions, reiterations, nature-padding, fabricated walks.

<breathes on nails, polishes them lightly on waistcoat> Well, I'm not going to disagree with you there...

So is Anna real? Did CH find her? I am
getting so confused! Or did they make her up and have a short term rental in a place that looks quite hard to get to and where nobody will see them.

I wonder did she originally write it as a novel 'based on real life' in the same way that HNTDD was, and sent it out to agents as such, but was told it didn't hold up as a novel, maybe try it as a memoir? So she tries again with relevant agents, eventually finding one who sees possibility in it and works with her to make it more credible as a memoir.. It could account for the awkward retrofitting, patchy nature writing etc.

There's, what, three years(?) between them being evicted and the supposed start of writing the book. We know they had places to live for free, what were they doing all that time (apart from the odd walking holiday) if they didn't bother working? When they were faced with losing the house in Wales they were very quick to set up a publishing company and knock off a quick novel to raffle, so they can work fast and creatively if they want to .

Maybe she wrote Lightly Salted Blackberries much earlier than claimed, wasn't having much luck with it, so Tim decided to go to college to get some professional qualifications to start making some money. And in the meantime, she started rewriting and produced TSP.

I may have the timelines wrong, it gets quite confusing! but given that we now know they were never homeless, I think it's worth considering what they were actually doing in that timeframe.

@TheTimeTravellersNiece Tim decided to go to college to get some professional qualifications to start making some money.

As opposed to just getting a job and earning money straight away...

Well yes, but they're special, aren't they? And who is going to give either of them a reference? Going to college would allow him to reset his CV.

@TheTimeTravellersNiece I wonder did she originally write it as a novel 'based on real life' in the same way that HNTDD was, and sent it out to agents as such, but was told it didn't hold up as a novel, maybe try it as a memoir? So she tries again with relevant agents, eventually finding one who sees possibility in it and works with her to make it more credible as a memoir.. It could account for the awkward retrofitting, patchy nature writing etc.

So we have HNTDDD, as you say, the novel that describes their life.

Lightly Salted Blackberries is the text that is their memoir that the publishers took some things out of and changed to be called TSP.

I have trouble reading her published books but would love to read her first two manuscripts HNTDDD and lightly salted blackberries (for investigative purposes of course)!

But the thing is with sending stuff to agents and publishers - most people don't get a reply. They might get a 'thank you for your submission but not quite right for our lists at this time' email about a year later. Agents don't have time to be going through manuscripts and saying 'well, yes, if you changed this and this and rewrote this bit and concentrated on this bit you might have something.' They don't have time. They don't give advice unless they are going to take the manuscript on, or think that the writer shows such promise that, with a few tweaks, their book is publishable.

They would have already signed her before they gave her such advice. So either they thought her writing was so shiningly brilliant that they couldn't pass it over (unlikely), or she'd already written it in a form they thought, with a very little bit of tweaking, they could sell. Agents want to make money out of writers. Someone who's written one single book, no chance of a sequel, that is going to need a lot of their input before it's worth sending to a publisher - they are going to pass over.

So I think Sal might have mentioned that she had ideas for follow ups (but without having any such ideas), and also that she was originally flogging it as a Twu Luv Stowee....

We don't know any more about Anna. They always have at least one vehicle. As well as the passenger ferry to Fowey there is also a car ferry a short distance from where they lived in Polruan.

I know, I'm just wondering if LSB was first written as a novel. HNTDD was a novel based on their life up to the point they were losing their house (we think, we don't actually know) They were still there when they were trying to raffle it. LSB would have the walking etc that came later We only have her word for it that it was written as a memoir, it could have been a novel in the same ilk as HNTDD, but was made into a memoir later.

Just a thought really, probably not important.

It would be interesting to know when they first met Anna.

It wasn't in Sept 2014 as described in TSP because they were at Polly's and Moth didn't start his degree course until Sept 2015.

It's unlikely to have been Sept 2015 at the end of a 6 week walk from Poole because they were walking west towards LE when they met the Parsons at the FAC on Aug 8.

So when did they meet her? Maybe later in 2015. Maybe they first rented student accommodation nearer the Eden project and then moved to Polruan. The idea that they met Anna who by sheer chance had a room for rent that was being vacated the next day but would be immediately available for Moth and Sal to move into just days before Moth started his degree course seems likely to be largely fictional. Of course it makes for a warm fuzzy upbeat ending to TSP

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 @OnlyAfterwards @Vroomfondleswaistcoat 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻❤️ thank you for putting all those thoughts into words so perfect!

@Uricon2 are you going to travel along with a band of Minstrels and use coconuts as an invisible horse? I recall King Charles II was the ‘party king’ so I hope there’ll be lots of ghostly excitement on your travels and fanfare. He’s probably a big fan of SM, in particular TikTok, dashing in and out of convenient oak trees and priest holes. Popping up on golf courses.

Absolutely and, just as in the Grant/Warren episode, she presents her charismatic raconteur and plays with her 'believers':

Moth spun a story of golden summers spent under canvas, of changing weather unfolding around two people living wild in nature. Of a narrow path alongside the busy world, but as separate from it as if it were in another dimension. The woman, Anna, sat mesmerized, caught by his stories, spellbound as people always are. He could have been reading from Beowulf.

Or Tim decided to go to uni to get a student loan.

I don't know if there's any way of checking lists of who graduated in a particular year from a particular uni/college?

@BeaveringBrandy … as always I continue to be surprised at how much has always been in plain sight and how differently something appears when you know the truth about these people. Something charming becomes something manipulative. It’s a thin veil isn’t it? Sally’s true character appears in her rebuttal.

Yes, I tried looking at that after the 'Mothman BSc' quote. It would have been awarded by Plymouth in 2018 if it is true. But, I couldn't find any graduation lists.

I was amused to think that, if he had graduated, it would have been in a big tent on The Hoe - which is where they supposedly slept without their tent! You couldn't make it up, could you .....?

There is (called HEDD Higher Education Degree Datacheck) but it costs and you have to have permission from the degree holder, it's primarily for people checking job applicants. I think you can also ask the university itself, but I imagine they are very strict on privacy and would take us out of open source information.

Yes I think checking would only be entertained if you were a prospective employer. Of course if Moth had ever applied since then for a teaching job, or any job, he'd have had to show them his certificate, but presumably that hasn't happened..