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

At the end of this article, there is a referemce to SW's legal team having made a statement about backing iut of the tour. I don't recall seeing mention of that elsewhere.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/the-salt-path-is-a-book-that-captured-the-hearts-of-millions-now-its-mired-in-controversy/ar-AA1IpNs8?ocid=BingNewsVerp&apiversion=v2&domshim=1&noservercache=1&noservertelemetry=1&batchservertelemetry=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1

Apologies if you've already seen/ shared this : https://www.facebook.com/PrivateEyeNews/videos/raynor-winns-new-book-the-garden-path/25482165008103980/

Have we wondered, at any point in these threads, about the actual definition of 'homeless'? I know that the land they owned in France has been raised several times as meaning that they weren't 'homeless', but, with my Devil's Advocate hat on, surely you can be termed 'homeless' if you just own land but there's no actual house on it?

It seems that the only building on the French land is derelict, so couldn't be lived in, so would pitching a tent on land you own yourself still count them as homeless? They wouldn't have a fixed address after all.

I know, I know, it's all academic, as they had plenty of people they could (and did) move in with, so they were never truly without somewhere to live, they were only 'homeless' in the absolutely strict definition of the term of 'having lost their actual home.' But using the French land to prove they had somewhere to go seems a bit... over egging the pudding (and yes, I know I've done it myself backalong in the threads).

No, I think you’re right. Sofa surfing etc still counts as ‘homeless’. You don’t have to be sleeping rough or in emergency council accommodation or a homeless shelter to qualify.

I think what feels ‘dishonest’ about TSP is that SW specifically discounts anyone they know letting them stay, presents them as having literally no options, claims they were cruelly rebuffed by a council employee, that their van was too small to sleep in, says ‘Jan’ was relieved to ‘see the back of her squatters’, and turns ‘Polly’’s free accommodation from a fully-furnished, comfortable apartment to a primitive, semi-converted outbuilding where TW has to slave for P to make it habitable.

And of course the fact that they appear to have used it as a base for a series of hiking ‘holidays’ for eighteen months while refusing available work rather than been thrown out because Polly needed paying renters and become homeless again on the SWCP.

If she’d focused on ‘hidden homelessness’ (sofa surfing and the like) and not presented them as having literally no options rather than rough sleeping, it would have felt far less dishonest.

I'm willing to accept that the French property was uninhabitable, especially as it had been allowed to slide further into rack and ruin by Raymoth. Also, they wouldn't have been able to claim UK state benefits while living there (I don't think) so it was pretty much a non starter and as they didn't seem able/motivated to do much paid work here, it would be that much more difficult abroad.

What I do think they could have done is try to sell it, rather than abandon it. I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in one of the articles interviewing the local people that this was a possibility. Even a few K would surely have been an enormous help in their alleged financial straights?

@OnlyAfterwards Yes, the books seem to revolve so majorly around them having 'nowhere to go' - perhaps that's what people are thinking of when they talk about the French land. They could have gone and camped there. Or, you know, to any one of their seemingly millions of relatives, adult children, friends etc.

The French countryside contains no end of overgrown patches of land complete with derelict building. It's unlikely that they would have found a buyer.

"All the time the Walkers were braving the rains on Exmoor, they could have had their feet up in Bordeaux, enjoying la belle France! Obviously, from a career point of view, pottering around a local market in a sunhat and picking up some nice cheeses makes for far less compelling copy. Anderson isn’t going to sign on to play a character who does little more than zhuzh a gîte then learn to play boules."
Caitlin Moran, The Times

I just don’t think they even did the full walk either tbh.

Absolute grifters.

Apologies if this has been posted before. It's an interview where SW is asked about the process of writing TSP.

I only managed the first 3 minutesi

In that tume, I noticed SW seeming to say that they both wrote the book, but then correcting that to just her ("We had no idea that we -well, that I- would write the book")..She also says they both wrote notes in the margin of the guidebook (but not in preparation for writing a book).

She is asked about the notebook which she packed. She says that she did pack a notebook, but they quickly threw it away (along with wverything else that was unnecessary) to save weight. I gave up listening at that point. I hope that the next question was about "Moth"'s radio.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/143-writing-the-salt-path-raynor-winn/id1124306307?i=1000432658453

Worth rereading Sal's original email (5 May 2017) to BI.

It seems to me that they latched onto the concept of homelessness as one of the key themes to sell TSP and clearly lied about their situation ("with nowhere to stay").

Agree re the numbers of such buildings around but they bought it only a few years earlier, didn't they? We don't know if they made any attempt to offload it of course, although it would have seemed sensible to at least try at the time they were having the financial issues they were. There seems no evidence of that, from what I recollect local people saying when the scandal broke.

And if they were already estranged from Tim's brother by then, they might not have wanted to occupy the land, or go over to deal with the French labyrinthine sales laws. So they just abandoned it.

Which, although explicable, does seem odd for people without a penny to their names...

Mention of "overgrown patches of land" reminds me of my first thoughts on first reading of TSP, long before the Observer revelations. I put myself in Moth's shoes and in that situation there's no way I would have attempted to continue on the path - after the first mile or so, that is!
(We walked that first section from Minehead harbour last year so I was reminded of my childhood in that town and of many walks undertaken - my personal favourites being up one coombe and returning down the adjoining one.) But in my - thankfully imagined - Moth's condition, I would have insisted on finding a remote part of the woods and rigged up a shelter there.

Well, apart from the ones they stole from, or the ones who knew their light-fingered ways…😀

Another reason, presumably, why TW’s parents literally don’t figure in any of the books, apart from a single mention of his dad driving them to a train to go to Scotland in TWS, why SW’s mother’s deathbed is so strangely written and the sister deleted, and her mother presented retrospectively as a dour, stern, disapproving ‘flat’ character, eternally disappointed in and disapproving of SW for not bagging a rich farmer.

When in fact it’s possible she blamed TW, not for being a landless layabout, but for her DD turning into a compulsive thief..? Whether that’s fair or not is, I suppose, not something we can know…

Let us not forget that Moth goes from lying prostrate on the floor in Jan's house for the best part of a fortnight after the harrowing experience in Glastonbury at Heavenly End to scaling a wall beside the entrance gates to Glenthorne House just beyond Porlock Weir on day 2 of the walk......

Now that is what I would call a miraculous recovery!

It stuck in my mind @UpfromSomerset when you shared that you joined us 'unbelievers' when you saw JI portraying Moth and dragging his foot badly.

To those of us with a sound knowledge of this coast the clips from the film, I have seen, look comical. Someone once shared a video of an extract from the film in German, when they were given paninis free, it really is comedy gold.

One has to consider why they chose to not go bankrupt instead of going on the run to avoid the debt that clearly would not be covered by the house repossession. Is it because they wanted to retain whatever money they did still have? I never believed they were penniless. Saying they used all their savings on legal fees was a very convenient way to claim they had nothing. I don't think they ever spent a single penny on legal fees and always represented themselves...they wouldn't trust anyone else because any solicitor would likely have to know the truth re: the embezzlement, the real circumstances of the loan, the non-existent investment with Cooper etc. Much easier to create a fake story with as few people knowing as possible.

One also wonders how he managed to recover for 2 weeks on Jan's floor when walking was subsequently found to be his one way ticket to improvement. Yet another bit of bad logic in SalRay's writing (as with the premptive despair of the diagnosis mentioned up thread yesterday).

Maybe they could have stayed with the fake Rear Admiral in North Wales - he has a big castle on clifftops.

Before we knew about Sal's klepto leanings - was it ever raised that they seemed to have a large family between them, plus adult kids? I mean, when TSP first came out, did anyone say 'why didn't they just go and stay with a relative until they could get jobs? (Or A Job in Sal's case, presuming they had swallowed the 'Tim's too ill to work' line).

Because declaring that, because your house has been repossessed and you have a very ill husband, you are now completely without any support at all, or friends, or family and so you're off to walk the SWCP begins to look like a flounce.

And in TSP Sal said that the first person to say "I love you" to her was Moth, and writes that not even her parents had ever said that to her. Somehow I can't believe that, especially now it seems her mum put her on a pedastal, according to family in the documentary. She really does love to play the outcast. Seems like a self fulfilling prophesy now and doesn't she know it with statements like having "vitriol poured on me from all quarters."

Imagine the family WhatsApp chats. .

XX: RED ALERT! Light-fingered Auntie Sal and Dodgy Uncle Tim are on the lookout for somewhere to stay.😱
ZZ: 😰Again? Great.
YY: Oh God, I'm emigrating!✈
XX: Just don't leave a key under the doormat or an unlocked garage or you'll come back to discover they're claiming squatters' rights and sold your boat.😡
RR: Oh, and Tim's dying again, apparently.🙄
ZZ: What is it this time?🤔
RR Oh, the usual. Leprosy or something.

When Salray writes about the council housing situation, we know that is a lie, Tim had not been diagnosed, so saying they were not helped and we're told Tim was not ill enough, or dying, in order for them to be helped. I agree that not having a home, sofa surfing is homeless, but Salray hasn't portrayed it like that, she went full on, sleeping in a tent, homeless on the road.