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

It sounds like the problems, some of us, had with the meeting last week. I wonder if someone could post a link to episode 3 and see if that would work, please

Firm diagnosis would probably also guarantee PIP payments and perhaps a car (through the Motability Scheme). Oh and maybe Social Housing? I remember Sallys statement “Moth wasn’t ill enough” to be immediately granted Council house (she would never consider a temporary accommodation, they’re far too good for that!). They’re nothing but grifters and scammers 😡

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/cider-at-haye-the-walkers-ep3/id1590561275?i=1000744816683

It doesn’t work for me. Episodes 1&2 worked fine.

I’m not exactly sure how I did it, but I think one step was logging out and logging back in (to my observer account). I also wrote to the subscriptions team who said it was a known glitch. They seem to have a lot of those!

Listening to the podcasts, one thought is, SW talks about "her truth" in defense of the book but no-one else is allowed to have "their truth" - when they disagree with her they are just liars.

What has just worked for me to get to Ep 3 on Google Chrome browser on my MOBILE is:

On mobile:

1. Log out and back in again on the website.
2. Tap 'menu' (3 lines top right corner)
3. Tap on 'listen'. - if you tap the word 'listen', not the drop down arrow, it takes you straight to the 'listen' page and 'new series The walkers' is at the top (within a blue background).
4. If you did tap on the drop down arrow alongside 'listen' then tap again on the word 'listen'
5. Tap on 'Listen now' at the bottom of the blue section.
6. Scroll down to Ep 3 (or whichever one) & tap on it
7. Tap on the 'play' button

For those interested in psychological aspects of WinnWalkers behaviour/ motives and while we’re awaiting for the “glitch” to be fixed, I’d strongly recommend watching this short video of Dr Ramani explaining the dark personality traits.

It’s like she’s talking about the Walkers…

And the COMPUTER version is:
On mobile:

1. Log out and back in again on the website.
2. Click on 'listen' (within the header at the top)
3. The 'New series - The Walkers' is at the top of the page - click 'listen now'
4. Scroll down to Ep 3 (or whichever one) & click on it
5. Scroll up to the top of the page and click the 'play' button

This is the direct link in case that works for you https://observer.co.uk/listen/the-walkers-the-real-salt-path/cider-at-haye-the-walkers-ep3

And this is the link to the whole series:
https://observer.co.uk/listen/the-walkers-the-real-salt-path

Thank you so much! I simply logged out of my acc and then signed back in and it’s now working!

It's fair to assume that most posters on Mumsnet are women with children or mothers-to-be. Increasingly over the years we've attracted and welcomed women without children @RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays and some men with and without children to the site.

It's fair to assume therefore @OnlyAfterwards that most posters on these threads of ours are women. I also assumed for various reasons including posting style that a small number were men, although I think that Honorary Thread Grandfather (HTG) @UpfromSomerset is the only man to have declared his hand very openly on our threads from the beginning. As the OP I get quite a lot of PMs, including when posters want to discuss something at least initially off thread and in confidence, all very appropriately. From that I'm aware of at least some of the posters on our threads who are men, including the poster (not HTG) who spoke in Episode 2. As everyone who has PM'd me knows, I respect posters' privacy and won't be identifying anyone with their name/username/sex on our threads.

All welcome here except the drive by scolders and ploppers and the overly salty!

I've just started 3 and have 3 words.

Land Rover Discovery.

The people who have been pissed on by Raymoth (sorry, but I think it's accurate) all sound so nice and I found the stuff around poor Martin Hemmings very sad.

Great stuff Chloe!

Addendum. Salray should not have been allowed to read the audio book , she is dreadful, although I suppose it provides an authentic note of whining self pity.

Is there any evidence that the Walkers actually undertook the walk/bicycle rides detailed in Landlines at the time they said they did? LL always took me as being the most far fetched of the 4 books.

Thanks for 1 and 2 @DisappointedReader , I've signed up for the Observer and 3 is playing praise be!

@UpfromSomerset has always said he's a man and I tend to assume there will always potentially be some, which I don't think is a problem as the behaviour of people on these threads (apart from the very occasional disruptor) has been great, male or female.

Watch anyone claiming to be Charles II though (looks over shoulder)

Episode 1

<briefly borrows hat from Pedantry Correspondent>

I believe it was a Land Rover Defender not a Discovery @Uricon2 @DoubtfulCat .

<fondly pats exceptionally elderly Land Rover not from ill-gotten gains and parked next to the charabanc>

Sorry, mistakes were made (in fury!) 😂

Sorry if mistakes were made about the landrover. I do muddle the names although in my mind I am picturing the Defender 😬

just listened ep2. Warren Evans pointed out to Our Clo that the love S&T share ‘elevates them above others’. And it’s like they have an attitude that if someone else has something that they would like to have, but don’t- that person is flawed or shallow or mean or something. If someone else is praised or does a kind thing, it’s almost as if that lands with S&T* like an insult to them- as if they can’t be nice people if someone else is praised as a nice person. Or as if, if THEY’RE nice people, everyone else must be horrible. I’m sure that’s how and why they feel entitled to take what they want no matter who gets hurt. Rich people in TSP (or as I said, anyone who has something they’d like) are undeserving of their wealth, but S&T are humble, hardworking, deserving.

*I will now refer to them jointly as a single entity, because they are both as bad as each other and I now suspect they egg each other on. Like Sally could muse to Tim that in the upstairs room at the estate agency, she could do whatever she wanted and as Martin is so chaotic about payments, he’d never notice… they look at each other… Tim says oh, we could do with a new car…

Thanks to you all for being so kind and understanding! And to the OP @DisappointedReader for bestowing an honarary title "HTG". Should be able to decipher that one - although I do forget some, such as LSB, but the context is usually a giveaway.

Episodes 1 and 2 seem to work for everyone on the Observer website.

Episodes 3-6 seem to only work at the moment if logged in and subscribed on the Observer website. I think Episode 3 will be available freely like 1 & 2 in a week.

See my earlier posts of today for the links and what to do. Only £1 for the first month, cancel at any time.

I think the issue there is that it's a large, very vague claim, that they walked 'home' to Cornwall from Cape Wrath, and it was 1000 miles, but as SW actually says in LL that they couldn't start from where they'd planned, that they took taxis and lifts, went off route for van collection, skipped bits etc, and after the Pennine Way part they do with Dave and Julie, it all gets rather vague in terms of exact route, travel method and whereabouts at any one point.

Part of the issue is, I imagine, that lots of part of it aren't the kind of 'wild nature' that is the Raynor Winn trademark, so it's no use to her, so she's skipping ahead to the 'ta-dah!' of the 'lit up like a Christmas tree' DAT scan.

Strikes me as somewhat strange that there are less accounts from others encountering the Walkers on their LL jaunts given that they should have taken more time than the few weeks they spent on the SWCP and SCP had now been published.

Also relatively few Instagram posts of the LL walk.

Especially as accounts of their fame appeared to have reached Germany by the time of the Icelandic walk.

A lot of this hits hard for me personally because my own family were the victims of staff embezzlement - my father ran an agriculture-based business in southern Africa, which was hard work and not something that would make anyone rich, and quite variable year on year, but we did have a few good years that allowed my father to build the family house etc.
We had a trusted employee, a friendly, personable man who had worked for us for many years. And when I was a teenager his massive theft was uncovered. The money was never recovered - he was reported to the police, but he skipped the country and that was that.

Of course a business and personal finances never recover from a thing like that, and my poor, lovely, trusting, kind father died suddenly, exhausted, in his sixties after another hard day at work.

I am even more convinced that the whole "don't plan past Christmas" thing was because Timoth felt he needed to justify the lack of err actual cider making, although I don't believe for one moment Bill C was putting pressure on. All these people were well intentioned and kind to them but got treated appallingly, lied to, defrauded and painted as unpleasant and venal despite their generosity.

Bad as each other, that pair, both up to their eyes in it and a basic synonym for unpleasant and venal.

Thank you for clarifying @DisappointedReader It is working for me now following this advice. I thought I had to have a free 3 day trial with Apple, then yesterday learnt that you had to give a day's notice to cancel, so left it until today and had been blocked. Easier to pay £1 to Observer - which I'd rather do anyway, for many reasons but especially currently.

Thanks to all for advice, links and encouragement, as usual - what a team!