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

My thoughts exactly, since early on.

She may also have been infatuated by him and emotionally dependent on him, all of which may have destroyed any sense of morality. Perhaps, in her eyes, the end (maintenance of her relationship with Moth) justified the means (lying,deceit,theft etc etc). The family members are best positioned to know. We can merely speculate.

I am coming to the end of 6 and have my head on my hands (well, not exactly of course, but while listening)

Episode 6 spoiler

He was getting PIP while at Anne's was he?

Does anyone know when episode 7 is coming out?

Episode 3 spoiler.
Bill says he agreed with Sally and Tim to let a young couple come and make cider on the farm, the young couple would live in a caravan.
Bill says this was all agreed, but when he arrives at the cider farm, Tim comes out shouting at Bill, in a rage, terrifying with blank eyes.

Bill sends an email to ask Sally what was going on, Sally sends him back an email saying CBD is the cause, that it was something she tried to not let people see, it was his illness not him. We haven't heard anybody else talk about Tim having rages, have we?

Episode 4 spoiler

Transcript episode 4

“So could Raynor Winn and Moth have just dreamt this whole thing up? Well, it's likely to be more complicated than that. Those doctor's letters published by Raynor Winn on her blog had the name of the neurologist blacked out, but I had my suspicions about who it might be.
I managed to track him down and talk to him, and he just so happens to be from Portheli, the Welsh town where Raynor and Moth lived before they lost their house. I don't know if and how well he knew the couple before Moth arrived in his clinic. We spoke in general terms because he's bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, but it's important to say he's not a specialist in corticobasal degeneration.
He told me he hasn't read all of Raynor Winn's books, and when I explained the details of Moth's recoveries, he said that wasn't something he could endorse. He was pretty clear that he had never come across anyone who has reversed the symptoms of CBD or even halted the disease's progress. In the end, I can't definitively say whether Moth has CBD or not, because I haven't seen his medical records.”

So after all, The Top Dog is wasn’t even a CBD SPECIALIST? 😱

As far as I know he’s always been described as charming, lovely and very chatty man.
He has shown his true face then.
And the pathetic excuse “oh it’s because of CBD”… just shocking!

ep4

Neurological consultant saying how suggesting to CBS patients, or any patients with a progressive disease, that strenuous exercise might help them - is itself harmful. It’s victim blaming. And of course Tim there is this miracle case. He’s special- he can do things that others can’t (like being a Master Plasterer rather than an ordinary one, like wearing a cravat, driving a brand new landrover DEFENDER (😁)) and once again, SalTim are elevated. By their love and by their joint ability to rise above other people, to be more special and more deserving.

This is making me cross, can you tell!? Oh, to have the two of them here in front of me-!

Spoiler alert episode 4.
Thank you @ItsNotYourUsername, interesting that the consultant said he hadn't read all of her books, does this mean that he has read one?

I am increasing in my need to stand both of them up against a wall and play the whole set of podcasts to them just to watch their smug faces fall.

And I am not a noteably aggressive person, but the podcasts make me itchy. I've only heard the first one so far and am not likely to be able to hear more than 1 & 2 but I really don't think I could take more than that. She (Sal, not Our Chloe) really is awful, isn't she?

I think they have a very text book codependent relationship with extremely blurred boundaries and no healthy balance. It would have been interesting for a psychologist to draw a profile of the two of them.

This description of rage at being balked makes me hark back to my earlier suspicions of him as a narcissist type and/or coercively controlling. Maybe not directed at Sal- but it’s there.

I'm just happy to have been adopted by you @Vroomfondleswaistcoat🤣

Yes, I can't believe listeners could cope with Sal reading her books. Everything about it breathy, schmaltzy, smug ... oh my

Not making any excuses for Sally ( there are none) but Tim is not a passenger on this mad journey. Look at his appearance on The One Show and how he ‘taught’ Jason Isaacs to do the limp nobody who knows him has ever seen. He could well be the brains of the operation. We’ll probably never know - unless they decide to tell on one another like kids who have been caught out.

Episode 6 warning

Episode 6 (leading into 7, which isn't up yet)

Chloe has got HNTDDD.

Seriously guys, the whole series is everything we've been saying/speculating about for months, from the mouths of people who know them. Spot bloody on, I say.

I have a copy of LL which someone bought me. I confess I've only skim read parts of it because this pair of unprepared idiots and the consent references to people commenting on their age irritated me too much. I doubt if they walked much of the Cape Wrath Trail as it's extremely tough and demands a high level of endurance and navigation skills. Most people who do the CWT spend months training for it and some still fail usually due to foot injuries or blisters. There's no trail or path in parts of it. I believe its possible to walk short sections and they probably kept the van to enable them to do this. Interestingly I don't think they made use of any of the bothies on the route. They started the trail in May 2021 and in an instagram post SW states they'd completed the CWT and the WHW by the summer solstice a month later. If they did manage both paths it suggests a high level of fitness and not a seriously ill man.

Yes but I think it probably runs deeper than this. All this glorification of Moth and their wonderful love etc. It feels like self-justification. As if she is carrying the baggage of going against the wishes of her mum and dad all those years ago when she chose someone they didn't see as economically viable or reliable. She seems a bit conflicted about this. It also fits with her negativity towards those who appear to have relatively more wealth (including family) even when they go out of the way to help them (their motivations are questionable, they aren't good people, they haven't earned their wealth etc.). It all seems to be about showing, despite all the hardship, that she and Tim have something special without all the material things. So, it was the right choice, it was all worthwhile, etc. A bit sad really.

Not a spoiler ep5- that she offered to meet Chloe to put her side forward wasn’t true. At all.

Spoiler potential: The real Sally & Tim…

They spoiled their kids with designer clothes (which got showed off to the cousins).
They wouldn’t say to family how they could afford the nice and expensive things they had as a family (the nice new Landrover is mentioned again).
They leapt at the chance to buy the house next door to the pigeonnier.
Most of this episode we know, about the theft of the parents’ money, but there is the human detail provided by the testimony from their two families.

And changing names was pretty effective at hiding them in plain sight.

Well the truth (about whether she did any of the walks) is all there in her Instagram profile:

”walk a bit, write a bit…”

And left a review? 😬

Can’t believe Chloe has got HNTDDD 😱😱😱
Hats off to her! She’s done an amazing job exposing this despicable pair!

Charles II was a woman. FACT.

😂love it

Episode 6- the family story. Spoilers.

apparently this typed confession details the whole descent into fraud and theft, and also why they moved to Wales in the first place. They sold their first house and Tim put it into a property deal with a mate, and lost it. So they could only afford to buy in Wales. I think we knew this?

the letter outlines her misery and her reasons to steal (saving Tim from his own mistakes, bringing back the “real Tim”) and may be a practice run for HNTDDD. If the sadness in the letter is real (big if) it suggests Sal may have become the cold person she’s reported to be because she didn’t expect forgiveness from anyone. And IMO this part of the story supports my old theory about coercion, that she did it for him. To keep him in the style he wanted to become accustomed to. Maybe no overt coercion, perhaps that threat of losing him. Anyway, she also mentioned a dx of Parkinson’s, so whenever this letter was written, there was already a narrative of Tim as ill to add to the narrative of Tim as too destroyed to cope without the hundreds of thousands of pounds that Sally stole to restore the “real Tim”.

Her family forgave her enough to house them when they became homeless. They went from family to family interspersed by walking holidays. That makes her depiction of “Polly” and of Sal’s mum even more despicable as it was so mean, unfair and untrue.