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

SW said it was CBD making him behave that way, and implying that she regularly has to deal with it.

Maybe she did. Maybe that’s why she does everything.

my ex is very passive-aggressive, but he had a threatening side too. I was also responsible for his emotional wellbeing, particularly if it was an event relating to me or my family, or a responsibility relating to us as a couple or to the child I had given birth to (his child, but at times you’d have thought I had conceived and developed it entirely spontaneously against his wishes). Maybe Sal has lived like that since she was 18?

I don't think she's doing it all for him. I think she also has delusions and wants to be seen to be living an affluent life - perhaps keeping up with the Jones' is more important to her than him? Buying their children designer clothes, telling people they've bought a 'chateau' - I bet the clothes buying was down to her, and wanting people to think they'd bought something in France much grander than they had... She could have said that they'd bought a 'little place' in France? Or a 'place to do up'? But no, SHE wanted people to think it was a grand castle.

I share your frustration but in the final analysis you can only bring people to the watering trough through rational balanced argument. However, you can't necessarily make them drink from that trough.

I remember once having a discussion (which lasted nearly 4 hours!) with a work colleague, (who was responsible for analysing telecom companies), about his religious beliefs. He was a member of an extreme Christian cult and had been brought up by his parents who were also members of the same cult, to believe unquestionably in its doctrines.

Try as I could to wheel out all sorts of historical and archaeological evidence to demonstrate, that in all probability, Planet Earth wasn't created in a week some time around 6,533BC, he would have nothing of it. Instead he managed to come up with every sort of illogical and unscientific argument to justify his beliefs. In the end I gave up and just accepted the fact that some people just won't disbelieve what they want (consciously or unconsciously) to believe.

We have the one episode (from Bill, at Haye Farm) where there is an angry Tim.

No one else ever says anything other than that he was very nice. The Hemmings' daughter worked with him in the garden since the age of 15 and still is a gardener - she said she learnt from Tim.

I also learnt how much Sal was treasured and treated by her mother, from Anne and the other female relative. Anne describes them as having a symbiotic relationship which is a good working description. But, not for me as I think they are very much the same species - and a particularly obnoxious version of our species.

I saw these too! A few were like "i love the books and still do. I Just see them as fiction now but still a great story of hope." 🙄

Yes, they omitted to mention that the 'hope' the books are filled with is the hope of getting away with it.

A thread or two back it was @Freshsocks I think who had found that the pregabalin Tim was taking for neuropathic pain can actually cause Parkinsons like symptoms. Ironically the improvement in his symptoms could be because he stopped taking pregabalin when they started the walk.

I found the "we bought a chateau" comment interesting.

-It was a massive exaggeration.
-Saying this to the Hemmingses suggests no shame about how she acquired it, and arrogance/confidence about not being found out.
-It's out of keeping with her approach in books and interviews, which are all about how they are sufferers and underdogs.
-And conveniently, she now says that the opposite is true (ie that she did nit buy a chateau but rather an uninhabitable wreck - in order to save the villagers from it developed into something habitable).

The nonsense is endless.

@Peladon It was story upon story with the French property, wasn't it? A chateau, bought to stop developers, too run down to live in... the story just changed depending on what situation she needed to talk herself out of. And I agree with mentioning it to the Hemings (I think she came out with it at work, didn't she, so everyone would know) when it was likely bought with money stolen from that actual business! When she knew that they were struggling to pay their workforce!

I wonder if everyone wondered where the money was coming from at that point? Tim wasn't earning lots and they knew she wasn't earning a lot, and yet they are swanning around in a new Landrover and buying French property?

'Family money' according to Ros Hemmings

Unfortunately as with the transgender cult you cannot argue with facts against a position arrived at through faith not facts.

@DoubtfulCatyes I expect Sal has always had to deal with Tim flying off the handle behind closed doors. I'm sorry that you had that with your ex too. I've partially seen the effects of this kind of control in friends' relationships, but obviously can't fully understand what it's like to live through.

The difference in this case is that Sal is not just an innocent victim, but clearly is as deceitful and controlling (of others) as Tim may well be of of her. I know that you were not implying otherwise, just saying that that part of what she said may well be true.

For her to imply it was the CBD is manipulative, wicked and deceitful of her.

A LOT of people must have had their suspicions about the whole CBD thing though. Sal seems to have been touting it about as Tim's diagnosis for YEARS, and everyone is more than capable of Googling and finding out the life expectancy of a genuine sufferer. And with Tim clearly not in severe decline - even taking the walking out of the equation (because they were staying in fixed addresses for much of the time, which everyone locally must have known), there must have been many an eyebrow raised at Sal's 'it's his CBD' assertions.

@BeaveringBrandy We have the one episode (from Bill, at Haye Farm) where there is an angry Tim.

At the beginning of TSP, just at the end of the court case, it says: "I glanced at the lawyer in the side room and kept walking, but Moth went in. No Moth, no, Moth, don't hit him."

This has always struck me that, having been married to him for so long, her first thought was that he would hit the lawyer. I know it is an emotional and upsetting time but to jump straight to a thought of physical violence, to me is telling.

Asch's Conformity Experiment on Groupthink.

What is worrying is that before CH's expose , so few journalists/interviews were able to ask the difficult questions to expose the truth about the Salt Path saga. That includes the rather basic question - why is Moth still alive with CBD after 20 years when there are no other known examples of this happening to individuals with CBD?

Do the podcasts speak with anyone at the PCPA, to find out what they thought?

The PCPA dropped the association with the couple almost immediately after CH's first article, which coukd be consistent with them not being surprised. On the other hand, their statement says that everyone had been shocked by the allegations, implying that it came as a total surprise to them.

To be clesr, I'm absoutely not having a go at the PCPA, which is clearly a good charity doing important work for people in a terrible situation. And if they did have suspicions, it would have been a very difficult position as "Moth" was presumably major for profile and fundraising. But am interested inwhat ttheir perceptions were, as part of getting a clearer overall understanding of this couple, their situation and their umpact on others.

@SimonArmpit I'd guess that nobody was asking how Tim was still alive before this because all they would get would be Sal holding the line about 'walking makes him well.' Difficult at that stage to disprove the CBD diagnosis, and her entire schtick was 'walking helps him manage his symptoms'. So behind the scenes everyone must have been muttering, and maybe the question was asked many times, but when they just got Sal's stock answer it wasn't going to advance things. Without either proof that he DIDN'T have CBD or proof that walking really WAS a 'cure' (or at least stopped more severe symptoms developing), there wasn't really anywhere to go with it, whatever they might suspect.

Do we know what Tim did after 2005 when he stopped being the head gardener at Plas yn Rhiw? Renovating the barn i assume given he inscribed his and Sal's name in the plaster in 2007 according to CH in the doc.

Thank you for the relevant contribution. I have also seen the clip of the anguished Gillian pulling back Jason on the court steps as Cooper trips down gleefully.

When I posted above there seemed to be a lot of picking up about Tim. I feel that we have one example of his anger and we have other facts about Sal, that have been shared subsequently above, of her unprompted lies.

I think we all want the facts and the truth.

Recovering (for the next 20 years) from the fall through the barn roof?

Well, that's one thing. I meant occupation...did he ever get another job or just rely on Sally with her incredibly sticky fingers?

Curiously, if Cooper was told Tim had some neurodegenerative illness in 2011 when the debt claimants were wanting their money, it is odd that Tim's tests and scans all showed up negative that same year.

This just goes to show that Sal has been touting the 'neurological illness' for YEARS, even with no diagnosis. This was what made me wonder about the aconites... (I have a deep seated need for narrative...)

In the fictional The Salt Path, it’s absolutely fine and ok for Ray to immediately assume that Moth wants to go and physically assault ‘Cooper’ and then to show that it’s the last thing he was going to do. He’s like a hippy handing out flowers to soldiers. The reader may assume that Moth is very angry and with good reason, but he’d never lose control of that - unlike in fiction or a soap opera where people have allowances for beating each other up.
In reality, Tim was enraged with Bill Cole and he tried to dampen it down later with tears of self pity… he wasn’t going to live beyond Christmas. The doctor said so. I’m so sorry we didn’t make your cider and you’ve been losing money. At this, Sally rears up like a protective Jack Russell and writes things about Bill Cole in The Salt Path that she wants to make the reader ‘tut’ and ‘ooh’ at the unpleasantness and then the false representation of him as just a Londoner with soft hands, so what can you expect?

How to make this fiction more believable? Mmmm…. I want Moth to be a ferocious warrior, fighting for good! But this is “reality”, so he can’t really assault… let’s pretend that I think he’s going to - and then the relief that all he does is shake the man’s hand.. and let’s reaffirm this mild, saintly character throughout the book… much to his wife’s chagrin at times.. although she is resigned to Moth just being Moth! Like the mother of a toddler.

You are right!!! That is so telling!!
I think BC had a glimpse of the real Tim. Why wasTim so angry with BC for bringing in help, surely a nice thing to do as LL made it clear Tim was very sick when having to work in the orchards (I don’t really understand why he would be any more sick doing physical work in the orchards and in nature than he would be if he was walking on the cliff path? From what I know about that part of the world it’s very hilly so presumably he could’ve walked up and down hills for several hours a day if he felt like it to create the same effect as salt path walking? I know it’s all the nonsense. He could’ve also had a treadmill and set it on an incline and looked out the window at nature ) Was he furious because the young couple would be on his patch and might start to notice that things were a little ‘off’? He would have to be on his guard on home turf. Or was he angry because he sensed BC was starting to smell a rat and their game might be up? I have never heard that rage and aggression are a side effect of CBD. Why did Sally say that? They must have known they were attracting suspicion but after five years they were comfortable and about to be gifted the farmhouse. So close and yet it was slipping away!