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

Really do think Our Chloe should write a book about this too.
There is so much painstaking, excellent work that I think if Bernstein and Woodward had had her (and MN of course) Tricky Dicky Nixon would have resigned on Day 1.

Yes you have " I have no relocation" - well, stay where you are and have an early night!

I was just settling down, last night, when I read your post "Listening now ..." So I guessed that meant they had just released Ep. 7 - so I stayed up and listened now, too.

Episode 7 (and 1 to 6) spoiler alerts!
Just managed - on and off today - to complete the podcasts and my head is spinning too. Re. #7, what a strange world we live in, when 3 publications categorised as non-fiction are revealed to be anything but and the other, earlier work (HNTDYD) described by the author as "fiction" is considered by Chloe H and her colleague as non-fiction, albeit with names changed to protect identities.
Was amazed to discover the sheer number of people that Chloe and her team had manage to interview and how some had got in touch with other actors in this drama to compare notes re. their (negative) experience of the Walkers.

Sorry if I've missed discussion of this point: near the start of ep 6 there was a comment to the effect that SW/TW had, as a result of the publication of the original investigation in July, been made to pay £150K to (I think it was) the business people who inherited the loan from 'Cooper'. This seemed like quite a big deal - a small fraction presumably of what they've made from the books and the film, but still a bit of actual payback that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the investigation. So, some consequences.

Oh dear @BeaveringBrandy, so sorry, I was waiting for episode 7, having a little look now and then. All of a sudden it was there, I had a quick look on the threads, nothing about it, just seemed wrong not to let anyone else know :)

Great points @UpfromSomerset, Chloe has managed to contact so many people, I am going to follow your sensible example, label spoilers 1-7, might keep me out of trouble :)

Additional mortgage advances as well as theft. Wonder what was said on the mortgage applications.

Ep. 5
I had not clocked the fact that Sal stealing her in-laws money was simultaneous with robbing the Hemmings.

Joking with you @Freshsocks - I was keen to hear about HNTDDD so stayed up. But I have listened to some of the other today.

@Anythingbutheadlands i keep my seat in the charabanc warm because it’s such an entertaining and erudite crew, the most enjoyable thread on MN by at least a Salt Path of miles.

And because I hate injustice, scams and greed. I really want it all to come out and them to be shamed for what they’ve done- to ill people and their loved ones, who were given false hope and also victim blamed. To their families and to those who have befriended them. To memoirists (anyone else note Clover Stroud’s contribution?) and to us, the public, already doubting so much in this age of misinformation and already so overwhelmed with toxic news, to find a heartwarming true story was anything but.

And I recognise the charismatic grifter. I’ve worked with/for several before, had the misfortune to be in a relationship with one, and usually the grift is stealing credit for other people’s ideas or unseen labour; or stealing time from people, and/or their emotional investment, or their joy. This time the grift may have been all these things and then huge sums of money on top.

I also recognise the miserable sods who never appreciate what others do for them because they feel entitled to it anyway!

Episodes 1-7.
I'm glad you saw my message then @BeaveringBrandy, it was very late to take it all in, I will need another listen to some of the episodes.

It is good to know that the money was paid @cricketandwhodunnits, and Chloe's investigation has had results, I don't understand why Raymoth didn't want to pay once they had money. It's understandable if you have nothing, you can't pay. At the cider farm they had money, maybe not enough to settle a £150,000 debt, though the books must have been earning fairly substantial amounts. They didn't pay much rent, Bill Cole even considered signing the farm over to them, yet they left leaving unpaid utilities bills.

Excellent, yes. Completely agree with you about all of that. The rebuttals we have been privy to and the knowledge that lawyers are involved, are the icing on the narcissistic rage cake. They’re so deluded and grandiose -which is so obvious now with more facts at hand: range rovers, fancy clothes and a chateau in France. They were the type of people that apparently Raynor Winn turns her nose up at and scribbles disparagingly about in her books and she sees not, the glaring fact that they are criminals. ???!!

@Anythingbutheadlands I started out innocently enough as a lover of memoir and travel writing (I am, tragically, a sucker for both). Then Chloe reeled me in from the very first sentence of her original Observer piece, and it was all downhill from there. Add in my inner, closet sleuth — apparently so convincing that my divorce solicitor once suggested I retrain as a forensic accountant — and I never stood a chance. The final nail in the salt-encrusted coffin was stumbling across a band of very funny, deeply inquisitive and alarmingly eloquent fellow sleuths on Mumsnet. At that point it stopped being “interest” and became a communal hobby/ obsession. I did also want to learn from my mistake of blindingly trusting memoir writing. It's kind of ironic as I approach everything else I read with a healthy dose of scepticism unless there's atleast a bucket load of reliable references attached. Did I mentioned my girl crush on CH?

I assumed Elias is just a reversal of the letters in “Salie” (aka Sally), and that Baxter is either a wider family surname, or that of a past pet, or sheep, or chicken…!

Travelogues can (I believe) be relatively honest. Call me naive but I tend to trust the likes of Colin Thubron, Nicholas Crane, Jan Morris, John Hillaby. I guess there were always outliers - Bruce Chatwin, Paddy Leigh-Fermor? There is a gold standard which I believe travel writers should try and adhere t0, succinctly summarised by a travel writer friend:

Non-fiction still requires an author to tell a story; sometimes for the narrative it is permissible to shape events to improve the read, but I think it all boils down to one simple principle, which is, tell the truth.

Re. travel writers, that reminds me that Paul Theroux and Jonathan Raban independently of each other decided to circumnavigate Britain at the same time in 1982 (unlike Raymoth and a certain poet...). Raban sailed in his own boat from Fowey and Theroux took public transport. I'll have to look through their accounts of their trips - Kingdom by the Sea and Coasting - to see if they mention the SWCP. The two writers bumped into each other at one point and warily eyed up each others' notes, if I remember rightly.

The difference is “working” in nature. TimMoth seems allergic to the stuff.

Also quite possibly a narcissistic rage at Bill, daring to move new people into “their” farm, the demands from Bill just became too much. Do work, make cider, let strangers live in the caravan etc

It’s a long while since I read it, but I enjoyed Theroux’s Kingdom by the Sea (which should probably have been titled ‘An American Curmudgeon on British Rail). It’s an unflattering (to us) portrait of station platforms, forgotten towns, backwaters, beautiful countryside and shabby bed and breakfasts in 1980s Britain. I found it fascinating to see my own country through foreign eyes and it’s often very funny.

It’s also kind of the opposite of the Salt Path as there’s very little emotional stuff, he’s a detached, lonely writer who resists any temptation to make the trip into a personal journey (no redemption arcs here!), and the book as a whole is more a reflection on the experience of travel.

I do wish Theroux had done a repeat of the journey two or three decades later - it would have been interesting to see how he recorded the changes, both in Britain and on the railways.

Haven’t read the Raban though.

@Anythingbutheadlands
I’m here because I want to see all the lies and awful behaviour thoroughly investigated and exposed. So often people just get away with everything and victims suffer in silence. I am fed up of lying and profiting from it being normalised. For me, if something is going to be labelled and marketed specifically as the truth, or honest, I need that to be the case. I don’t want to be gaslighted, or see it happening to others. Only in part does this come from personal experience. Being lied to has a significant and detrimental effect on mental wellbeing. I feel sad for the family and friends here and I hope they get some closure from this investigation by Chloe.

Ideally, I would like the fourth book to not be published, at least by Penguin. It would be a demonstration of the ethics that I have come to think they don’t have. I am not generally someone who would rub their hands with glee at people being publicly disgraced, but enough is enough. The Walker/Winns have done too much damage and gone far too far on their path of deceit. Much further than their supposed walking. It is time for it all to stop.
As an unexpected bonus the camaraderie on these threads, the sleuthing, eloquent writing and wit has been lovely to read along with.

But am I right in thinking that Sal and Tim had agreed to the young couple coming to make the cider beforehand with Bill? I can't hear any more of the podcasts at present - and the very first one was enough to make my blood boil sufficiently that I had to go and stand outside the charabanc for a while to let the cool headland winds cool me down a little (I saw a peregrine whilst standing lonely in the salt air, so that was all right).

But if they'd agreed with Bill to let the couple come and live in the caravan and work on the farm - why agree in the first place? Only to turn on poor Bill when they actually arrived - did they think he would just let all his cider apples fall and rot, because they couldn't be bothered to harvest them?

At this stage it feels like Penguin and the agency Graham Maw Christie, both of whom still publically back and market the book as a "true story" and "unflinchingly honest" are no better than street hawkers who purport to sell high end brands when they are really poor quality counterfeit duds. They are relying on unsuspecting customers.

The last time I looked at the agent's Linkedin, it still showed an embarrassingly bad article talking about how TSP should be completely believed. It's even more cringey now.

And of course, Penguin still advertising "unflinchingly honest ... true story".

What has the world come to.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat i seem to remember it being agreed by Sally, but then Tim pulling the rage stunt.

Has anyone made a report to Trading Standards recently?

Ah, thank you. I'm at a bit of a disadvantage without listening to the podcasts. So did Sally not even think to discuss it with Tim? Because if she made such a decision (about letting strangers basically in on what they were doing) unilaterally without even talking over the implications with Tim, does that not say that their relationship was not one of the 'cowed and submissive' Sally always being in thrall to Tim and his whims? She must have thought he would be all right with it, and if the couple turning up was such a surprise that Tim lost his cool, that would imply that she just never even mentioned it to him subsequently.

Which would be strange behaviour, I mean I would at least mention it to my SO if someone was going to come and live very close on my land and I had given permission for it to happen. THAT would surely have been when Tim would spit out the dummy and they could have phoned Bill and given him some do doubt pathetic excuse about needing privacy or something. But they didn't, so I have to assume that Bill okayed it with Sal - who just, what, never mentioned it?

A close family member had a partner who passed away from a neurodegenrative disease. In the partner's last months, the close family member kept talking about SW's books: I could see that she was sometimes feeling a desperate hope (could she take him on a massive walk and cure him?) and sometimes regretting that he was now clearly far too ill to do the massive walk by which might have been able to fix him. It clearly affected her. I (naively) didn't disbelieve the premise of the cure, but just pointed out that in practice there was no chance of him being able to do the necessary massive hike given that he couldn't walk two paces.

Then CH's story broke, and I realised that th3 "cure" was probably a crock, and how much physical and psychological harm fabricating such a story could cause to extremely vulnerable people.

That's what brought me here. I had not previously joined mumsnet or anything similar.

I stayed because of the stories gradually coming out, the thoughtful analysis, the fact that there was so much information (in the books and online) that we could do genuine and useful sleuthing, and the warmth and kindness (not meant ironically) of this lovely group of people.

Also because, in a world where lying, shabbiness and corporate greed has become so common, this was an instance where there was a possibility of the truth prevailing.

There remain loose ends (were Dave and Julie made up, questions regarding benefits, what will SW and TW say, when will the mis-selling stop etc), and I won't be signing out of Mumsnet just yet, but this has felt like a monumental week.

I want to thank the OP and everyone else on this forum. And of course, Our Chloe for listening to the apparently wacky first approach and following up on it so tenaciously. In a world that feels increasingly dark, this has been a real glimmer of light.