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

@RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays I managed to sign up so I'll PM you the link.

I'd love to get a peek at PRH's business plan for 2018. I'd imagine that TSP festured prominently.

I think you could be right. This is what I have long suspected...the Big Issue article and her backstory story of suddenly getting an agent and book deal and quick publication always felt off to me.

Bestselling books become so because idea, execution, publishing knowhow and the zeitgeist combine in precisely the right way and at the right moment to capture readers’ imagination. One can certainly see what made The Salt Path successful: a compelling piece of storytelling in its own right, it tapped into deeply held anxieties about the sudden loss of home and health, and countered them with a portrait of resilience against the odds.

This article is a careful assessment that brings in other books and writers:

The end of the road? What The Salt Path scandal means for the nature memoir | Publishing | The Guardian

I agree about PRH putting serious cash and oomph behind TSP and making it a hit.

I also think that the approach to The Big Issue was most likely SW starting to build her own writing profile as she started querying agents.

A lot of the kind of advice she would have seen online emphasises creating a profile, mentioning any previous writing experience etc in query letters, and how, when querying a non-fiction book, it's important to establish your credentials (why and how do you know about the topic? how did the book emerge from your own experience?). So, as someone trying to find representation for a 'homelessness memoir', publishing something in TBI was an obvious way of establishing 'credibility'.

Especially as, obviously, 'Raynor Winn' had no previous existence at all, and she wasn't going to want to draw attention to 'Sally Walker' or indeed the brief and inglorious writing career of 'Izzy Wynn-Thomas'.

The fact that SW gave so many interviews is helpful to anyone considering whether TSP is a true story.

Is anyone else going in person apart from me (NineNuzzlyMinecraft) tonight?
I made a couple of printable 'badges' if anyone wants to wear one so we can find fellow charabanc-riders.

They bought into the ‘pity party’ and thought she deserved it, maybe? This very brave, shy country bumpkin with a dying husband…

Ooh, that's me at the back there, very lifelike!

Loving the badges. I'm not going tonight but I might just wear a badge anyway... It would be like a 'secret handshake' by which we charabanceers would know one another...

Lovely drawings @OneThousandThreads ! I’ll definitely make a badge but I’m not going to be at the event tonight.

What always strikes me about her interviews is that she very much sticks to a suspiciously unchanging script, and yet gets details wrong a fair amount in ways which would be far less likely had whatever detail it is been something that actually happened.

See for instance the frequently-changing amount of tax credits they supposedly had to live on weekly during the walk.

If you'd trekked miles off the SWCP to find an ATM and expected to see the same small sum in your account, week on week, you'd remember the amount more accurately, surely? Because according to TSP, there was literally no other money in their account other than the weekly arrival of the tax credits, and it literally translated into whether they ate or not.

Whereas it's far more difficult to remember this kind of thing if what you're actually trying to remember is what you said all the other times. You're thinking 'What do I usually say?' rather than 'What actually took place?'

@OnlyAfterwards I think Tim's absence from a lot of interviews can be explained by his inability to stick to 'the script'.

You mean, other than his suspicious ongoing appearance of vertical-haired total wellness?

Admittedly, it would be pretty funny to have TW with a couple of green room drinks in him, next to SW on some chatshow sofa and interjecting 'Oh, that was the night we stayed in that nice B and B near Padstow!-- Ouch! Sorry, I'm having an illness-induced hallucination. That was the night we ate half a pack of noodles and camped on a windy cliff-edge in the dark.'

That and the avoidance of being asked "so Moth, how are you?"

ETA. I am still perplexed as to their boldness to appear on Rick Stein cosplaying as rewilding cider makers. TW says something like the SWCP saved his life as if he is cured, then goes about demonstrating the ancient ways of apple pressing.

That was one of the funnier/odder moments of the Rick Stein programme, I thought. Rick, not known for his tact (my husband is frequently between hilarity and annoyance at the way he gets, say, some Vietnamese fisherman's wife to cook the catch in whatever way she usually does, and then tastes it, makes a face and says 'A bit basic!') stands in an orchard and says to TW 'It's terminal isn't it?' and TW dolefully agrees.

X-posted!

I suppose if you've been cosplaying a dying, homeless person, then cosplaying a heritage cidermaker is child's play! 😀

I think watching the documentary sealed it for me. I LOVED the book, despite the weird inconsistent bits; the pitching the tent on the beach - I mean, please, have they never heard of tides?!, and the whole Simon Armitage thing (When I was reading the book I was so confused on seeing the photo of Moth - he looks NOTHING like him?!, but mainly the whole 'unexplained' and woolly reason they lost their home). I read / watched The Observer takedown, and although compelling, I still thought it could be partly true. But the documentary was SO revealing. The most heart breaking things were the poor man with CBD thinking their story could give him hope; and the bits about the family who spoke about the Walkers / Winn's stealing FAMILY money. What horrible, loathsome people. Unforgivable to lie about a terrible illness diagnosis too.

It was fascinating to watch Tim. He was so different when it was just him and Rick. He was looking at the ground and smiling to himself, as if trying to be good, when Sal was doing her boring usual. There was this bit - where he was allowed to talk - and it is about his health and he stumbles over a word (like anaesthetist) and she says it for him. It looks quite contrived - and I feel bad for noticing this and even worse for writing it. Mass emotional blackmail.

I happened to see that RS programme when it first aired, having read TSP and thought 'Oh, that's that couple!' And in fairness to me, I did think 'They seem quite cagey and ill at ease', but dismissed it as 'Well, he's still ill, so even though they have a home and a job somewhere beautiful, and are presumably financially comfortable, so that probably explains it.'

(TW definitely turns on the charm and charisma when it's just him, RS and the cider press stick thingie.)

I watched the cider show a number of times with the sound off, just observing Tim, how he was walking and moving, he made spontaneous movements with his left arm, brushing his face to flick something away, making gestures. The neurologist observed few spontaneous movements of the left arm, Tim does keep his left hand in his pocket a lot when photographed. In the cider show he is using his left arm seemingly easily, demonstrating the cider process. Tim looks in better shape than Rick.

Yes this. I know someone who grew up very poor and living in very insecure and even dangerous housing. They have gone to some efforts later in life to buy a house, even though they were in pretty secure social housing before that, and I can see how this might have come from that kind of childhood experience. For the WinnWalkers though they seem happy enough to live a much more moneyed version of the wandering life still.

One thing that immediately felt 'wrong' on the first read was how easily the living situation of their kids was dismissed with 'it's fine, one's going to university and can live with their other half in between, and the other's going abroad'. My DC would have been as distraught as me as the idea that they literally had no parental home to come back to.

Good luck to tonight's adventurous event attendees - I've got a long standing event in the diary myself or I'd be trying to get in too.

YES! I totally agree. Both parents and children's reaction to this was so weird, and not normal. The whole situation around the 'bit of paper' that wasn't submitted to court in the right way was so strange to me (it's been a while since I read the book). Surely if you were going to lose your house and you have half a brain you would submit everything?!!

Yes, it reminded me of how, in children's fiction, one of the author's main jobs is to get all the responsible/good adults out of the way so the children can get involved in some adventure without anyone responsible to take the risk away from them.

Only in TSP the adults need to find a way of 'getting rid' of the young adult children, who are constructed explicitly as being the responsible ones, focused on PR jobs and stability, so they can go on their own 'adventure'.

Off topic (sort of) but what does everyone think of SW/ RW's other books? After really enjoying TSP I tried to read both the follow ups but I was so bored and sceptical I didn't finish either. They came across as more unlikeable in them too.