Thread 23 : 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 22 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?

Thread 22:www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5470952-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?

Most recent:

• Salt Path: A Very British Scandal, available on Sky Documentaries and NOW TV, 15th December 2025
• ‘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
• Observer Newsroom: The Real Salt Path Story, Thursday 8th January 2026

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. For over 6 months we have done amazingly well together for 22 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 22,000 posts there are still new things to look out for on the path:
Podcast series (7 episodes) from The Observer's award-winning Investigative Journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou, 13th January 2026.
The Walkers: The real Salt Path | The Observer

After listening to some of The Walkers: The real Salt Path podcast episodes from The Observer today my thoughts are even more with the victims. I also believe that the publishers, agent and prizegivers must now act and be seen to act.

Please start each post with the podcast episode you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so. Many thanks.

As always, keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 22 IS FULL

Thank you. Legal to paraphrase?

We don't need to worry about copyright but how about this at the beginning of TSP. Anyone?:

Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost …

Homer, The Odyssey

I’ve considered this too although people often lose control of their bladder during a panic attack and the description in LL certainly had a flavour of this. If TW doesn’t have a problem with alcohol I think there’s a strong possibility of mental health problems. I was a mental health nurse for over 20 years and have a finally tuned sense of intuition.

Thank you @AgitatedGoose, we had thought about alcohol being involved before, I think you shared this information, it's interesting that alcohol can cause the eye movements as well. We don't know what caused the test results, to be as they were, but it's more likely to be something other than CBS. And as @ThisQuirkyRaven has said there are many medications that can cause these results.

Sorry @Peladon, as @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree pointed out, only the eye examination had occurred in the first letter 2015. Thankfully @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree has a better grip of things :)

Very interesting indeed @BewilderingBrandy . If I had to put good cash money on it, I'd say that is another paeon of praise for Timoth, comparing him with Odysseus.As if.
Our Simon has done a version of the Odyssey, really good IMO.

It would be interesting to know how Simon translates it. I prefer the following take, for Tim, I can imagine Sal doing her Gigspanner hand and swaying movements:

‘Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns’

Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles (London: Penguin, 1997), 77.

We only have SalRay’s word as evidence of the “pool of urine” incident. We know she tells big fibs which pull at the heart strings. Don't forget she told Ros Hemmings she’d sold her mothers wedding outfit!
Personally I doubt it happened, or it was “Co-opted” from the story of another person who is unwell, and squirrelled away for use at a later date as evidence of TimMoth’s decline.
Of course, poor dear TimMoth had CBD, a condition which can only be truly confirmed by examining the brain after death. You don’t believe it? So you’re wishing him dead!

They don’t really strike me as heavy drinkers.

But.. but.. did Oydsseus wear tweeds? Did this hero of antiquity sport a neckerchief while confronting the anointing of Grant's sirens? Was the Medusa faced while properly dressed?

I've reached the stage of immersion at the almost six and a half months point where I've developed 'the ick'. I'm experiencing a visceral reaction to photos of our deceitful duo. Even the YouTube video posted by a pp had me pressing pause because, even though Yes Sir, I Can Boogie is a fine song, the breathiness at the beginning reminded me of Salray's Carry On Up The Salt Path moments like the Mars Bar dipping and Tent S e x, and of her Saltlines serial killer 'tick,tack' performance.

I think I'm suffering from PTSD (Post Tim n Sal Disorder) .

If anyone wonders why I'm leaving gaps in s e x, it's because last time we posted about Salray's Carry On Up The Salt Path moments, it drew Love Honey ads to the middle of our threads and unfortunately we don't seem to have got rid of them yet!

As it's Saturday night, here's my contribution to our thread playlist. I think I've spotted a few charabancers in the audience:

My daughter has FND and her eyes dart about, especially when stressed. I have one more appointment to confirm but probably have FND myself and have already been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and ME. We both have ADHD. Moths symptoms could possibly be FND but they are so determined it’s CBD they have self diagnosed. From one of the podcasts it looks like this started when Ray was caught stealing and they ran with it. Like most lies, there’s usually a little bit of truth.

For (and about) Salray

Apologies for getting my favourite song on to the thread.

It strikes me as apposite though, the lyrics.

Thank you @Thedownwardspiralpath, it's interesting that the eye movements can have so many different causes. I'm sorry you and your DD are contending with these things, it makes me even more cross about TSP health claims.

I don't want to jinx it - but have the ads (on this forum) for TSP finally stopped?

Also, it may be that SalRay failed to do her homework regarding CBD and incontinence. I haven't got a copy of LL to refer to so I don't know what she wrote about the episode and so it may align with below. But a basic search tells me that incontinence is mostly associated with CBD because of the severe disability of movement preventing patients getting to the toilet (functional incontinence) and it is associated with disease progression. I am yet to see any evidence of any progression, and indeed, according to Salray, his condition regressed at least periodically.

It made me think of some of the lyrics of RM's She Sells @Uricon2

I'm going to indulge myself with posting another version of this, including a few more charabancers and a perfect antidote to any glumwashing or winter lurgies:

Apologies if we've had this one already and I missed it.

I'm rereading The Salt Path for the first time since the truth came out, and I can't help noticing how often Raynor sneers that much of Cornish folklore (the King Arthur connections, the Mermaid of Zennor, various Druid myths) was clearly fabricated to attract tourists. Yeah, imagine inventing ridiculous stories just to make money! The horror.

Observer Front Page 18th of January 2026 - Tomorrow's Papers Today!

it may be that SalRay failed to do her homework regarding CBD and incontinence.

Yes, the letter about atypical anal sphincter disturbance made me think similarly.

As for keeping a thread going- yes please. I picture it like the thread people spool out behind them when going into the deep dark wood- or indeed a trail of pebbles (hopefully not breadcrumbs, which could be eaten by birds) or fudge wrappers, guiding us back to the charabanc in case of new information (or- maybe- just a sense of nostalgia for these jolly japes? Maybe that’s just me- I will feel real sadness when the charabanc finally pulls over at the omnibus station and we all have to collect our belongings and make sure Our Simon has all his appendages, and that nobody makes off with any leftover cider.

Returning to lifestyle choices, I can think of a number of people who lived life to the full in their younger days, who suffered quite severe consequences later on when (it was at least believed that) they had left a party lifestyle behind many years before. I wonder if eco warrior Moth was also on the free party scene back then? Or ‘just’ a champagne lifestyle, quite literally, through their good times and bad. Absolutely no condemnation of that from me but it’s silly to pretend it’s not without risks.

My soundtrack contributions might be Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor (imagine Salray in the video) or Everything I Do (I Do It For You).

Thanks very much for that @BewilderingBrandy. I've just come in after a spell of moonlight gardening in my ballgown and wellies. I didn't want to leave all the sartorial elegance in the flower beds down to Timmoth. In the absence of smock seamstress Salray, my ballgown was made by a family of tailor mice working by candlelight.

I'm relieved to see we haven't been bumped over to next week due to lack of space, despite such an important story as Greenland being in the news. That's a fantastic photograph.

I was thinking about what@Uricon2 said earlier about us being in The Observer feeling weird. Yes, it does a bit! I'd describe my feelings as a mix of the night before the last day of term in school or uni days, an exam or driving test!

Do you think it's too early to start the trek to the newsagent?

The cynic in me would change the song titles for our dastardly duo to Nothing Compares 2 Cash and Everything I Do (I Do It For Money) @DoubtfulCat.

and that nobody makes off with any leftover cider.
I'll be rather disappointed if everyone doesn't make off with any leftover cider (in the unlikely event that there is any left)!

Your post made me remember the Agatha Christie-type coastal house with the library a pp posted back in the mists of thread time. I'd love to be able to host everyone there for an au revoir (not goodbye) weekend. It would be marvellous to meet you all.

The vindictive side of me wants to look up the drive-by scolders and @ them back to the thread to see us in The Observer!

My reasonable side will settle for the fellow passengers and charabanc driver considering this request - adding somewhere in the next thread title “and vindicated since The Observer cited these threads” or some such?

Whenever there is a development - OWH published, TimMoth’s true illness revealed, Gillian Anderson breaks her silence -whatever it is- it will be a siren call back to these threads (from a real mermaid, not a made up story of a mermaid!)

I am reminded of a time in the days of yore when one poster scoffed at the mere notion that any journalist would find these threads a credible source of info. Yet here we are!

I'm reserving judgement @LetsBeSensible at least until we know what The Observer has to say about us all! I'm half expecting to have been papped looking happy and without a book to my name, or wrongly identified as someone working for Penguin who started the threads on the basis that there's no such thing as bad publicity!

Oh well, the die is cast (or the stones are cut, according to Uricon2Esquire).

See you on the other side everyone. Fingers crossed for a good report we don't have to hide from our parents!