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

I think that points to A LOT of leeway…

The actress voicing the confession email on the podcast did a particularly good job of that bit, I felt. Well, it made me laugh aloud on a bus.

Absolutely, @RockyPath — I knew people signing on at three or four different dole offices, back in the paper days.

How would she get around the fine payer producing their receipt, if she did do something like this and there was an audit, they might check. Supposing a situation like this did happen, she could be caught if the fine payer was able to produce their receipt, but lots of people might not keep them. Someone might have been able to get away with it for quite a while, maybe never being caught.

I have had so many instances of amusement on these threads @AbovetheVaultedSky :)

Well, I was grinning like a Cheshire cat on the bus because of your earlier post:

quite apart from SW being terrible at dialogue in general, her student actors converse in a weird, stereotyped someone’s-idea-of-Cambridge-luvvies diction. No one talks like that. That’s the lazy imaginings of someone who thinks Cambridge students don’t just talk like students. For God’s sake, SW had two student-aged children!

And then I realised - Sal and Tim are still two student-aged children. Their relationship has kept them in a frame of mind where everyone owes them a living and they're just pure, free spirits that are only happy when they're communing with cool, surfer dudes.

Thanks for this. It was bad enough the first time but bloody hell, listening to it again makes me so angry given what we know now. 😡

Thanks @RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays . Yes, this is the TechPixies one I was thinking of. But I can't get it to play on that link or find it elsewhere in the list of podcasts. Am I being dim? I don't recall having to subscribe the last time.

Evening everyone. I hope you are all well today.

On Salray's job in the court fines office, I wonder if any driving offences of Timmoth's miraculously disappeared from the record or any fines were miraculously paid?

@Stoufer On a different note, I haven’t seen the article that was supposed to be written by Phoebe - I thought @DisappointedReader mentioned it had been bumped to today, digital only? Has anyone seen it?

Sorry, a busy day. I haven't seen anything yet and haven't heard anything further from Phoebe since the message from her I posted on here yesterday morning. I wondered if we've been bumped off by Prince Harry this time instead of by Trump?! I was imagining Melania on here on the relationships board. Pretty sure the advice, in time-honoured Mumsnet fashion, would be to LTB.

On Salray's job in the court fines office, I wonder if any driving offences of Timmoth's miraculously disappeared from the record or any fines were miraculously paid?

Ooh, interesting thought! We know that speeding fines were turning up at the Welsh house years after they'd left. They would have been in their 50s by then. One generally slows down over the course of one's driving career. It wouldn't be surprising if the natty dresser accumulated quite a few points in his youth.

Warning to @DisappointedReadervery breathy and insincere

Thank you @BewilderingBrandy! I spared myself this time and have avoided watching that one again. I seem to remember she claims the Welsh house was a ruin when they bought it and that they went on to have holiday cottages/lets, plural.

We must have had this one before but it has just made me feel nauseous. The audacity of the woman. Promotion of Landlines by Penguin Michael Joseph, Spring 2023 (2:38). Comments are turned off. :

I have no idea how one would go about fiddling court fines payments, or the books of a small surveyor and estate agent. This is because I’m not someone who steals money, or fiddles books!
Whatever the methods are, I’d say our “school art prize winner” and alleged bank statement fraudster SalRay is better placed to know (and exploit). It’s all conjecture, of course, but my gut feeling is telling me you don’t just start by creating fake bank statements. You start off small and you push it and push it as far as you can.
Even at a similar-ish time, Martin Bashir was using the BBC graphic design dept to create a fake bank statement to trick Princess Di.
I’m sure a 20p here and £1 there could have been skimmed off in the 80s. Maybe it looked as if all the books balanced, until someone realised they didn’t…

Thanks for sharing. First time I've seen it. Yet again (3rd time), PD's SWCP guide to the SWCP open at the same page.....

Maybe "Moth" is speeding more now because he is short of time.

This is when literally cutting and pasting and then photocopying would have been needed in an office. If you then looked at the photocopy and there were lines showing you Tippexed them out and photocopied again. All my knowledge of this is completely above board!

To offer a distraction, I just found this piece that I had never seen before: it's a take of things following the original expose and around the time the Bill Coles piece was published. It's worth a read...still not noticing the glaring CBD diagnosis timeline fixing but all else seems a fair assesment back when we were all working out what all this was about ourselves.

noon.org.uk/eleanors-letter-what-youre-saying-about-raynor-winn/

I was only about 10 in the late 80s and a young teenager in the early 90s- what were unemployment benefits like back then? Easy to claim? I seem to remember reading something which suggested that students could get the dole in the summer holidays, obviously that wasn’t an option by the time I went to uni, but was it ever true? Could they both have done cash in hand work and also been paid the dole?

@RockyPath think this one works (hopefully)
www.podchaser.com/podcasts/career-interrupted-901382/episodes/e283no-home-no-money-no-plan-j-256698766

She says in her confession letter that she already has a police record and will go to prison this time if her mum presses charges. We know Martin Hemmings never pressed charges, so how does she have a police record? From the court job?

I don't have personal experience, someone might, I just had a search and it said that students in the early 1980s could claim, but they had to be working less than 16 hours, I think. It seems that it was something the government wanted to finish, make students less reliant on benefits during holidays, and then phase it out completely 84-86. The criteria for applying seems to have become, more restrictive through the early 80s.

That is interesting, she was arrested and questioned for the embezzlement, does that constitute a record though? You would say you were arrested and questioned, wouldn't you?

I was a university student in the early 80s. In those days, the then student grant covered term times only and if you weren't earning in the university holidays, you could claim some sort of benefit - possibly the one that used to be called supplementary benefit (ie a 'top up' type benefit rather than a 'job seekers' equivalent.). I had a part time retail job in university holidays so didn't ever need to claim, but think some of my friends did. As far as I can recall, benefits for students outside of university term time were gradually phased out through the 80s.

Thank you for confirming that @TheBookShelf, it seems like it became harder and harder to get, especially just for the short holidays.
Just had a look @PsaltyNotASongBook, I googled did being arrested and questioned, mean that you have a police record, it said that you would, it would go on to the national database. She could have been arrested and questioned more than once though, I suppose.

I think the only barrier here would have been getting them to do work!
It was perfectly possible, and bear in mind that there was less pressure to find a job. Having to do a “work prep” course for a few weeks after 6+ months of signing on would be the only real fly in the ointment. Probably easily avoided if you were doing something constructive, like volunteering because you wanted to retrain…
Also there were plenty of “cash in hand” jobs, please remember this didn’t mean you’d be quids in. You’d be working with no rights, possibly no H&S for a pound or two per hour. And someone could always call the dole and snitch on you if you had enemies.

Hwaet! Well, it’s taken me the entire train journey to catch up. You can imagine me puffing and panting after the charabanc but hopping aboard when you all stopped to sluice down under the back seat and lay in more fudge and cider supplies. Fabulous posts as ever and absolute perfection from @Priorlake for the charabanc pic of us all complete with headless Si ❤️

and to @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree for one of the best usernames ever. Belated happy birthday to @Freshsocks and the usual heartfelt thanks to @DisappointedReader for guiding us through the past months and for being the pointswoman with Our Chloe & Phoebe et al. I’d like the threads to continue if nothing else because the wit and comradeship on here have cheered me immensely since July and it would be a shame to lose that community.

I’ve listened to podcast episodes 1 & 2 and have v much enjoyed them, so am looking forward to the release of more episodes over the next few weeks to those of us non-subscribers. Nice to hear the MNetter in ep 2. I do remember him as I inadvertently posted one of his X/Twitter threads on one of the early threads without realising it was one of our posters (mistakes were made etcetc) 🤣 I do hope the article by Phoebe appears soon, too.

Police record (likely from being arrested and interviewed under caution) not criminal record.

Good evening @TonstantWeader, thank you for the birthday greetings, just get yourself comfy, I'll fetch some fudge :)