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]

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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

Leaving the Burton Courts job because childcare costs made it unviable would not cause a family omerta on discussing it and the reasons why she left, as said reasons would be perfectly reasonable and respectable, then and now.

It's easy to forget the extent to which cash was king in the 80s, especially for smaller amounts, although there would have been a fair few cheques. As so often with this saga, it's cherchez la dosh (if you can find it, of course)

ETA Just occurs that Harry Enfield's "Loadsamoney", a late 80s trope was .. a plasterer. There were definite good reasons why the comic character had that profession, at that time.

Maybe old friends from TSP will join her on the walk to help her answer these weighty questions- the blind mystic of Culbone, the tarot reader from St Ives and the peregrine watcher from Lantic Bay, not forgetting of course the dastardly duo from up North, Dave and Julie.

The answer to your question is - not exactly. This is coming back to me - but I can't remember the source - it is, in essence, another appropriation. She stressed that she is not at all religious but she started describing nature in terms within Sufi mysticism.

I have alluded to this sometimes when commenting - you can hear some of it reflected in her Gigspanner collaboration. She speaks about it as if she is the one to discover how transient we are as essentially of the natural world. For example, when she say things like : I am the wind.

Sounds like something from The Tempest! We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Paula Vennells could make a cameo to talk about religion.

To me, rather than a mystic imparting timeless wisdom, she more resembles Basil Fotherington-Tomas skipping around shaking his blond curls and exclaiming " Hullo clouds! hullo sky! (and as any reader of Molesworth, indeed any fule kno, he was wete and a weed)

There's a traditon of writing about the natural landscape, good bad and indifferent going back to the Enlightenment and I've read and hear nothing that makes me think Salray has anything memorable (in a good way) to add to it. Dressing in pseudo rustic linen, swaying and portentously intoning "I am the wind", no ta.

And the angel reading woman from Glastonbury.

In a sort of mystic charabanc of their own, fuelled by fairy dust and hot air.

@BewilderingBrandy I've never dared listen to what exactly she is whispering while she does her shuffling thing on stage with Gigspanner.

I suppose I should be relieved she's not appropriating some cutesy version of Celtic Christianity via New Age stuff. I could entirely imagine SW grabbing onto the idea of 'peregrinatio'. Ugh.

I was hoping to be able to listen to episode 3 today as a non-subscriber but it seems not. Does anyone know when the other episodes are likely to be released?
(It's not the £1 I object to it's the "sign up to something and cancel later" as I'm not very good at the second part and worry I'll end up spending more than I can afford)

I don't know about the release of the eps. generally. It may suit you to subscribe with the £1 get your welcome email, then cancel the Auto Renew, you then get another email giving you the date in Feb that you expire. Meanwhile, you can access the whole lot.

I may have misunderstood, but I thought the other episodes were only going to released on a weekly basis on Spotify/Apple or wherever. I just looked on Spotify, where I have a subscription, and I can see the third episode there.

@RNApolymerase -- you can sign up for £1 and cancel immediately, though. I joined for a month on the £1 deal, cancelled several days ago, and got an email confirming my subscription would not be renewed, but would still last till Feb 13th. So you don't have to wait to cancel. You're just cancelling the automatic renewal at the end of the month, you still get the month for your £1.

Am I misremembering or was it alleged earlier on in our increasingly frayed and tangled threads, that Sal's degree wasn't an actual law degree but was a qualification to become something official in court?

I mean it would be EXACTLY her M.O. to talk up a basic qualification into a 'law degree'. Would she even be able to get onto a law degree with her qualifications?

I don’t know. How would we know?

Thanks for messages I have just accessed via Spotify.

Well, because we do know that SW was arrested and questioned, from the testimony of Ros Hemmings, and from SW's purported 'confession letter'?

After a very busy patch, I’ve finally caught up with everything you clever lot have been posting, culminating in listening to the interrupted career podcast thingy. OMG. There is literally nothing novel or of interest in what she says about being a working mum, and the breathiness is worse than ever.
(I wonder if she’s always spoken like this - it feels like a manipulation to pull the listener deeper into her stories. She finds herself fascinating.)
I agree with others that the way she describes parking fines as “nonsense” speaks volumes.
Then it’s the same old same old: the LIFElong friend etc. and a bit of anything buttery later on… and the mars bar.
Tell us a new story Sal.

Episode 3 is now available in Apple podcasts for non-subscribers.

But we don’t know if there were previous incidents involving the police.
If the business of defrauding the Hemmings was happening at the same time as Mum, it’s possible she’s referring to an even earlier “police record” was my point.

I suppose if there were problems with balancing the books at the court office, then going off on maternity leave might slow down any investigations.

A serious question about the mars bar story. Can anyone confirm this detail: does Sal usually say that the canteen was empty or crowded when she met Moth the first time? I thought it was usually a crowded canteen but I’ve just heard a version where the room was completely empty except the two of them.

That's very interesting re the breathy voice.

Obviously it may be natural and she can't help it, but I do wonder if you're right and it's yet another manipulation? She does appear to find herself fascinating (god knows why - other than for all the wrong reasons explored here!), so I can imagine she totally believes she sounds like a true child of nature, at one with the wind 🤣 Whereas, imo at least, she sounds bloody awful and is painful to listen to. In fact breathy, full of hot air/wind sums her up perfectly 😂

Also, I'm another who found her use of the word 'nonsense' to describe the parking fines extremely telling.

Oh and the whole 'baby in one arm, work (or whatever) in another, whilst trying to make clothes (conjuring up visions of Moth's future gardening smocks!)' completely cracked me up! Was she trying to lay claim to being the original multi-tasker?!?!

I know that many of us cannot see (let alone hear!) why such a good folk band would think Sal enhances their show - she is certainly a mistress of her craft, but that is best done surreptitiously in the shadows not a spoken word public performance. However, here is Peter Knight, where he is to Raynor what Jason is to Moth, (albeit with his less effusive manner).

For the main point I've made, from 3:40 :

I remembered that when I listened to LL on a borrowed audiobook some months ago there was a bonus 20 mins at the end where you hear Sal and Tim talking about cups of tea. I decided to reborrow it today so I could listen more attentively. It makes a change from the usual stuff as there is no interviewer - just the two of them talking about their walks and their travels: their favourite cups of tea - including ones they had near Zennor, the falls of Glomach, Iceland etc. They talk about how they now have tea with very little milk due to how their tastes changed on the walks when they had no milk. They talk about sunsets and skies and camping and Moth’s recovery… it all sounds very convincing and is no doubt a way of sounding relatable. Sal also talks at length about the mars bar meeting here my question about whether they were alone.

If SW's qualifications were not enough to get her onto a university law degree at age 18, they might have been sufficient for a distance learning law degree as a mature student. I had a look to see if it was even possible to do a law degree by distance learning in the 90s - it was, but there were very few providers. University of London was one - no online learning platforms then, most people didn't have email, so it would have been a correspondence course.

So in theory SW might have studied for a law degree and completed two years of it. However, given her propensity to talk things up, if she did do any study at this point, it seems more likely it was for some sort of clerical qualification to develop into a higher role at the magistrates' court; working on the court fines counter sounds like an entry level job not needing any specialist knowledge.

No clean pants? When I pack to go anywhere, 90% of my packing is clean underwear.

And re the Mars bar incident - when I was at college (only a couple of years before Sal and Tim), it would be almost impossible to be 'the only people' in any given room. So I'm not sure I'd buy the the place being deserted apart from those two.

She should have been sponsored by Mars.

As well as the "meetcute", there was the key moment with "just me and Moth on the edge of the Altantic with a Mars bar", when they realised "that we could start to reinvent our lives in our way, how we wanted".

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/06/home-is-a-state-of-mind-you-dont-need-walls

Hang on, didn’t she write in LL that she wore a pair of army boots that didn’t fit? Those are Vivo Barefoot (very expensive) ones!