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

She does seem to flip-flop between 'Tim is so ill I can't leave him alone so can't work' to 'we decided to walk 630 miles' to 'lying in a pool of his own urine' and then back to 'left him at home so I could talk to literary groups'.

He's either well enough to get on with things by himself, or he needs someone with him 24/7. Make up your mind, Sal.

“Scott of the Antarctic” 😀👏🏻 brilliant. We just know how it’s going to read without reading it.

Just on PIP, you can claim it with any impairment, not just physical. I used to work with a lad who received it for mitigations for his autism- physically he was fit and well, but he struggled with his mental health.

Does anyone know what was in place before PIP and before the coalition’s welfare reforms?

I thought it was DLA (Disability Living Allowance)

DLA vs PIP Explained: Key Differences, Eligibility and How to Apply | Contend Legal

I only followed these threads at the beginning and then I was too busy to catch up - but I see there's a podcast now, I'd love to listen but can't figure out where to find it! I assume it's not the observer one - that seems to be one episode and I think I may have listened to this on YouTube - everyone seems to be referring to different episodes so it sounds like a great long explanation of things so far, I have lots of dull chores to do today so would love to listen to this if anyone could tell me where to find it

@BlueJuniper94 You can subscribe to the Observer online for £1 for the first month - if you decide not to keep the subscription you just switch off auto-renew before the next payment goes out, but you still have access for a month. The podcasts are on there, you can listen to first two without subscribing anyway.

Ah great, thank you!

You should be able to listen to the first three now for free here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-walkers-the-real-salt-path-tortoise-investigates/id1590561275?i=1000744816243
The rest will be released weekly

My friend's son still has DLA for autism. I am convinced that she's wrong and he must have been moved to PIP, but she swears it's still DLA.

I wonder if Tim genuinely did suffer at some point from a short term illness that affected his movement? And that every since there has been a dwelling on that time by both of them, so every slight limp or ache or pain has been put down to a recurrence of a virus that is long gone? I know that if you've had something nasty that has laid you low for a while then there can be a terrible fear of it 'coming back' somehow.

He’s only ill when it doesn’t interfere with SW promoting something, going on tour, hitting a book festival etc. If he were genuinely declining, or had in fact ever been as unwell as she claims, she would have quickly gained an (understandable) reputation for last-minute cancellations, and probably cleared her schedule when it kept happening.

Whereas the only thing that was ever postponed with TW’s health given as an excuse was the publication of TWS, which was pushed back from April to September 2020 with the reason that SW couldn’t do a book tour in May because TW wasn’t well ‘and needs me fit and healthy to care for him’ (SW on Insta).

Obviously we don’t know the real reason, but given that SW said herself that she struggled to get going on the follow-up to TSP and had only started to write four months before the MS was due (and the published version bears all the hallmarks of something cobbled together to try to recreate the winning formula of TSP), I imagine it was really because the book wasn’t ready to go to print, and still needed a lot of editorial work.

And as we’ve seen with BC, when you haven’t done what is required of you, whether that’s cider-making or making a writing deadline, a sudden decline in TW’s health is a terribly handy excuse, and makes anyone overly focused on what you didn’t do look like Gradgrind.

I do wonder what she’s like to edit. I’ve done a lot of academic editing in a previous role, and it gives you a real insight into someone in terms of what kind of MS they send in, how and how quickly they respond to queries, negative feedback etc.

@AbovetheVaultedSky I think she rather painted herself into a corner in the first place by writing about her 'terminally ill' husband who suffered so dreadfully yet turned out so happy and healthy for all the promo work required!

She could at least have kicked him in the ankle to give him a convincing limp.

Yes, it sure is confusing. Particularly when her rebuttal suggests she has to physically lift Tim out of bed every morning. The more I read it the more it comes across something she might write for claiming benefit (minus the public's vitriol etc).

"My books have become a record of his health, from the mornings when I need to physically help him from the bed and into the physio routine that makes his days possible. Through the movement issues, the bowel problems, the memory slips, the stiffness, the pain, the fatigue, the obsessions, and the despair. To the times, on our very long walks, when those symptoms have improved. "

If any of the above were true, how could anyone leave the love of their life to go off on a 2 week jaunt in winter on a difficult, and potentially treacherous route?

It’s almost too black to be funny, but I do, when I try to imagine actual behind the scenes conversations between them, find myself picturing SW saying ‘Are you really going to eat all that?’ or plucking Mars bars from TW’s faltering grasp. Like a sports coach supervising the diet of a champion, or one of those scary K-pop ‘codes of conduct’ where they’re weighed weekly.

Difficult dynamic when your brand is ‘devoted spouse penning nature-inflected love letters to an adorable. dying spouse’ and you also have to ensure said spouse doesn’t look as if he’s living the good life too obviously when he’s glimpsed in public!

Through the movement issues, the bowel problems, the memory slips, the stiffness, the pain, the fatigue, the obsessions, and the despair.

I get all these too - and I am an extremely healthy 65 year old. These things are just ageing. Except for the obsessions and despair, but those usually creep in when I worry about money, which is in short supply as I've retired early. I don't need helping out of bed though (the dog gives me sufficient encouragement).

The real reason for TWS delay is surely linked to Covid and lockdown stopping any promotional events. But Sal had to twist it away from the whole nation's collective situation to her personal "truth" narrative.

This.

Plenty of books were released during Covid (it was actually a great time for book sales as so many people were stuck indoors with not enough to do), so TWS could perfectly well have come out then. But I suspect Sal wanted the glory of appearing in public and doing the talks to an adoring audience and that was why they held the book back.

A couple of random and unrelated comments

Re. The salt ways and Roman origin of the word salary... SalRay is an anagram of salary, that's like inverse nominative determinism.

And I think we've discussed before the highly likely possibility of the C2C being chosen to coincide with/appropriate the C2C becoming a national trail, so I expect it was always planned to be the walking part.
And I think the walking in winter was necessary to fit the narrative of lonely walking without Moth, contemplating loss and death and birds migrating north for the winter etc etc.
Besides, surely a Walker walker who has walked all 630 miles of the SWCP, and 1000 miles of the UK is not a novice walker making silly decisions and needing to miss bits out. Oh, hang on...

Personally, with the evidence available, I think we give them too much of a benefit of the doubt in assuming there is any truth to things like Moth having any illness, Salray doing any studying of a law course, them doing even a moderate amount of the walking they claimed etc etc.

I think what they do is beyond appropriation, it's parasitic appropriation. In fact parasitic is what they are, seeking out sources of life, goodness, shelter, provision; moving in and devouring their host from the inside out. Leaving either when the host is destroyed or devoid of anything else to 'feed' them; or if they are in danger of being found out.

I must echo other posters in saying how sorry I am for Bill Coles, and how sick the podcasts have made me feel, I ended up listening to the first 3 then haven't braved the rest yet.

A day off work today… after catching up with these threads I start doing a bit of housework - and find myself singing (and not for the first time) “I want my, I want my, I want my MTV”. It becomes an incessant earworm that won’t shift. Why? It’s all because of @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree - but I’ll forgive you because it’s definitely the best username I’ve seen here 😊🎶

I suspect she struggled to write TWS. A bit like writing the follow up to a hit album, she has pressure to repeat the winning formula but this book doesn’t have the magic. Instead it’s cobbled together piecemeal style. The mother’s death is retrofitted for a clunky foreshadowing of Moth’s demise ( set in 2015 its 11 years ago! He’s doing well!) with a smattering of Cornish magic because brand Cornwall was HOT in 2020. Tack on a holiday. Make some exaggeration about Haye and toss in wilding because that’s current. The book lacks heart. It’s a ‘cut and shut ‘ read.

@OneThousandThreads I wonder if Sal thinks fitness having been acquired is just kept forever? She seems to think that having done one long distance walk (possibly, but under debate) that means she is fit enough to do another, despite seemingly not having trained for it or even done much in the way of distance walking at all in the interim.

Not to wish to detract from your very good comments, but the bit about migratory birds made me realise even she/they got that appropriation wrong...birds in the northern hemisphere generally migrate south in winter.

Pip is not awarded by diagnoses, it’s based on how your disability affects mobility and daily living. It’s my understanding he had been struggling for some time without a diagnosis. ( you don’t need one) He has never been diagnosed with CBS, The 2015 letter proves this.
I’ve never spoken to any of my doctors about my adult disability payment ( Scotland)

Yes, that’s why we’ve been laughing about it on here. I mean, apart from anything else, it suggests very little genuine interest in nature, apart from as a feelgood literary device and something supposedly that sets them apart from dreadful people eating cream teas and building conservatories.

Birds generally migrate south but water bird species such as Shoveler, Pochard, Gadwall, Water Rail, Common Snipe and various geese species all arrive from colder climates to spend the winter here, along with fruit-loving Fieldfare and Redwing. However, these fly south to the UK in the autumn and return north in the spring which still doesn't quite fit with SW's timeliness.

If any of the above were true….. ?
In the alternative universe of the Raynor Winn books it certainly is true. Note her explicitly saying that her “books have become a record of his health”. I find it odd. I know that people are entitled to their privacy, but TSP story and its miraculous cure for a terminally ill man at Death’s door who agrees to his loving wife’s somewhat silly demands, is very public. When inventing a story that’s intended to take advantage of people and part them with their money, the lack of engagement with that public on a day to day or even weekly, monthly basis via SM, an ideal platform to document their life, speaks volumes. I don’t know. The amount of people genuinely worried about Moth was staggering. I think this was a shock to them and they didn’t know what to do.
If any of the above were true….?
I am certain that he would not have been able to walk those trails at all.