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

The whole thing is a mishmash of plagiarism and lies. Tim and Sally work together. They are a partnership.

😂This disparity eluded me. Another sign of invention. Unless Our Simon can confirm he was often mistaken as a tramp. "Oh God, Mr Armitage, what has become of you? I never knew you had become a tramp."

Really chuckling at this!!

Can all these posts be printed and published into a book please??!! 👏🏻🙏🏻❤️

Do you think there is appetite for a book on The Salt Path saga or has everything relevant been covered in the articles, podcasts and Sky documentary? Would anybody read it apart from, perhaps, some on this thread?

What a wonderful, confusing read it would be @HatStickBoots :) just thinking @ThisQuirkyRaven, you can tell your lad, that the naughty lady is being punished, she isn't allowed to go and do her singing anymore :)

You’re a novelist — that makes you good at spinning a plausible story about something, or needing to come up with a reasonably psychologically convincing explanation for something your plot requires. (Me, too, and I’m also an excellent liar, when required (as in, to spare someone’s feelings. Not committing grand larceny or perjuring myself.))

I suspect that this wouldn’t have been one of SW’s strengths as a fiction writer, given the strains on the credulity of the reader caused by some key bits of TSP — eg we get a melodramatic scene about happening to hide under the stairs from bailiffs in the exact same place as a strategically-placed book about walking the SWCP (I mean, I’m an obsessive reader whose worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere without anything to read, but even then I struggle to imagine having a lovely glow about an old favourite while hiding under my stairs from debt collectors?), and managing to convince your frail dying DH to walk 600-odd challenging miles while wild camping and living off on small change, all in the five minutes before the bailiffs start coming through the door with an axe to explain the entire unlikely premise.

Which also requires a feather-light explanation that doesn’t make sense for why you’re blamelessly homeless in the first place, and a bizarre absence of family and friends, apart from a couple of offstage young adult children who are fine without a permanent roof over their heads, and are only in contact when required to pluck at the reader’s heartstrings (child is lost in a foreign country!) or when needed to provide a rail fare.

CH also seemed (understandably) puzzled by the narrative ‘logic’ of HNTDDD, where Ellias the ‘pure soul’ thieves and blackmails dreadful conmen for the sake of her husband, though it’s not clear how any of it actually benefits him…

I suppose we should take our hats off to whatever skill of SW’s made this not only plausible, but actually appealing and touching, to so many readers.

Every cloud having a silver lining!

I don't think there is much to chose in moral terms between what Raymoth have done and the Canoe Two Darwins apart from the element of letting the sons believe he was dead, which was horrible. They had the book thrown at them and served time for pension and insurance fraud and associated charges. In this case, robbed Martin Hemmings, robbed 2 sets of parents, made a fortune from telling lies and selling books based on a fraudulent premise. I'm still convinced there is more and am interested in Salray's abrupt leaving of the job at Burton Courts, which apparently was not a subject that could be discussed in the family. Timoth was happy to have multiple driving offence fines directed to Maxine at the old address and I'm sure a lot of us are side eyeing the PIP claim.

The background of French properties and Landrovers means any sympathy for people in dire straights doing bad stuff vanishes. Until the final £600 (which as others have pointed out was just stupid) meant she was exposed, Salray showed no remorse and no sign of stopping, while concentrating every energy on protecting the preciouses, Timoth. It then happened all over again, with parents. Everyone else can go to the wall, other than them.

Personally, I'd rather not have a relationship with an irresponsible overgrown man child of however much twinkly neckerchiefed charm, when they appear to think money falls from the sky and can't adult. IMO, to tolerate such cavalier (sorry Charlie) behaviour is not love, it is desperation.

I don’t know… these threads contain something extra, there’s so much humour here and a collaboration of sharp, intelligent minds. It seems a shame to lose it. Sally and Tim, Raynor and Moth are not the same characters and we have two stories running parallel to one another. We still can’t agree on who they really are but at least the facts are now available.
I think that the rebuttals show the personality of the author and Tim’s red mist style of anger that shocked poor Bill Cole, sum it up.

I agree between not much to choose between them & Darwins. If Darwins had embezzled a workplace as ‘stressed’ & invented an ambiguous illness & gone done a book/film route NO prison term…

Interesting obliquely Angela Harding related post on Our Simon's Insta this morning (liked by her) (sorry for lack of share but insufficiently tech not to risk having my name all over it!)

Such excellent posts from both of you. I agree with both. However…. Although it was indeed stupid to have taken cash that was explicitly intended for the wages and Vroom thinks that “sheer stupidity” and “no sensible argument” proves that she doesn’t have a superiority complex, I disagree. I think she does feel safe and rather smug at being able to deceive people so well because they have been conned by her whole appearance and manner of speech and she also convinces herself that people deserve to be treated like crap. Emotional blackmail has always worked for her. She turns on the tears and becomes an endearing, simpering little girl who has robbed them blind and doesn’t care.

I'm now imagining a sort of Walkers/Darwins mash-up whereby the Walkers decide that, to follow through on the scam and convince everyone that TW was actually as ill as he purported to be, TW fakes his own death, by leaving a bandana, a pair of tweed shorts and well-polished boots on a Cornish beach with a note saying 'Goodbye, cruel world! I can no longer take the malicious doubting of my terminal condition.'

His rowboat, the Tale Tale is discovered, empty, out to sea...

Meanwhile he sneaks back and lives in a smaller house on their extensive rental property and disguises himself by getting a buzzcut, dying it black and growing a moustache, while SW performs grief, claims life insurance, and tells the media they 'drove him to it', transfers large sums of money abroad, and applies for a passport in the name of Baxter Mothman.

Eventually, they are discovered when, in the background of someone's holiday video that went viral because a gull flew off with someone's chihuahua in Barbados, there is clear footage of a dapper, silver haired man in bandana and tweed shorts, climbing out of a fast car with a copy of Beowulf under his arm.

@AbovetheVaultedSky 😅😂🤣🥲 that’s going to keep me chuckling for the rest of the day! Even a sighting of Elvis will be small potatoes compared to that.
Some of us have mused a few threads ago, that Tim will have no choice but to fake his death. Thank you for fleshing it out so perfectly!

Your mentioning the 'chateau' reminded me of the way SW continuously exaggerates for effect (cf her family members recalling how the children were always dressed in the latest designer outfits, boasting about fancy holidays while claiming poverty at work etc). Something that I don't think has been mentioned on these threads is her insistence on calling the repossessed home a farm, or farmhouse, when it's a quite ordinary (for these parts) former Welsh longhouse that's been extended. Even the recent sales details called it a 'cottage' (with around 2 acres of land ... the famous 'farm' 😎). It's the grandiosity of the narcissist writ large. She truly believes her lies, and doesn't think she's done anything wrong - everything is always somebody else's fault. Thing is, we're all looking at it from the perspective of having a fully-working moral compass, a healthy sense of right and wrong. Narcissists' brains don't work in the same way. Normal rules definitely don't apply in the world of NPD.

Maxine purchased the house some years after the Walkers vacated it yet she was receiving parking fines & speeding tickets which must mean the Walkers still had a car or cars registered at their old address. Perhaps a nice Land Rover Defender?

@AbovetheVaultedSky you're on fire today! Brilliant and so funny.

Oh, just noticed a typo -- TW's rowing boat was supposed to be called the Tall Tale! (Though lots of other appealing options. The Saucy Sal? The Knot True? The Fibber?)

.

You'd never know I was procrastinating what I'm supposed to be doing, would you?😀

I think the thing with canoe man that struck me (as a sideways thought) was that if he had subsequently murdered his wife, being dead would be a perfect alibi

Same here re the Burton Court job - imo to have left abruptly does raise questions when taken in conjunction with SalRay's job history!

I'd also like to add my voice to those pondering how those two grifters managed to remortgage/borrow what was presumably a decent amount in the first place/make the monthly repayments before the whole idea of embezzling Martyn Hemmings took root in SalRay's (and/or TimMoth's) mind. I'm guessing in the first instance when they purchased the Forest Row cottage, they were at least both earning a full-time wage.

I appreciate that, back then banks/building societies were far more free with who they'd lend to, too (we experienced some of that ourselves). But nonetheless, by the time they potentially remortgaged Pen y Maes, they must have struggled to show evidence of a household income that could support the repayments...unless SalRay cooked the books...again?!? I suppose if she was syphoning money from the surveying/estate agency business (plus cash from the two sets of parents' accounts), it could have looked as though their income was far greater than it actually was and would have supported applications for further borrowing.

Not sure I believe a word of the Moth investing half the funds from the cottage sale (?) story!

I'm also in the camp who think it highly likely that SalRay plagiarised much of the book(s) (I've only - under duress - read TSP, so can't comment on the others) using sources such as 500 Mile Walkies and out of print stuff that is always going to be hard to prove. It's just all too fragmented and doesn't read as though written by the same person, imo...

As for the whole 'tramps!' business, as @ThompsonTwin suggests, it's really not something people say anymore, is it? I honestly can't recall the last time I heard the term used - outside of TSP - and to actually use it as an accusation to someone's face seems extremely unlikely.

And @Peladon makes a great point about TimMoth not being able to be both tramp and famous poet, which is something that had completely bypassed me previously! Yet more of SalRay's contradictions 🙄

@Uricon2 :"Timoth was happy to have multiple driving offence fines directed to Maxine at the old address"

I think the law requires you to give the DVLA an up to date address.

Do speeding tickets always lead to points on your licence? If so, what happens if you get too many points to drive but aren't aware of it because all the post went to your old address?

And how can you complete insurance applications reliably if any speeding fines wouldn't reach you?

Add to the grandiose claims her saying that her dad was a farmer when he was a stockman, and their pretence of having 'farmed' when they had a couple of sheep and some chickens.

Great post @LibertyLily, the investment before the Welsh house, doesn't sound right to me either. Salray goes into great detail about how the Welsh house, was their dream house. They had thought about it for ten years, not it was all we could afford, because Tim lost money investing with Cooper. Way back there was speculation that the Walkers might have had an endowment mortgage, that might not have worked out (the failed investment?).

I definitely think Salray plagiarised others books. The tramp thing is so unbelievable, such a good point @Peladon. I'm not sure with points on licence, but it's a legal requirement to change your address. I would like to know more about why Salray stopped working at the court, interesting that the family said it was never spoken about. I agree about the grandiose claims @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, she added long distance walker to the portfolio.

Is there any current word on Tim's health? Has he been sighted anywhere out and about around their location? Because if he's perfectly well obviously she can't allow him to be seen but I would have thought if Tim was showing any sign of any degeneration, Sal would be trotting him out at every opportunity to silence the unbelievers.

So no sign of him would seem to reinforce the idea that he's hale and hearty and not being allowed to leave the premises. How long do we think someone with as big a need for admiration as he seems to have is going to stand for that?