Thread 24 : To feel disappointed - and now disgusted and vindicated 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?
Thread 23:www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5475246-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?

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 23 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 23,000 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 (and including a shoutout to our threads), 13th January 2026:

The Walkers: The real Salt Path | The Observer

• The Observer, 18th January 2026:

The Salt Path scandal: a hunch, a hint and six months of ... and Publishers agree The Salt Path crossed a line | The Observer

• BBC Podcast, 28th January 2026 (to be confirmed)

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.

After listening to of The Walkers: The real Salt Path podcast episodes from The Observer 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.

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

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 23 IS FULL

I only like them in soup 😁

I look great in wings and a tutu.

I'm going as Headless Simon. OK, I look absolutely nothing at all like him, with or without a head, but since when has that been a problem?

I'll share all the offferings of cake and scones I'm bound to get with the charabanc, of course.

There's a considerable cohort of anti science, anti vax and anti pharma conspiracy/new age types in this country who bought into the idea that a progressive, fatal neurological disorder could be cured by going on long walks and fresh air in a beautiful landscape. These type of people are easy to con by con artists like Raynor.

I’ll come along in lots of wetsuits which need to be unzipped and peeled off to reveal the girl in the red bikini, then I’ll unzip that and step out in my tortoise costume and strike a yoga pose whilst holding up a cone of chips to a flock of seagulls with Moth’s hairstyle.

I’ll come as the lasagna that Grant served to Raymoth!

I'll come as a wild poo.

I'll come as a non-existent panini.

I'll come as the glumwashing sense of entitlement.

Liking the key non-living objects angle for the Anti-Fan Convention.

Though no one is going to want to sit next to the Wild Poo or Grant's Giant Lasagne on the charabanc, and people might keep sitting on the Non-Existent Panini's seat?

Though I suppose that raises the crucial philosophical question of what a non-existent panini looks like.

Of course, lots of things in TSP turn out to have not existed, so the field is pretty wide there. What might a non-existent diagnosis look like? Someone could come as the non-existent male cafe worker from the Mullion Cove cafe, or the non-existent carpet or letterbox of said cafe? Or, if we're including the sequels, as a non-existent barrel of cider?

I have been watching The Night Manager so was considering the woman who looks for David Cornwell/John Le Carré's house every year. But I'd be worried I wouldn't find the venue ...

I’ve also been watching it and keen to see what you think of the latest series, but don’t want to derail the thread too much!

I’d like to come as a damp squid …or a repetition of headlands (I’ve decided that “repetition” is the collective noun for headlands) - or a distant horizon.
Quite challenging on the costume front though.

I was considering the horizon ,,, but I've picked up on the 'endless'

It is not my thing at all but the actors are so good, and I had relatives travelling in Colombia - so love the shots of the landscape, but also there is a sense of desperation ... the recent history. I had not seen the first series - so went back and watched that. Fun to see David Cornwell in a cameo.

Oh that’s cool that some of your relatives went travelling in Colombia - I’d love to go to South America one day! I think both this season and the previous one started off quite slowly, as they only really got going properly in the second episode. I preferred the first season overall, but still think this one it’s worth watching.

I’d like to come as one of the non existent SWCP walkers who disparaged them for being tramps/old/homeless

I'd like to come as the space under the stairs. Something you can't put your finger on is very fitting I feel.

Am enjoying it all the morr for having waited 9 years.

Oooh, this is only TSP-adjacent but I found it an interesting fact.

The author John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) wrote a book in which he took a real place (Wookey Hole) but invented a fictional owner and attributed a very scurrilous lifestyle to them. Powys was subsquently sued for a considerable amount of money by the real owner for bringing them into disrepute.

So there's a precedent, if any cafe owners wanted to give it a shot.

In my imagination, they look like the following.....Two slices of bread that never agreed to meet, gently toasting the idea of each other in separate universes. The filling is a philosophical debate about whether fillings are necessary at all. Grill marks appear only when you stop looking at them, like memories pretending to be stripes.

I'd come as a (non existent, of course) lightly salted blackberry. No licking me, please 😋 or squidging me into the charabanc floor!

It’s perfectly clear we’re almost all angling to arrive in plain clothes, apart from a badge announcing what non-existent thing we are to point at when someone is crabby we haven’t ‘made more of an effort’. Apart from the Wild Poo, Grant’s Lasagne, the Stripping Wetsuit/Red Bikini Woman Turtle, and the entire cast of Iolanthe.

And shouting ‘Remember I was originally the title character!’

This is actually very interesting and relevant to the TSP/RW/Penguin situation - as I am wondering whether Powys claimed that his writings were "unflinchingly honest" therefore in the non-fiction category or was the book described/advertised as a novel?
Perhaps he should, for example, have followed Thomas Hardy's ploy, naming Dorchester as the fictitious "Casterbridge" in his novel. Powys should perhaps have concocted a fictitious name for "Wookey Hole". Then he would have been OK? Or perhaps not?