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]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 23 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?
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

Who is BC

Bill Cole, the owner of Haye Farm.

I’m sure it’s been brought up before (after a mere 24 threads my memory is a bit patchy for some reason 😂) but at various points in this saga I’ve often been reminded of the journalist Johan Hari.
Acclaimed as an outstanding young writer, won awards, had columns in the Independent. Then someone noticed bits of his writing came from elsewhere - he’d plagiarised it. He denied doing so, but eventually admitted it and as a result he returned the prestigious Orwell Prize awarded to him in 2008 (his entry had also contained material he’d plagiarised). He kept the prize money, though. DH and I read the Indy at the time and I remember it being a huge scandal.

There was a lot more going on with him (fabricated claims in stories, sock-puppet accounts, edits to Wiki entries under a false name) but after a period of ‘reflection’ he’s still going. His latest book, about the new weight-loss drugs, was also criticised for inaccuracies and made-up quotes.

I’m certainly not trying to draw any direct equivalency here but just saying that a shifting relationship with truth is quite a familiar-sounding pattern.

(Oh, and as for Richard O - despite the cuddly House of Games persona let’s not forget he was a major TV exec for decades and very much a media big beast; he’s now pretty much untouchable in publishing thanks to the TMC franchise. He’s seriously clued-up so I suspect he’ll have kept an eye on everything about Salray and their shenanigans)

There’s a question for Chloe about the difference between the book and film’s depiction of them being invited for lasagnes. I have a hunch this is the scene that prompted the phone call to the real Simon Armitage which led to “It’s not real.”, “No, but I am.”
The book depiction was false anyway and Simon doesn’t want to be associated with filth like that even if it isn’t real. I think that’s why the scene was changed.

BeachcombingBrandy
Yes I’m aware of the AMA and will be following it, but thanks for pointing it out. I don’t think that it is appropriate to be asking Chloe about a rival podcast. Anyway, I have now noticed that in the list of references at the top of this thread the BBC Podcast is listed as To be Confirmed. Perhaps the OP will elaborate on this?

Oh good, I'm glad you can watch the AMA. I've searched under BBC sounds and there is nothing related to The Salt Path that comes up, as far as I can see.

What frustrates me the most, if they had told the story of being a couple of people who made some bad decisions which fractured relationships, and this was their journey of acceptance and redemption - this would have been a much more interesting story! We love to hear about people becoming better and learning from mistakes, its such a missed opportunity. But it would have required insight I guess.

@ThompsonTwin Happy to ask the question about LSB

I said a similar thing back along (in the mists of Thread history). If she'd admitted to her mistakes and what she'd done and made the books a series about working your way back, redeeming yourself and rehabilitating yourself through the power of nature and realising that other people also have problems - she could have done it. But she would have had to have been a very different type of writer, and I don't think Sally Walker is capable of such self-reflection.

I don't think it's a 'watching' thing, though -- just that CH will go onto the AMA thread for two hours and respond to as many questions as she can on there, so you'll be able to read the thread afterwards like any other AMA.

I think an AMA is better than a podcast because you can refer back more easily and double check answers. I might not be around as it goes live but I'm looking forward to catching up later with the whole thread.

Just thinking about Simon’s reaction to the film requests … I’d like to know if Penguin approached him when they had the first manuscript and told him that he was mentioned throughout and then gave him a copy to read and give permission for the use of his name? I think they must have done because he said he’d given his “blessing” due their circumstances. Well, he would have known about the “lasagne massage” chapter in the book, so then why was it changed for the film? 🤔

Great. Many thanks.

Wasn't the issue in part that the screenplay referred to him as the Poet Laureate, because it was 'funnier', and he didn't agree to that, because he wasn't PL at the time he did the SWCP walk? For him that was a sticking point, because it was playing around for laughs with an official position he takes seriously, and because Carol-Anne Duffy was PL when he did that walk? Hence the producer saying 'It's not real!' and SA saying 'But I am.'

And also, that while SA was OK with being a running gag in a MS by an unknown, down on her luck debut author who had only got a publishing deal for her hard luck memoir because her story was so unfortunate, with the double-whammy of homelessness and her husband's terminal diagnosis, he definitely took a harder line once she was clearly the reverse of 'down on her luck', having become a bestselling memoirist, made pots of cash, and had a miraculously still hale and hearty DH into the bargain?

Agreed. I won't be around either, so it will be great to be able to read the resulting thread afterwards.

Having said that, given that the thread will be in writing in the public domain, and presumably actionable by someone ill-disposed towards the Observer's investigation and/or CH personally, I imagine she will need to be quite cautious and measured in what she says.

Thanks for asking this - I've been scrutinising BBC Sounds since the weekend for news of its upcoming appearance, but not a dickie bird ... Nothing today either. Boo. Anyone got any ideas - or better still, insider info?!

I can't find the BBC one either. That doesn't mean it's not there - BBC sounds is not the easiest thing to use in terms of finding stuff.

Maybe simply for brevity? The film is already surprisingly long for a film about a walk, coming in at 1h55m. Portraying the Grant scene as it was in TSP would have been quite long in the film and I suppose the production felt the same effect could be achieved with shortened encounter, and indeed exaggerate the RayMoth plight as unwelcome vagrants. I'm just speculating of course but might be an explanation.

I've already asked my one question. Is anyone asking whether Chloe has spoken with SA or Liz Harding?

I haven’t seen the film but every time someone mentions the Grant scene in the book with the massaging ladies descending on Timoth, it reminds me irresistibly of Monty Python & the Holy Grail, when the chaste Sir Galahad arrives at Castle Anthrax and the lascivious Zoot (and her twin sister Dingo) insist on stripping off his chain-mail despite his horrified protestations. It’s just impossible to take it seriously in any way.

Yes I read his public article, so I know the issue he wrote about…. But I’m just wondering if he was given a manuscript to read before it was published, because surely they would need to? If they didn’t and he only knew that he was a running gag afterwards, I think that’s really low because by that point he had no choice but to be gracious and override his own thoughts and feelings for the sake of theirs. I imagine also, that having walked that path himself and documented its many challenges, he had his own private thoughts about their version and was skeptical of it. I was very glad that he gave a firm No to the film producers with regard being referred to in the film as PL and I do wonder if he also said “and you can cut that lasagne and massage scene as well.”
?? I’d like to think so anyway!

They do come off “better” in the film than the book. This would have been the right thing for them to have done but of course it’s not what our grifters really think should have happened.. (even though it didn’t!).

Actually I was wondering too if a possible next step might be something like this (mentioned in post quoted above)? Brand ‘Raynor Winn’ is primarily the narrative of a journey in nature, overlaid with a negative ‘redemption’ theme - eg homelessness / terminal illness / marital insecurities.

She could very well continue this theme with a journey in nature (maybe overseas?), where the overwhelming negative / redemption theme is the notoriety / consequences of previous bad decisions they have made.

Instead of people they meet hurrying away because ‘they are tramps’, they could be hurrying away, or being hostile because of the Walkers’ bad decisions / deceptions / notoriety... the book could explore how they come to terms with this as a couple, and individually, and as members of a wider family… and could feature flashbacks (and fore-shadowing?) of the events that have previously happened re: the writing of the books (probably intended as something inconsequential, and possibly anticipated as giving them a small lump sum) and the subsequent snowballing into becoming very high profile… and why they mistakenly (and understandably?? / foolishly??) chose the path that they did - and about how things have accumulated, and compounded, and reached a crisis point.

In fact, there is a large amount of potential foreshadowing already, which can be included in the new book… the whole episode of the (starting small) alleged thefts that snowballed to the stage that she was shocked to learn they were £64k, which then snowballed (through bad decisions) to evading the law and taking on an eye-wateringly bad debt (who on earth would accept those loan terms unless they were a fool - or desperate).. which then escalated to massive increase in amount owed, loan foreclosure and loss of their house.

It is almost like the cycle starts again! And obviously these flashbacks and foreshadowing can really explore the human side of what it is to make the worst decision possible, in any given situation, and having to live with the steadily worsening consequences of that for many years afterwards. A big dollop of humility - and some stirrings of a blossoming self-awareness and a newly-fledged sense of empathy, and it could be a successful (and redemptive!) book, that continues to reinforce the nature-tragedy-redemption brand…??

Oh - and I have somewhere lurking around in my head that selling film rights can be very lucrative?? I may be making this up, but I have the figure of £1,000,000 in my head (a friend of a distant friend wrote a book and sold film rights, and I have a hazy recollection it may have been in that sort of ball-park…). So they may have more ££ than pp’s have suggested above. But my hazy recollection may be way off - so do carry on, everyone!!

You haven't misremembered @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree, Chloe doesn't make it clear in the podcast, whether Bill Cole knew Tim and Sally's real names or not, before MF contacted him. I am assuming that PRH knew Sally's real name, she would have had to sign contracts and receive payments in her real name (so they knew who she was). I am interested to know about the tenancy at the cider farm, they were so long at Bill Coles and he was so emotionally involved, even considered giving them the farm, it would be interesting to know what names they gave Bill Cole.

They could have signed a tenancy agreement with false names (which you are not supposed to do ) made rent payments directly to Bill Coles bank, payments can show on a bank statement, in the name of the person paying or with a recognised term, Farm rent, for instance. So BC might not have known their real names. I think this will be my question to Chloe, did Bill Cole know Tim and Sally's real names before MF contacted him. I also wondered if Bill was only charging them a small rent, and if their wages covered the rent.

I have friends who are guardians of a property abroad, they live in a house on someone else's property, they work keeping the property in order, they earn their rent, and receive an extra wage on top (they work very hard for their money, top grafters not grifters) I don't know if Chloe can answer this question, but I'll ask, she might not get time, or not answer if Bill Cole doesn't want that information divulged.