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

And probably sick of people coming up to him thinking that he must be "Moth" Walker.

Yes, that was fascinating. If they’re in her handwriting that a handwriting expert has determined was almost certainly written by her, I suppose she can’t deny writing them, but has to go with the ‘I was suffering from a fugue state at the time, from sleeping in my car and eating only two sandwiches and a sausage. Later I would hear voices and hide in cupboards like a shy, woodland creature, too fragile to cope with the cruel world… So it looks like my handwriting, but I’ve no memory of writing them! Bad Sal wrote them!’

It’s shocking how much they can get away with & got away with.

Chloe confirming too, what we already knew, it’s very doubtful they did the walk in full at all & not at time they said.

Interesting more to come on HNTDDD!

What an exciting evening! So many great questions. Lots of new revelations!

The statement on the RW website remains the same, with Sally denying writing confession letters despite conceding that she forgot… hmmm.

Bill Cole asked to join them on their walk and they refused. They just treated him with contempt.
Chloe would like to read OWH which surprises me a little. I know it has curiosity value but won’t it just be full of untruths again? I wonder if the draw is in the desire to fact check it? I’m mulling over the idea that it will be published, sell well and she will come out of hiding.

I thought it was interesting she’s been offered a large sum to tell her truth.

I feel sad all over again for BC wanting to walk with them and never being invited to meet.

Prob because they weren’t doing much walking (?)

They went off frequently telling people they were walking, I suppose they might have just stayed in a hotel stuffing their faces with fudge and biscuits.

I haven’t much to contribute but very much enjoying your discussion and the AMA was super interesting!
@DisappointedReader wishing you and family well. Also to Mr @Uricon2 and anyone else who January is being unkind to.
@TheCandidPoet what was your name previously?
been wondering if our medical correspondent Mauvish is with us under another name.

Sal's IG feed suggest they walked the PW in 21 days, averaging 13-14 miles a day which is pretty good going (twice what they averaged on the SWCP).

They spent 2-3 days with Dave and Julie after taking a train from Horton -in-Ribblesdale to Lancaster so Moth could go to A&E to get his broken ring finger seen to. More likely that the walk was pre-planned including the visit to stay with D&J again and they headed back to their place half way on the PW for some lengthy R&R.

All the jeopardy in the walk (finishing at FW/impulsive decision to walk back to Cornwall after finishing the PW) appears to be completely fabricated. They may well have spent time in B&Bs and hotels.

I think she’s only denying ‘the letter’, ie the email to her sister, which is deniable, because all they have is an unsigned, undated printout — presumably the email account to which it was sent has long ceased to exist since her sister’s death, even if we knew the accounts it was sent from and to, so there’s no way of authenticating it.

I assume SW hasn’t denied writing the other, handwritten letters addressed to her mother, because they’re in her writing, possibly signed, dated, postmarked etc, and too hard to deny. (And in fact a handwriting expert has said it was ‘highly probable’ they were written by her.) So she ‘doesn’t remember’ writing them.

I think it’s another example of what the unscrupulous can get away with around a well-intentioned person by just not seeming enthusiastic about an offer of help. Like the initial offer of help from the young cider-makers.

BC thought he was offering to do something nice — to meet them on their long walk, presumably bring them supplies or anything they needed, check for himself whether TW, about whose health he worried, was struggling — offer to drive them to a doctor if needed.

But of course to the Walkers it was an unwelcome ‘check up’ that would have required them to agree to be at specific places at roughly specific times, and, depending on where BC was planning to meet them, might have involved walking they didn’t plan to do. And, if he encountered a TW who was apparently capable of walking a very challenging trail at a reasonable clip, might have wondered why he wasn’t capable of the less taxing job of making cider?

It was definitely fabricated as this article from Penguin shows. It mentions that Sal will shortly walk the length of the country (LL walk incorporating PW). No suggestion of just doing the Cape Wrath trail:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/raynor-winn-interview-salt-path-wild-silence-author

Thanks for this. Out of interest, has anyone ever tried emailing as they suggest:

What did you think of this article? Email [email protected] and let us know.

It says she hadn't written a word before 2016. We now have the Wiki page, etc. I have not had an acknowledgement when I have emailed anyone, so far.

To catch up with Paula Vennells, at the PO enquiry, she would have to say "I can't remember" or "I don't recall" more than 100 times.

Thank you for reminding me of this, I’d forgotten! I was reading so quickly and haven’t gone back over it. I can’t understand this. Firstly, as I think we all agree, her truth is bound to be full of excuses and probable blame shifting. It’s Moth’s Diagnosis that is the worst lie of all. We have the facts now about how they lost their house and we know what type of people they are, so we don’t really need to see her getting paid vast sums of money to break down in tears and tell the reporter that she did it for Moth, or the parents didn’t like him or that was addicted to stealing blah blah blah. There is a duty of care to just clarify that he does not have CBD/S. Hang their heads in shame and then f*off. As of now though, the books do need to show a disclaimer somehow without going to all the cost of sacrificing the materials to produce new copies in order to display it. A printed sheet of paper at the booksellers and obviously big headers where it is sold online will do the job.

Oh, I’d be surprised if she wasn’t offered a big chunk of money for a ‘tell all’ interview — it wouldn’t be by an investigative journalist like CH who was interested in the facts, more like ‘The Big Interview’ in the Guardian, where some big cheese or formerly big cheese talks about their addiction or doping or bribe-taking or MH difficulties or whatever. it might even be a chat show?

But maybe she’ll leave it until she has a book to promote, to monetise it fully? Whether that’s OWH or some putative ‘I can’t remember doing half the things they say I did’ book.

One thing I'm still a bit unclear about is the original neurologist visit on 19/6/2015. In the podcast the neurologist who talks to Chloe says that the letter from the neurologist dated 26/6/2015 does not suggest that Moth has CBS/CBD.

However, the final paragraph seems to me to suggest that he does:

I mentioned to him that the PSP Society provides information about corticobasal syndrome/corticobasal degeneration but emphasized that much of the information he would encounter if he researched the matter would pertain to patients with more severe disease than his own.

I think it has to be looked at in the context of the whole rather tentative paragraph. Just above that it says that "none of the main neurodegenerative syndromes fit very well" and ... "his condition most closely resembles the corticobasal syndrome"..."but it is clear that he is affected very mildly.

If you look at the paragraph before that, it’s not really anything as firm as a diagnosis. Mostly he’s ruling stuff out, and saying it isn’t idiopathic Parkinson’s, then says ‘none of the main neurodegenerative syndromes fit very well’ before saying he’s explained to Mr Walker that his condition ‘most closely resembles’ CBD, but that he’s clearly very mildly affected given the long history, and that while he’s sending info about the PSPA charity, it will mostly be relevant to people much more seriously affected. And that he sees no issue with TW starting a degree course.

So it’s more ‘Look, I can’t yet make a clear diagnosis from these symptoms. Here’s what it’s definitely not. It’s most like CBD/S, but you’re a really atypical, unusually mild case if that’s what you have, given your medical history. I’m sending you info about the charity, because that’s the best fit, but it’s only really going to be relevant to someone far more seriously affected. You’re fine to start a degree.’

Since July we have talked online for seven months, had two major newspaper articles and a number of spin-offs, a podcast and documentary and two written rebuttals.
In all this time there has not been sight nor sound of Sally/Raynor or Tim/Moth.
There can’t be much more for us to say.
But surely eventually their heads must come up above the parapets.
i hope this thread will remain open. I will continue to check it as I await that day.

I guess what I am trying to ascertain is, based on the letter, is there any way that Sal and Moth could have left the consultation with the impression that although very mild and atypical, Moth did have something akin to CBS/CBD?

Clearly it was very mild and he wasn't told that he only had a couple of years to live. So at best they massively exaggerated/distorted what the neurologist told them, at worst they deliberately misunderstood/misrepresented the diagnosis to imply that Moth did have CBS/CBD.