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

It's certainly been linked, or copied and included on these threads. I think there's more than one. There's one where they're all sitting down in a row outdoors (walking the Thames Path?) and another where they're standing in what looks like a cloister, all looking at different things?

Maybe one in Iceland, too?

I don't know, but, in her shoes, if I were contemplating my next move, I would find it a very useful source of information about everything from holes in my story to inconsistencies in equipment across supposed stints on the path, and where SM suggests an entirely different timeline, and things I would need to address were I to publish another book where I purport to tell What Really Happened.

She'd be an idiot not to read this, the Reddits, watch the documentary, and listen to the podcasts, unless she's absolutely determined to keep schtum forever, not publish again, and continue to live in obscurity.

There is also this one I found on PSPA website too, which is clearest one of them.

Oh, I don't think I'd seen that one before, @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree.

It seems to make even more nonsense of Dave being all huge and healthy and towering next to fragile, dwindling Moth.

Superficially he looks far less hale & hearty than Moth! As you suggest.

Yes, I remember when photos - noted for inconsistencies - vanished from insta. Or something like that.

Are they labelled there as D&J?

No, but they are on a different photo on Thames Path facebook page for the same fundraiser.

I do remember all the photos posted of them with Dave and Julie so I suppose I didn’t phrase my question well because it’s the friendship aspect that I’m wondering about, if that really exists. I agree that the dying man looks healthy and virile in comparison to Dave.

And the same people were certainly identified by name elsewhere on SW's Instagram, but I think those photos were deleted.

Well, awkward to have your social media suggesting you took a walking holiday in Iceland with your old hiking friends D and J in February 2017 when you claim in TWS it was in September 2019, just before your first (non-?) cider harvest at Haye Farm, after BC was moved to tears at your magic rewilding of his farm, so you thought you could take in a walk to set TW up before winter drove him indoors.

From memory, I still haven't read the books or seen the film, but she describes D & J in an unusually generous way. He is the "big-hearted man" when she has supposedly just bumped into them a few times in TSP. The harmony with J when they wash their hands together, going the wrong way, on the Dorset coast path is very unusual. Sal doesn't mention J's hair, I don't think either - so she's in.

Yesterday, in answer to @Anythingbutheadlands Chloe said:

I've seen photos of them on a PSPA fund raiser with SW and TW but I was not able to trace them because I did not ever find out their real names. I have a strong feeling they would remain supportive of their friends if I did find them but you never know!

Not that I am suggesting we should track them down, but some charabancer sleuth could potentially identify privately & privately let CH know (?) Perhaps - if ethical (?) Guess they are in public domain…

The absence of glumwashing is very conspicuous, I agree -- D and J are the right types, not yompers or too-clean weekend backpackers, and and Dave doesn't have suspiciously soft 'city' hands and Julie doesn't have 'elegant' hair or start talking about highlights.

Though it's never particularly clear why they warm to them so much, as Dave never gets to develop over the three books beyond the Bumper of Book of Northern Cliché, and is given to saying things like 'Just washed our feet at the toilet block. Bloody stink, my feet do', while Julie never appears to say anything much.

Someone definitely had a poke around, based on the suggestion in Landlines that Julie was a counsellor of some kind (although somewhere else she's a remorseless campaigner for the underprivileged?), and that they live in Lancashire -- but didn't get anywhere.

I don't think she would be able to resist knowing what's being said - although I suspect she and Moth won't read directly. More likely they will get a family member (if any are still speaking to them) to follow and read and give a distilled version.

A place near me is putting on a screening of TSP in the village hall, I think at the weekend. A few interesting comments on the local pages, polite but unhappy about the deception, even from a couple of people who had liked the books. It's really out there and something that I don't think Raymoth are going to be able to put back in the box, short, medium or long term.

ETA Sorry, posted too soon. I think OC has behaved entirely properly in not making public things that are should ( even arguably) remain private and Raymoth should be grateful this was picked up now and by someone with ethics, rather than being subject to a good old Fleet Street monstering back in the day.

I’m wondering if the attraction is that Tim and Sal feel superior in some way and don’t need to compete with Dave and Ju and if the latter have been fed the same sob stories as everyone else, I imagine the couple felt quite in awe of them etc
Sally doesn’t really strike me as being a true friend, not with her backstory and conniving character.

My view too @HatStickBoots . Ol' Twinkly Timoth might be very convincing to people who are just ordinary/normal/trusting and nothing I've seen or read about Dave and Julie sounds likely to nourish the well established chip on Salray's shoulder (with no offence to D&J meant at all)

I mean, Jason I is a fairly big, at least known star 'name', loads of entertainment experience including an important role in a world famous film series and he ended up worshipping the ground he walked on.

I know it’s awful @Uricon2 😞 and they don’t show even the slightest traces of guilt in their faces… unless an expert could prove me otherwise. They are sooo entitled. They think they can redeem themselves by bigging up the awareness they rose for CBD and the pitiful charity donations that they think can distract from the bigger picture.

@HatStickBoots I have zero idea of how they did the film publicity and stood on those red carpets, were interviewed on TV with JI and GA etc, fully aware that Our Chloe was conducting a serious investigation. It isn't coolness IMO, either hubris, self delusion or a toxic mix of both.

D is bald and, from all accounts, likes an English fry up!

Do you mean they enjoy two mounds of all-day breakfast. One each?

According to Sal, apart from fry ups, Dave works long hours, is into fell walking and as a keen twitcher he spends time insulating bird boxes as a hobby!

I don’t know but have a feeling Sal was def on our early threads.

I think the PSPA society had the closest knowledge of the harm done by these two malingering and play-acting CBD, when they (the charity) work with and know real people who are really affected (like John). It doesn’t surprise me that they dropped them like red hot shit; and quite possibly some people at the charity were already suspicious.

As for Dave and Julie, that’s still a mystery to me. Sal obviously likes them, although she does prefer Dave: at one point in one of the books she muses on how many questions Julie, a counsellor, asks, and reflects that she herself would never get on with going to a counsellor for that very reason!

What I can’t understand is how nobody has come forward to identify D&J, nor why OC thinks they would stay loyal- if I discovered a friend of mine had this collection of skeletons rattling around in their cupboard I’m not sure I would have much loyalty left to them. Which makes me wonder whether it was a veiled hint from OC; whether there is some financial benefit to D&J from being matey with Sal and Tim; or whether there is some other sort of relationship. They may no longer be friends and simply like their own privacy (I would) but equally it’s fairly astonishing that not one person who knows who one of them really is has tipped off a single journalist or Mumsnet Sleuth! Not a colleague, a counselling client, a neighbour, a shopkeeper, a friend of their kids… it’s remarkable.