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

To add wondering how much they knew about their deception?

But they are positively flaunting Tim! There he stands, a man who, in the very book that the film is based on, purports to be terminally ill with a disease that is, as Sal perpetually muses on, going to reduce his mobility, his ability to swallow or think or do anything for himself - with not so much as a mobility aid or a limp.

Bearing in mind how many years had passed between TSP publication and the film coming out, does it not look like a slap in the face for all those people who worried about Tim and how he was doing, to watch him capering about and sucking up to famous actors?

Do we know who red jumper lady is? No need to share name.

What has all this done to me - I'm not even a sleuth? I have just spent ages poring over photos of heftily-built men from the Lancaster Fellwalkers.

I mean, they're not even my type ...😉

Absolutely, but look at how much they’d previously got away with — Tim did an entire degree, seeing the same fellow-students every day, while telling everyone he was dying, without apparently doing more than having an occasional ‘funny turn’. SW was three books into the ‘Adorable Moth is Dying So We Save Him By Walking’ series, promoting them heavily with the same script, and no one seemed to see anything amiss. On the contrary, readers were lapping it up. And no pesky people who knew about the past seemed to have bobbed, at least no one that anyone listened to.

This needs to be printed and slipped into every copy of her books for sale! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Yes, but the salient words there are 'according to Sal' and when has she uttered one believable word?

Loving all these posts about vertical hair and the elusive D and J. My interest in D and J is partly professional - ever since I heard Sal on LL mocking all the questions that Julie/counsellors ask and thinking, yeah Sal, you don’t want any questions being asked do you?!

I do have a secret fantasy that Sal might seek professional help and end up with me - what a conflict of interest that would be!

I can’t remember whether LL gave any clues about where D and J live - presumably near the PW. Of course, they could have moved since then.

@Freshsocks yes, I was shrinkwrappedinseattle. I promise not to change names again.

@Uricon2 yes that vertical “Firestarter” Prodigy hair is very annoying and contrived and I feel the same way about Sal’s “tight, smug lips” in every photo. Damn them! < cue thunder and lightning crackles >

LL suggested they live south of Lancaster in the Cockerham/Stodday/Glasson Docks/Aldcliffe/Thurnham/Galgate area. 90 mins by train from the PW (Horton-in-Ribblesdale)

So you're saying ... my sacrifice was all for nothing ..😢

Just ‘in deepest Lancashire, an oasis a few miles west of the M6’. I think the only clues to where it might be are that they walk by an estuary with mudflats, near a giant farm that belongs to a dairy conglomerate, and Julie says that planning permission has been granted for thousands of houses on fields nearby. I know some posters made guesses about where this might be, but it’s not an area I know at all.

I'm proud of you @BeachcombingBrandy, I just had a look for expat bird box insulators :)

They are unfindable because of false names. ...just like RayMoth were until CH was told they are Sal & Tim Walker. Unless someone who knows them reveals their names it would be very very hard to ever trace them, hence why CH hasn't. All we have is clues from the books, particularly LL that suggests they live in the Lancaster area.

Is this photo from Salray's Instagram? If it's not been discussed already, digital images contain EXIF metadata, e.g. make of camera and, more importantly, GPS location. Instagram strips out metadata for privacy reasons, but if Salray posted it on a blog or passed any images to the PSPA or similar, we might be able to figure out where this was taken. Maybe Dave bought a round and OC can start from there.

Do you mind me asking where you found the photo? Earlier thread or new find?

You got in there quickly! It's not you is it, Sal?

Müller Dairies are at Skelmersdale, just off the M6, and a £164m regeneration project for Skelmersdale has been approved. Mudflats at the Ribble estuary, 10-15 miles west…

https://www.placenorthwest.co.uk/tawd-valleys-164m-skelmersdale-regeneration-approved/

ETS I don’t know the area personally

Just read a Telegraph article about the publication of Winter Hill book.

I was amazed tbh.

Then at the very end of the article it says,

The book is now set for publication on Oct 22 of this year, according to Penguin’s website.

So an article of bumfluff akin to tabloid junk, then!

Salt Path author to publish new book delayed by ‘distress’ over scandal https://share.google/Hp3GQfpWlcfbgHENy

It seems about 6 months behind the curve! Clickbait at its finest.

Amazon

I think we just both wondered where it materialised from so cross posted. If that’s what you mean by quickly?

I didn’t fancy trawling through 22 threads to find the first time it was posted. I haven’t personally seen it before so wondered where it was unearthed from.

Not Sal. But I would say that I suppose. But I’m not.

It was a feeble joke on my part as the first thing that crossed my mind when I last posted was that Sal would want to know where the image was published and ask/pay for it to be taken down.

I don't know where it came from @ipathi, I've been following the threads consistently, not seen that image before. It is incredible how correspondents keep finding new images, even after months of researching. I think finding Dave and Julie has become a bit of a charabanc joke, I imagine they are called Dawn and Pete or Gary and Sue, they look like kindly people, they should have people who stand by them. I just hope that if this couple are, Tim and Sally appreciate it and don't treat them as badly as Bill Cole, who thought about gifting them his farm, imagine if he had done that and then these revaluations appeared. Anyone posting could be Salray :)

Funny to think that if this had happened a few years later, we might be speculating that Sally had spent a while prompting gpt to produce some images of her" friends."