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 learned the other day that there is such a thing as friends for hire! There’s a new film out that is this very subject. However, in this case they met too long ago for it to be like that.
Where did these photos come from? It looks like the sort of shot a local newspaper might do after the charity event, or was it a fan who spotted them in the pub?

As somebody on these threads recently remarked, BC was possibly not welcome to join Sal and Moth on their LL walk because if he had joined them and watched Moth walking 13-14 miles a day on the PW, he might have questioned the veracity of Moth's health claims (the Doc's only given me a couple of weeks until Xmas) and also wondered why they hadn't managed to produce any cider at Haye Farm over the previous 3 years! (Moth's health comes first....)

Surely D&J must have twigged that Moth's illness was not as severe as they had been told or described in all the books. D&J joined them for 2 weeks on the PW walking something in the region of 130 miles at a pretty good pace. After Sal and Tim took the train back to Horton-in-Ribblesdale they then appear to have polished off the rest of the PW to Edale (98 miles) in a week according to Sal's IG page! Quite some going.

No photos of D&J doing the walk appeared on Sal's IG feed, which is a bit odd as photos existed of 'the gang'doing the Laugavegur trek in Iceland in 2019 and walking the Thames Path in 2024. Must be a perfectly logical explanation I guess!

D&J play an important role in all 3 books. They are portrayed as honest, down to earth, decent folk from oop North and the friendship they have with Sal and Moth, in a subtle way, reinforces the credibility of Sal's account of the walk and Moth's miracle recovery from CBD as the DAT scan lights up like a Christmas tree.. D&J are a metaphorical rubber stamp of Sal's veracity. The reader asks himself, well if they are such good friends after all this time since they first met on the SWCP at Tyneham Cap in Aug 2014, then Sal and Tim must also be decent folk who are telling the truth. If D&J did ever smell a rat and realise that Sal and Tim were selling the public a pack of lies, then why did they go along with the whole farrago. Surely that would also make them willing accomplices in the tale of snake oil deceit and anything but honest..

Gosh yes @ThompsonTwin you've nailed it! It’s exactly as you say, “the rubber stamp”, a subliminal message. I agree with you. I know I should read all three books again to refresh my memory but I can’t bring myself to do more than glance at random pages here and there as there are too many books and so little time…. I begrudge wasting precious book reading time on these godawful things but this means that I can’t fully remember the incidents. Of course those incidents are fictionalised anyway. I remember them showing concern for Moth in the book but I wonder if they did in real life? They must have believed it all otherwise why would they do the walks for charity together? Sorry my thoughts go to and fro… it’s confusing. Trying to make sense of all this is quite difficult.

Considering the dynamic between the Walkers, I was interested in the following interview. It is the section about their 'wild adventures' which always seems to be the same old incident. What interested me though was how many times she said the word 'follow' in relation to Moth - she would always follow him. From about 18.53:

Good point!

She would be following Moth on the path (to avoid him dropping behind and because he was carrying PD's SWCP guidebook) and in life....

Photo of Moth walking through woodland on the SWCP near Abbotsbury in Dorset

It's intriguing isn't it? Something similar was discussed miles and miles ago and I flagged an inconsistency whereby RW would claim Moth struggled, foot dragging etc and she had to wait for him vs her following him and his footprints in the dust. No doubt she'd explain it away by bringing up the cure of walking.

To add to the above. Sal's bare-faced lying is off the scale about Haye Farm - the exact opposite of what they did there (very little). I did not know she gave Bill her phone no. on Twitter.

It is like the Thames Walk photos shared yesterday. He is loving it - all arm around the lady and backwards cap! I am not sure if it is the same year but, on one of these walks, he is meant to walk to the finish with 40 PSPA supporters - but he collapses and an ambulance comes. Yet when Sal is then asked about it in a TV studio she says that he is fine.

This picture has given me flashbacks to an ex of mine who would say 'let's go out and walk the dogs' and then ALWAYS walk so far in front of me that we couldn't have a conversation or admire the scenery together. It was HIM walking and ME walking but we might as well not have even been together.

The ridiculousness of it really came to light when, walking by the Thames in London, I popped into a shop to get a bottle of water and he didn't realise for three miles. He got so lost that he had to ring me to find out where I was.

I wonder if that is indicative of Sal and Tim's relationship?

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat oddly enough I had an ex who did similar.

Unless it's a very narrow path, DH and I walk side by side. We certainly would on the path in that image.

Yes, thank you and sorry you had to 'follow' in his path. It is another illustration of what I have been gathering bits and pieces about for a while. I think the closest we have to the truth is of course in her work of fiction, HNTDDD:

When she is awaiting arrest by the police, this is what she says to herself - "Just remember Ellie, remember this, it's for him".

I just listened, with a lot of eye rolling and wincing, to the plastic survival bag story. What a load of "that never happened" BS. No one would get any sleep in conditions that she describes. And a plastic survival bag with holes and filling up with water is no longer a survival bag, it's just a bag.

If it's got holes in, it's not even a bag. It's just a bit of plastic,

I also don't remember that photo but I've discovered its location,
The Ship pub, Mortlake
https://share.google/kh9L79nkPC2QM0zzB
See the River Thames out the window and see the same window design, river view, and and flowers in this pic on Google reviews of it.
Presumably on their Thames path PSPA fundraising walk.

I feel like a real sleuth now, I've discovered something!!
(I zoomed in on the menu and thought it said Ship)

Presumably it was an Instagram photo as it's square? (The pic w D+J)

Looks like the publisher has the same brass neck as Salray. They've opted for the 'say nothing and it'll all calm down eventually' route. I suppose they still see her as a cash cow and reckon she'll continue selling whatever. I'm wondering if the Observer revelations have gained any traction outside the UK, perhaps foreign sales are still buoyant enough to justify carrying on?

There is an interesting connection there. Mortlake is the end of The Boat Race and where the writer Derek Tangye and his wife Jeannie lived before moving to south west Cornwall. He wrote The Minack Chronicles, was the neighbour of John Le Carré, and had a flower farm above the lighthouse Tater-du.

I’ve read most of his books, more than once and have been moved to tears as well as joy. The only one I haven’t got at the moment is the one written for and about his wife. Now that is a love story.

@OneThousandThreads your’e very clever to have found that, thank you!

I will listen the video and see how far I can get my eyes to roll too! Yes, the wincing is a real thing! Strong physical reactions to these people. If she does do a book tour in future, I hope she gets pelted with rotten tomatoes, just like in the olden days.

Rather like the story?

That Scottish mountain story is an infuriating mishmash of the same old script (she uses exactly the same expression for the mountain, 'a tsunami of rock', in TWS, ditto Moth 'pushing his huge size twelve feet' against the tentpole) and her usual 'getting her own details slightly wrong' compared to the published text she's rehashing.

She says in that interview that her parents thought she was 'going somewhere else', but in TWS they knew where she was going, to the north of Scotland, but thought it was with TW's entire family.

She uses the name of the mountain repeatedly in TWS, but I bet she didn't know how to pronounce it and couldn't be bothered to look it up.

And that guff about the 'voice of the mountain' calling them and then turning out to be deer calling to one another? Red deer don't make any noise that could be described as 'singing'. The males roar in rutting season, and the females sort of miaow to their newborn fawns in spring, but none of that sounds at all like 'singing' or anything as mystical as SW's description, in which they're being drawn hypnotically towards the mountain, which she'd also dreamed about on the train to Scotland.

In fact, stripped of the purple prose, this was an unusually immature and sheltered sex-drunk 20 year old going on holiday, with subpar borrowed equipment, with a first boyfriend who is not that nice to her, making her climb mountains with a fully-loaded, ill-fitting rucksack, and apparently unconcerned that her shoulders are welted and bloody, attracting the sympathy of the entire campsite, that she doesn't want to go to this particular mountain, or that he almost got her killed when they did.

An early radio interview from April 2018

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p063j46g?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Not really anything new. RW seems very relaxed and very easily bats away potentially awkward questions that seem more interrogating from the host's Northern Irish twang. But the host seems to think TSP has no self-pitying! What interested me though is near the end he asks "how is Moth?" RW says he's doing fine, much better than he should be according to consultants.

I wondered how that tallies with what we learn in TWS around the same time period. Isn't he meant to be losing his memory and getting increasingly confused. No surprises here, just another case of two seperate versions of SalRay's fictional universe.

Yes I used to read them going to and from work on the Tube. Jeannie is the last one I read but I think there may be more. This is when I read 500 Mile Walkies, as well. I only read books about the SWCP when I was in London!

Whereas it struck me that in lots of the walking scenes in the film adaptation, GA is often significantly in front of JA.

I am a big fan of his brother’s books - Nigel Tangye. Now there’s a man who can write about Cornwall.

In all this, I feel Sal’s writing is just so ‘ok’ & poor in places. It’s as if we’ve forgotten what good, well crafted narrative looks like. Derek was so popular in the 70s & I loved reading about his & Jeannie’s love affair, with the donkeys…:)

Derek’s wife’s ‘Meet me at the Savoy’ - sort of autobio - is well worth a read if you can find a copy. London & Cornwall.

And he then allegedly forced her to follow him off the mountain by going down a waterfall, but of course she would follow!

Reading your post made me think of the recent news story of the Austrian guy who was charged with negligent homicide for leaving his girlfriend exhausted on a mountain.

If she does a book tour I’d suggest a few of us get the charabanc fired up and attend one of the events.