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

That would be so much fun. A Beano style charabanc with Wacky Races style attachments all over it for the purpose of firing rotten fruit at the offending persons.

😒🤨😒
The way she launches into that first sighting of Tim in the canteen again and the plans for their future. At 18? Yes, let’s buy an old heap together and do it up. It’s implied that they sat together and mapped out their entire future in the college canteen at age 18, isn’t it?
I’ve had to pause at the point where she starts talking about her agitated, sleepless nights in the Polruan flat. I know where this is leading to and I need to brace myself for the avalanche of bullshit that is about to…. Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrggghhhh!!!!! Help!

ONLY if I can still come dressed as the entire cast of Iolanthe.

Absolutely. We can also invite that cast along with us!

Sal doing a book tour for OWH. Now that really would redefine the meaning of the term jeopardy! Particularly if they ever open the forum to adhoc questions from the audience!

Yes, and in Boscastle in June 2025 she was still bolstering the Raynor Winn Brand with how they were always going to do the Coast to Coast Walk. She is doing this to flog OWH but the interview is peppered with lies - like Wainwright;s book had been published about 8 years before she says.

They only seem to have a sprinkling of significant incidents to sell - but she certainly uses and embellishes those few.

I was highly amused at CH's response in the AMA to the question about how she'd ended up being booked by the Dulverton Festival after SW had pulled out, when she said that SW had 'insisted' she needed a bigger space than was being offered, so the organisers had 'commandeered the village church'!

Yes, @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree -- that was a horrible story. The trial must be coming up soon. I think for me it seemed such a needless death, that was what is so awful. The guy had cellphone coverage so had no reason to leave her, and they'd already had a flyby from a helicopter, but he'd said they were fine and near the summit, and when he turned the ringer on his phone back on, he had several police messages and calls checking on their safety.

I think the particularly awful thing was that even if he did, for some reason, think he needed to leave her to get help, he didn't take the most elementary precautions to ensure her survival while he was gone -- he didn't put her into their tent, wrap her in the emergency blankets they were both carrying or even take off her rucksack. She died alone in the dark and cold, still wearing her rucksack and carrying a snowboard.

That goes without saying. You could wear your shepherd/fairy//grenadier guard/peer etc costumes one on top of the other, and do a gradual striptease like the woman in the red bikini (well as described by SW -- I feel sure in reality she actually just took off her wetsuits in the ordinary, graceless way anyone takes off a wetsuit), leaving you wearing only a fragment of chiffon and glitter, as a fairy dressed for a warm evening at the Minack.

It interested me - the last paragraph - that you use the phrase "apparently unconcerned". This is how I perceive the dynamic where she has to make up for the deficit because he is so self-absorbed.

This was corroborated by the niece describing Tim's fastidious attention to polishing his boots even though Sal could be pleading prostrate on the floor before him.

You did well to find the pub @OneThousandThreads so presumably after the walk they went for a meal with Dave and Julie, I thought it might have been a Weatherspoons :)
I am going to be a bit rude here, but I don't think Dave and Julie, are the most intelligent people. I don't think Julie is a counsellor. @Anythingbutheadlands and I have looked extensively, of course not just in the name Julie. Maybe she has a community role helping people, something like that. They most likely don't realise that they are being used, Salray could have spun them a whole other tale. They might not have even read the articles or listened to anything negative about their friends, I don't usually buy the Observer, subscribe to Apple or Sky, I've had to go out of my way to read or watch things.

I don't think they are necessarily dishonest people @ThompsonTwin, I think they will probably be feeling they are being loyal. Raymoth are experts in manipulation, and I feel Salray could run circles around this pair, made them feel that they are the people who know the real Sally and Tim. I could be wrong of course, but my feeling is that they believe in Tim and Sally, and think that they know the real truth about them.

Same article in The Times today as appeared in yesterday's DT about the delayed release of OWH. Old news but could it be that the agent has contacted the press after CH's podcast release to stir up public interest in OWH ahead of further publicity?

Salt Path author Raynor Winn releases new book — on walking alone

Sal calls ‘Julie’, ‘June’ in other places. Could she be a J name? Any clue here?

Yes thanks for sharing and looking at the Daily Telegraph heading shared by @SimonArmwrestler last night, as well, it looks like the publisher, or agent, has sent out a press release as if this is news. Fortunately, The Times also has a "The Plot Thickens" article about the scandal at the foot of the article. So let's hope it backfires and alerts even more readers to the thefts and deceit.

I don't think we are ever going to find them, @PinkPanther57, image recognition doesn't turn up anything, and we have searched every name. They are probably like me, no social media, I'm not anywhere online, my real name wouldn't turn up anything and there are no images of me. They might reveal themselves at some point, or someone who knows them might identify them.

In follow up, “no one disputes he has a neurological condition” - interesting…

Yes, I have a feeling something will turn them up eventually…

Given the Telegraph's source of info was Penguin's website, I don't even think it was a press release, just a journo rehashing old info to get some clicks.

I think you are bang on the money.

I know appearances can be deceptive but if I was put on the spot I would say Dave was something like an HGV driver, a security guard or a nightclub bouncer while Julie ran a sweet shop or had a part time voluntary role as a lollipop lady!

If you read that 'Scottish wild adventure' passage in TWS with that in mind, the dynamic (obsessed, drunk-on-his body 20 year old SW, unusually sheltered and who has never been away from her parents overnight before, who will literally do anything to be with a comparatively unconcerned TW, who is more focused on doing what he wants on holiday) is very clear, and accepted as normal by them both.

The Spanish girls at the campsite after the first day when TW bounded ahead up up a mountain while SW struggled after him ('I couldn’t give in, couldn’t be that whingeing, whimpering girlfriend and ruin his longed-for trip') are horrified by her bloody shoulders, rubbed raw by a too-heavy rucksack that TW borrowed from a friend, and unimpressed with TW:

‘What sort of boyfriend is he? Making you drag a weight like that about.’

The Spanish girls were crowding round looking at my dismal shoulders.

‘I wanted to come.’

‘Ha, really.’ They took the sponge off me and slowly and carefully bathed the raw skin, picking out the threads of green shirt.

‘It’s not my rucksack – I borrowed it. It doesn’t really fit me.’

‘Never borrow kit for the hills, it always causes pain.’ They smoothed the skin down with antiseptic cream.

No indication whatsoever that TW feels any concern for her, either struggling up a mountain after him or her injuries (which he can't have avoided seeing, as SW walks back to the tent without her top to let the air get to the wounds), or that she might not want to put on the same rucksack onto raw shoulders the next morning.

Seen like this, the whole 'mystical night in the plastic bag' episode is a desperate attempt that she may even believe herself to make a trip with someone unsympathetic, and who is auditioning her as 'outward bound girlfriend', sound like some kind of fated blood bond.

Is she still trying to please him, years later? Is that what all the thefts are about? He's a free spirit and she's stumbling along behind him trying to make sure she's not the 'whining, whimpering wife who is ruining his wild, free life' or something?

Yes, thanks for sharing that because I haven't read it and that is generous of you. Gosh, it sounds almost biblical, with Mary and Martha sponging the wounds - I had no idea. Here you have her setting herself as a martyr to a noble cause - where it is really an obsession.

Throughout these discussions I have never wanted to let either of them off the hook. I think she was already light-fingered - it would have been interesting to know more about Burton court and I still have some hopes for BBC Wales uncovering more, but it is all such a long time ago.

It is clear to me, however, that he is high maintenance. Attention, validation and entitled to the good things of life. A lot of energy is needed to sate that void. Returning to HNTDDD, Chloe tells us:

Ellias is cleverer than anyone else and her only motivation, the thing that drives her, is making things right for her husband, Baxter

Oooh….. yes I remember that passage from the book. The real Tim would surely have been furious to have been written about like that, even if it were true, wouldn’t he? This all sounds more and more like Sally is the covert narcissist in this duo.
At this point in their life there was no reason for Sally to be suffering from the effects of bad equipment. What is this all about??
Edit: is this a punishment for Tim to be portrayed this way?

Also, I hadn’t read the post with the real life incident of the other couple and the poor girl who died. How horrifying 😞

Was unable to read the Telegraph article (without signing up) but we do have a subscription to the Times so I clicked on "sign in" and was able to read the article and the comments.
None of the 20 plus responses were complimentary. One was a one-worder ("Shameless"). I got the impression that those responding were fully aware of the exaggerated claims re. "Moth's" health. Some were very critical of the fact that the publishers appear determined to "cash in" on the undoubted success of TSP by proceeding with the launch of OWH.
But I for one am well aware that, as RO pointed out in a recent podcast, 2 million (TSP sales) might seem a good number but in a population of 60million (or is it now 70mil?) all this hoo-hah re a story about a long walk pales into insignificance. Most of of the UK population simply don't care.

I get the feeling that Salray thinks that she is cleverer than everyone else, but has great big chip on her shoulder. I agree with you thinking Salray is a narcissist @HatStickBoots, I have a close female relative who is a narcissist, Salray exhibits the same behaviours. My relative cultivates people like Salray does, for their usefulness to her. She particularly likes people who are not as clever as she is, she despises those who have had opportunities she hasn't. Salray is not nice unless she wants something, my relative has boasted to me about how she uses peoples sympathy, she said to me they think "Poor little thing, she's got a broken wing."

Well, she never criticises him at all. He’s the effervescent, sexy free spirit she’s trying to be worthy of. She puts any implicit criticism of his treatment of her into the mouths of the Spanish girls, who just don’t understand their mystic bond and probably have assertive ideas about not wanting to spend their holidays bleeding and stumbling up summits, laden down, after their less-special, less ‘wild’ boyfriends. It’s her badge of worthiness, the way she knows they’re meant to be together.

What I think you can see in SW’s description of this trip is that nature is TW’s thing, hence it becomes hers. Had he been a biker, she’d have been steeling herself on his pillion. Had he actually been an eco protester, she’d have been chained to a tree on the route of a bypass with him. Had he been a poet, she’d have been sitting adoringly in the front row at spoken word events.

She’s an unusually young, terribly sheltered, very naive 20 year old, and he’s the only thing that’s ever happened to her. She’s going to adopt all his enthusiasms, even if all she really wanted to do was hold hands in cafes and admire his plaits. And probably believe they were hers all along.

The more I look at the chronology of their walk in LL, the more unlikely it seems that they walked all 268 miles of the PW:

• Sal's IG feed suggests they started the PW on 18 July at Kirk Yetholm and finished at Edale on 8 Aug

• during the walk they took at least 4 days off to visit Newcastle (from Haltwhistle) and Lancaster (from Horton-in-Ribblesdale)

• so that implies they walked the 268 miles of the PW in 16 days at an average of 17 miles a day!!!

• D&J walked with Sal and Moth from Kirk Yetholm to Greenhead (72 miles) before returning home to Lancaster. It seems this section took at least a week and maybe more (D&J had two weeks holiday to fill)

• there is a photo of Moth at High Cup Nick on 28 July which implies they polished off the remaining 168 miles to Edale in 8 days averaging 21 miles a day!

• Sal says that when they visited Newcastle the streets were full of revellers for the Euro football finals (England v Italy). However, the final took place on 11 July, a week before they started the PW on 18 July!!!

I think we can safely say that Sal and Tim didn't walk all 268 miles of the PW between 18 July - 8 Aug as claimed on her IG feed and in LL!