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

i wonder if OWH is going to be publicised simply as 'from the best selling author of The Salt Path' to pick up all those uncritical readers who may not even have read TWS and LL but who read and adored TSP and have no interest in 'a load of media fuss' about the author?

I agree @RueMouffetard, Sally would have been into whatever Moth was. I suppose to be fair it's often what women do in relationships, especially young women, but Salray takes it to an obsessive level. This example with the rucksack, Salray isn't criticising Moth, she is eliciting more sympathy for herself. It's interesting that Salray has been portrayed as shy, yet she has been interviewed and displayed to the public, even gigging.

Salray wants you to see her as this shy child of nature, yet she's putting herself out there even more than is necessary (not now of course) I didn't read the books before the scandal, but I totally understand people putting how horrible she was, down to her having been hard done by and bitter that her husband was dying. Salray is probably quite happy with Dave and Julie, they are not as clever as her, so she can manipulate them, Julie though pretty doesn't seem to attract Moths attention.

I see quite a lot of similarities between Salray and myself, I must point out, only in upbringing and education (though I did finish my higher education studies, alongside being a mum) Lots of you posters are obviously more intelligent, better educated and well read than I am, but I don't have a problem with that. I think it's a different story with Salray, she might play on the being humble when it suits her, but also wants to be special. She probably couldn't socialise well with lovely Ruth Saberton, who wanted to talk books, Salray goes about her writing in a completely different way, RS I should imagine is far more knowledgeable than Sally, I don't think they would have much common ground.

That's a good point @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, about future marketing, if it happens. They might just bypass the critical readers.

Stop giving them ideas! I fear the devil's avacado has lost its ripe firmness.

Oy, my devil's avocado is as plump and delightful as ever!

Good shout.

Maybe someone, somewhere, is saying: my exes were called Space Raccoon and Vroomfondle's Waistcoat.

The Spanish girls are as real as Grant’s blonde bevy of beauties to my mind. My feeling is Moth has a roving eye but she doesn’t want to tell us about the reality…

I wonder what, if any, new light the BBC Wales podcast will shed on the whole sorry saga.

I suspect it will just rake over some of the same ground that Chloe has already covered without containing any new earth shattering revelations.

Hope I'm proved wrong and we get some juicy insights into Sal's time at the White House Hotel in Abersoch, interviews with school and sixth form college contemporaries in Burton-on-Trent and the icing on the cake - a warts and all interview with D&J from oop North!

This is very true, but what she writes, what she says and what she actually thinks and feels might be entirely different. There’s Sally and there’s Raynor. We do have the spoken opinions of her family to back up what we have read and heard her say about her feelings for Moth but I do think that her book accounts serve another purpose too for the reader. It’s her voice, not Moth’s, which is speaking to us. It’s her, Raynor, whom we are befriending as we read the story and invest ourselves emotionally. Interesting point about the Grant beauties and the Spanish girls being completely fictional. Whether they are or not, their inclusion and their script for the reader is intentionally to draw our sympathy for her, as always. She wants us to think of her as a plain little sparrow in a relationship with peacock. Her first person narrative does express her feelings for Moth, we look at him through her gaze, this is definitely for the benefit of the female reader I think. On the one hand we have all of her flattering love and emotional turmoil written for the reader and on the other we have her written accounts with dialogues between her and other characters. This dialogue and the scenes themselves have been carefully constructed to enable her to show the feelings she might repress. Tim would be angry if people thought he was a heartless git and Sally would never say so… but the characters she invents just might. The reason I thought of covert narcissism is because of her constant desire to be seen as a victim because she can twist people like that. I also know somebody (my mother actually) who has very strong opinions about things but won’t say them directly to a person’s face. Instead, she pretends that somebody else said them to her and she is just relaying what they said. It makes me wonder if Sally writes the dialogue that she would like to say but daren’t and Tim won’t be angry because that’s not how Sally feels, it’s what the Spanish girls said. They can be her mouthpiece.

I haven’t restarted the video yet, but one thing I forgot to mention from the bit I did watch, was how she didn’t mention at all that Tim found any of it difficult considering all the melodrama that the reader was subjected to. She talked about them being homeless, terminally ill and yet walking the entire path and how good it was as though it was easy.

For me, the most interesting thing, because not covered previously, was what Chloe said about the White House Hotel, Abersoch:

I believe she worked there for quite a while. 'Anne' her niece told me she understood that Sally allowed family to stay there for free. The lady who sold it around 2000 said Sally was still working there when it was sold on. I am hoping that if the BBC Wales series has a contribution to make it may be to unpick this story - because family members told me they suspected she might have been fired but I could find no evidence of that.

There is still no news on BBC Sounds. Apart from this and the short video on HNTDDD, which was all Chloe said was yet to come, I guess "That's all folks!"

It’ll come! Don’t worry.
I bet she was fired. They’d be losing money too if she was allowing people to stay for free. I wonder who and why? Another thought, nobody who stayed in their barn has come forward. Were there any or was it just Moth’s parents?

My late DDad worked for the Tangyes (Midlands industrialists with strong Cornish roots). Quite a few from different branches and they were a mixed bunch apparently, Derek shifted for himself with the books etc, Sir Basil was in charge of the factory and ran it into the ground sadly and there was apparently Chris who tried his best to mop up and was very nice. David Lean the film director was a family member I learned recently.

Long time lurker jumping in. I'm astonished that Penguin are publishing OWH. Even steadfast fans of TSP will be reading it with the knowledge of what has emerged about the numerous frauds. TW's silence is the other thing that has struck me. Given the sustained coverage, surely the simplest thing would have been for him to make a statement about his health.

One of the greatest challenges, it strikes me, for writer, agent and publisher of OWH is not so much the question of ABC as the questions of BC and AC.

By BC and AC I mean before Chloe and after Chloe.

OWH describes a half completed C2C walk undertaken in Jan 2025. All it's insights and anecdotes likely reflect a TSP engineered literary universe where every word Sal utters is completely credible.

12 months on from the C2C walk, perceptions of Sal's credibility and truth have seismically (?) shifted.

The problem she faces is that she can't really rewrite OWH with a thinly veiled mea culpa, because she undertook the walk before Chloe's tsunami was unleashed!

No idea of how she, her agent and her publisher square this circle! BC v AC!

I think it remains to be seen re: publishing OWH. The publication date info of 22 Oct 2026 reported by Telegraph and Times was available as far back as 10th July 2025 on Penguin's website and they didn't get any new input from Penguin for the latest pieces, merely quoted the old statment about delaying publication due to "distress". So I am cautious about drawing the conclusion they are definitely publishing it. Conversely, it is still available to pre-order so perhaps they are planning to release it...could be a case of them sitting and waiting to see how many pre-orders are made before deciding. Who knows, but what is certain is that any publicity and public engagements will be very awkward for our Sal.

Hi @SaltyTea it's great that new people are still joining in. Re: the simplest thing, you suggest, I suppose Tim can't, because he isn't, so he's stuck. This is what Chloe asked for initially before anything was made public - but they didn't reply. They're wallowing in a quagmire of their own making.

How interesting!

Nigel sounds like a real character, a PP said her mother nursed him in final days. He had a movie star wife for a while that he glosses over in books. I think they all had a colourful life with some affairs etc.

Nigel, Derek & fam lived in what later became the Glendorgal hotel - actor & minor Royal guests. Nigel ran in 70s I think but it was a money pit & eventually he sold up. He sounds like a more glam, affable Basil Fawlty! He got fed up with having to adhere to late 70s new safety regs as they interfered with layout of his old home & bar & dances held in his ballroom! Nigel worked for MI5 & sailed around like a James Bond figure.

They don’t make them like that any more!

Except they do - Rory Stewart, would be UK Tory leader and PM.... (Whom I met in HK when he was still a sprog!)

Great answers @BeachcombingBrandy @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree @ThompsonTwin and excellent point about Tim @SaltyTea . I agree with you. He should step out and face up to this because he’s got those published doctor’s letters to fall back on least. Of course, they don’t hold a lot of water, unlike their plastic sacks that were more comfortable on a rocky hillside than a feather bed.

PRH & the Times today say/believe he clearly has some form of neurological condition & that’s enough, the feeling is to question is seriously morally wrong. So…I guess he owes no one anything (?)

That was my thought too. I can't see a hotel allowing employees' family members to stay for free.
They might get a good discount if booked last minute (ie no one else wants the room) but it could well be restricted to close family too - and I doubt aunt and cousins would count as that.

But he’s not dying from it and he certainly didn’t cure himself of a terminal illness either. This is what counts. He became poster boy with his wife’s help, of a terrible disease that has no cure but was miraculously cured of it in her book which she claimed was not fiction. This must not be glossed over. They’ve peddled a very damaging narrative to the most vulnerable people whilst cosplaying as vulnerable people.

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'.

I'm so sorry, I can't find who I purloined this quote from but thanks. Apart from the ridiculous deer stuff, what strikes me is that Salray has no distinct sense of place or belonging in her 'nature/travel writing' and I don't think it has anything to do with Timoth being her home or whatever guff she's published, just that she writes what she thinks will sound good without any real meaning or deep familiarity behind it.

Our Simon writes about the familiarity of the Peaks as home. I've got a place too, where 600+ years of documented ancestors, probably more generations lived, I was born and I get what the Welsh excellently call 'the Hiraeth' for as I'm kind of in exile ATM, because life. For Salray, it seems to be any old random landscape she can wuther about, with rather less success than Kate Bush. Any walk will do and be eulogised as deeply meaningful, only they aren't.

Derek Tangye writes with a deep sense of place about Cornwall and the difference is marked.

Thanks for the responses everyone. Part of me feels that he does owe a lot to is SW. Whatever you think about their morals (not much here!), he seems to have left her swinging in the wind.

I agree, am playing devil’s advocate a bit, but there are those who think this way. There is no doubt he has a neurological condition and was clearly told as much & did seem to improve, so should be afforded benefit of the doubt etc.

Has above been countered clearly enough? Not for PRH perhaps (?) Raymoth can therefore hide in a grey area & poss address in OWH?