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

The problem as I see it with OWH is that - as with all books, except those sold to extremely fast readers with a day to spare in a bookshop - by the time purchasers realise it's an utter load of self-justification and lies cobbled together and held there with a load of old rope.... PRH and Sally Walker has their money.

I plan to pre-order OWH, speed read it and forensically analyse it before airing my thoughts on Amazon and Goodreads! Hasta la vista!

I would guess the Times picked up on the Telegraph piece, as often happens. Shame neither declared it's old news from 6 months ago or address the actual controversy. Sub par and misleading journalism IMO.

Following on from my question at the AMA, do you know the relative quantity stats of what is being sold in the bookshops as opposed to online sales? Chloe said that there was a brief spike, after her exposé, online. Not sales in bookshops.

In terms of quantity it would be interesting to know where the main sales were/are coming from. And bearing in mind what @Vroomfondleswaistcoat said above.

Personally, I still don't think it was enough to warrant the number of times it was picked up by Chloe and Erica. And definitely not the print version header, shared by @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree :

"Winn's bonanza book sales show there's no such thing as bad publicity."

Personally I think Penguin should rebrand TSP, in homage to Mark Wallington, as 630 mile porkies!

Indeed. It seems to me that it was merely a spike that lasted only a few days, which makes sense given the exposé would have generated interest and intrigue. But a short lived spike is hardly the same as "shooting back to the top of the bestseller list". Nothing supports the latter statement and the ST list, which is THE main list for industry, contradicts it.

I imagine she either “cooked the books” and waived the bill without the management’s consent, or doctored it to look as if they’d paid.

I know nothing about accounting, but when I worked briefly in Waitrose the checkout staff were not allowed to serve family members. After a certain number of review and progress meetings a cashier could be granted authority to gift an item for free at their discretion - usually flowers or chocolates, perhaps if a regular and valued customer mentioned a family birthday that weekend I might gift the strawberries and cream in their trolley. It’s all monitored from the staff member’s login, and at the next review there might be encouragement to be more proactive, to gift something twice a week and not just occasionally - they’re still scanned through the checkout but there was a button to show you’ve intentionally gifted it.

Perhaps Sally believed she did have the authority to do this and saw nothing untoward in her generosity!

Yes, I wish! When I first joined these threads I had never had a public username so in repudiation of TSP I chose the commodity that the SWCP is known for - brandy - history on a path ....

After a while, I thought that I would pick up on the 'second' book hence, Beguiled Silence. I could not bring myself to go with the name I then came up with for the next book : BlandWhines - I thought, I don't want to be called that!**

All true. Has anyone also considered Sal might have not been a terribly good accountant? Writing TSP V1 in 80s & as a child of nature, easily distracted?

The passage about SW’s bleeding shoulders and the Spanish women asking her what kind of boyfriend TW was is quite shocking. I don’t remember that, is it from LL’s? She doesn’t appear to reflect on what they’ve said to her and it seems like she doesn’t address TW’s lack of concern for her? I’ve only read TSP and don’t think I could stomach the sequels but am wondering if I should attempt them…
That whole episode sounds very much like abusive, or deeply uncaring behaviour from TW at the very least. Why did she accept this? Why has she stayed with TW? Why does she adore him? He comes over as a prat and that’s being kind.
Is she a masochist?

Although this is a slightly different situation to the usual one -- a high profile memoir 'brand' that penetrated far beyond the level of publicity usually accorded to memoirs, and then subjected to a far more high-profile takedown than would usually be accorded to a memoir that turns out not to be true.

CH on the 'We Have Notes' podcast describes Raynor Winn and Moth as 'national treasures' who've been revealed to have feet of clay. It's not quite David Attenborough turning out to be a murderer, but there's an element of that, that people who've never read it know about it.

I just think that it would be difficult for many people to buy and read OWH without being aware, at least, that there was sone dispute.

Or, in homage to Bill Bryson, "Notes From A Small Holiday".

No, it's from The Wild Silence.

She cuts from her mother's deathbed to the Myth of Moth as a brilliant free spirit totally enthralled by wild nature, so we go from the first meeting (plaits, RAF coat, magically emitting light into her life), skipping college and work to go walking and climbing (which he usually does with his friends, so it's a huge honour when he invites her to go with him, even though her harness is too big and she's wearing plastic trainers, totally inexperienced, and lets him fall off the rock when she bends down to pick up a camera) and finally the culminating trip to Scotland with the bloody shoulders, struggling along behind him, and the night where they end up in the survival bag, which she views as the cementing of their mystic bond, rather than as a rather grim holiday in which her boyfriend of several months isn't that nice to her.

Reading against the grain, yes, it's clear that he's primarily focusing on doing the stuff he likes, while she's only interested in them because he is, and is desperate to prove herself to him:

So when he began to plan a trip to the Highlands of Scotland I knew I had to find a way to go with him.

I gritted my teeth and followed Moth’s heels as he bounded up the hill with a monstrous rucksack stuffed with a tent and big clanking billy cans. I couldn’t give in, couldn’t be that whingeing, whimpering girlfriend and ruin his longed-for trip.

Is there a possible way of reading the phenomenon of 'Raynor Winn' as the first time she's taken the lead in their relationship and he's had to fall in line with her vision of them?

I wondered if it was a reaction to the Rest is Entertainment podcast which seemed to suggest a 'whatever' attitude in the publishing industry. SW has obviously lawyered up and I suspect she will be manipulating the publishers in all possible ways to publish. Their income must have taken a hit and they always seem to have been big spenders.

Thank you @RueMouffetard for contextualising. Yes, very plausible that the ‘Raynor Winn’ persona is her taking control in the relationship.They are such a strange couple. Oh to be a fly on the wall in their hideaway.

But looking at comments on reviews and such, there seems to be a largeish body of people who are aware that there's some dispute about TSP, but they either don't care or are insufficiently motivated to read any more deeply. There will be huge numbers, I suspect, who think 'well, the books are still on sale, so it can't be that bad.' And these are the ones, together with the die-hard groupies, who will buy OWH.

I'm hoping that they will be outnumbered by the horrified and outraged and that sales figures will be pathetic, but I also suspect that pre-order numbers will determine whether OWH is published at all (if they don't get whatever their predetermined number of pre-orders is, they might pull it).

I was wondering if the cost of the hardback might have an effect on pre-orders so had a look on the Penguin website. The pub date is now listed as 27 Jan 2028.

Looks like the release date for OWH has been pushed back to Jan 2028!

Thanks @ThompsonTwin but there is some possibly identifying info on the Amazon link! (I live in fear of such things)

Hope you don't mind but have reported in case you don't see this for a bit

Strange release date 27/01/2028. Completely misses the Christmas market .

My interpretation is that PRH have effectively pulled it!

Yes, but I think this is why I think what happens with the publication (or not) of OWH will be interesting.

Will there be enough pre-orders? Will some people who pre-ordered well in advance, ahead of the first Observer story, have cancelled? (Can you even cancel a pre-order? If a publication date is postponed, is a pre-order held over? I assume bookshops pre-ordering are more important than Amazon pre-orders?) Will more people have become aware of the books because of the scandal and might they pre-order out of curiosity? At what point do PRH decide?

They're forced into a sort of declaration either way.

Either they publish another book by a thoroughly discredited author and draw attention to themselves in a discreditable way as making even more money from a scam, their due diligence as being lacking, and continuing to advertise Raynor Winn's books as 'unflinchingly honest' long after they've been exposed.

Or they decide not to publish and have to think about the consequences of that, legal and otherwise, and how to spin it to the public.

And that's leaving aside entirely what exactly they publish, if they do publish.

I was listening to the We Have Notes podcast earlier where Miranda Sawyer said her publishers were unduly generous in hiring a fact-checker for her book about the nineties, but that in the past she's paid a friend to fact-check her books because it wasn't routinely provided.

Will PRH have OWH thoroughly fact-checked? And what will that fact-checker do? Retrace the C2C path via maps/guides or in person to check for accuracy of route etc? Check the weather reports to see if SW is being accurate about snow and temperatures? Phone BnBs to see if SW stayed there? Say 'We need medical evidence for this' every time there's a reference to TW's illness? Or 'Who can verify this?' every time there's a reference to ecowarrioring or having walked the entire SWCP or whatever?

Mind you, I don't know what a fact checker would do with a book which is basically a third spin-off/sequel from a thoroughly discredited bestseller whose triple-whammy basic premise that the Walkers walked the entire SWCP having been made blamelessly homeless in the same week as his terminal diagnosis, just isn't true at all in any of its elements?

ETA: Oh, release date pushed back still further! Evidence that they're essentially cancelling it, or that SW is furiously rewriting some kind of victimy-y 'I don't remember doing any of that stuff' mea culpa?

Afternoon all. I hope you are well today and thank you for your kind messages and supports.

I've not had chance to catch up yet but just wanted to add a couple of things quickly.

Dave and Julie: Firstly, I think I have mentioned this before back in the mists of thread time, but I have wondered whether Dave and Julie are related to Salray and Timmoth. They do not look dissimilar. Any thoughts?

Secondly, here is a new podcast from yesterday with Our Chloe:
Senior reporters Lucinda Rouse and Emily Harle are joined by Chloe Hadjimatheou, narrative editor at The Observer, who conducted an award-winning exposé of the main characters in the bestselling memoir The Salt Path. Chloe details the steps she took to interrogate some of the assertions made in the book after receiving a tip-off, including the circumstances of an apparent terminal diagnosis. She suggests ways in which charity leaders can work to uncover the truth when claims surrounding prospective celebrity ambassadors seem out of the ordinary, but stresses the importance of approaching the people in question in the first instance. You can listen to the episode below, or wherever you get your podcasts:
Third Sector Podcast: What charities can learn from the Salt Path exposé | Third Sector

💥✌💥✨🍮🍻

If I was in PRH and Sal's shoes/boots I would can OWH. Events since it was written have rendered it totally and utterly redundant!