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 found myself innocently wondering whether PRH would ask Sal to repay that portion of the advance that she got for OWH.

Then I laughed for a while and went and ate some fudge.

Can you imagine?

If she (1) was able to deal with her hurt, angry MIL face to face, after the discovery she'd stolen £25 k from her, via pretending to be mad, hearing voices and hallucinating and locking herself in cupboards, (2) managed to be put up for 18 months at the expense of an exhausted, overworked niece who knew she'd emptied her grandmother's bank account, and (3) not only had failed for five years to do the one annual thing at Haye Farm that their tenancy required, but held off their landlord's questions that whole time, claiming it would hurt TW's pride to have help, not to mention (4) pulling off a three-book literary scam, then a little thing like a lawyer's letter from PRH isn't going to lose her any sleep.

I mean, it's not like she hasn't seen them before, and she's got a lot of experience in delaying tactics.

In fact, it's possible that the giant pushback on the publication of the next book is at her instigation, not PRH's, isn't it? It allows her to save face and to continue to say nothing, for now.

I find it interesting that it's not been moved to October 2027. January 2028 is truly the long grass, and probaly shunts it just beyond any current schedule at the publishers.

I am really really hoping that it's PRH. finally acknowledging that OWH is not going to be a goer. They've singularly failed to say anything about the charges levelled against Sal and them, so maybe this is their way of saying 'yep, you were all right.'

If the date discrepancies were clearly pointed out re; neurological condition that would help as most serious issue. Nearly all missing this & more importantly what it implies.

I wonder. Some there will possibly be reading the threads.

@RueMouffetard The same poster quotes SW's statement as though it refutes the Observer story.

This has happened in a lot of places - people piling in to say 'there, look Sal says it's all lies, so it obviously is' without using any critical faculties.

Very good call. Why not October 27?That's plenty of time for a rewrite if there is a rewrite. October is the big push for Christmas sales. Shunting it into January when nobody is buying is mighty odd.

Afternoon all! Our local newspaper hadn’t picked up on the plight of the donkey sanctuary at all last week. I don’t follow anything on social media so today is the first I’ve heard of it by seeing it in bbc local news. They’ve already raised £43k which is amazing. They ought to have some stone/brick shelters for weather like this. The donkeys are all still alive thank goodness. We went there to see a newly adopted jenny and little foal last year.

“So sad because most of us love the coastal paths around Cornwall.”

< head scratch > What’s that got to do with it? Thankfully the coast paths are still there! She hasn’t rolled them all up like a carpet and had them shipped off to a lock up somewhere. News flash! You can still walk on the SWCP! 💥📣

For a true story of resilience and hope, and the support of locals, on the SWCP:

Seal pup found in Cornwall garden after Storm Chandra - BBC News^^

I wonder whether the pushing back of the release dste may have prompted someone to contact the medis (Telegraph and Times), to get ahesd with a positive narrative snd maybe try to urgently drum up some pre-sales.

They think it’s tittle tattle so what if a dodgy past (?) She’s refuted neurological condition…So…

Even the Times say NO on doubts a neurological conditions so we’re mean spirited
harpies…

The above said, people are beginning to realise (?)

If, as I suspect (( but could be proved completely wrong because there have been so many bizarre and unpredictable twists in this sorry but fascinating saga that has generated 24 threads on MN of whose existence I was completely oblivious before OC's explosive expose broke in July of last year (gasp, pause for breath) today's revelation that PRH have pushed back the publication date for OWH by a further 15 months to late Jan 2028, then I wonder whether this is the final chapter in the Salt Path saga (with all due respect to the BBC Wales podcast of which my expectations aren't high....)

Then ( drum roll in a low key unpretentious and self deprecating fashion) I think everybody on this thread should go out and give themselves a hearty pat on the back. We have been following in OC's footsteps but hats off to @DisappointedReader for setting up this thread and all the fantastic contributions from everybody on this thread.

Perhaps, in our small way, we have done our bit through objective forensic analysis and civilised and humorous discussion and debate to help the 'absolute truth' emerge and enable the reading public to understand the vital difference between that and an author's 'own truth' which by most people's standards would be described as a self serving, cynical, emotionally manipulative pack of lies!

Thank you, previous poster, for posting the podcast about charity ambassadors, which was really interesting.

PSPA is clearly an great charity, giving support to people in an awful situation.

Without meaning to undercut that critical point, I'm scratching my head at the statement in the podcast that they were unaware that TW and SW suggested that walking reversed "Moth"'s CBD symptoms. Did I mishear that? Also wondering what they made of the fact that "Moth" was walking marathons and promenading on red carepts etc so many years after his CBD symptoms allegedly began - I don't think that the podcast addressed that question?

There is a current thread on AIBU titled “What are your top ten favourite books?” and the first response is from a poster listing The Salt Path, commenting that iI was “well written”.

I feel I must be one of very few who thinks her writing is, generously, average (?)

She reminds me of a weak mature Lit student who misquoted The Wasteland as “April is a dreadful month”. Just all so twee, apart from everything else.

I thought they might. What made me laugh was the response from SalRay “…..”

I think her writing is average too. I am rather dumbfounded at some of the responses to TSP et al, treating it like great literature when a glance at almost any other nature writing will show hers up as cliche and superficial. I think the best one can say is that it is accessible. Nothing too challenging and no metaphors that have the reader scratching their head.

But Simon (headless or not) and even Mark Wallington and his 500 Mile Walkies leave her in the dust.

Accessible is exactly it. She’s repetitive too & she’d not have won the CB prize IMO, without the obvious hook.

Speculating here but even before this new publication date came to light I thought OC said something notable the other night. She said she felt a bit sad because she'd like to have read what was in OWH but we may never find out. I wondered at the time if she might have heard it was to be binned.

Honestly, I think the people who genuinely think TSP is well-written mean something like ‘easy read, unchallenging, with passages of unthreatening purple prose about headlands, wind and conjugal love.’

And have "live, laugh, love" decorations.

Unfortunately people don’t read as widely as they did, too…It shows, re: Sal.

This is genius 😂😂