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

Thank you @Peladon and @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree
Does the lucky hacker seem to contradict themselves by saying at first that there’s no way it will be published and then finishing with a re-write, greenlit and sold on Amazon and Waterstones?
Waterstones used to be a place I’d love to browse, ten or twenty years ago. I haven’t checked recently to see if they’re still loyal to the original marketing but they were.
Im absolutely fed up of seeing it and the other two books, for sale. The shop formally known as WH Smith had just restocked and put it by local and travel. It sits there rubbing shoulders and spines with proper books. Ditto in the Fal bookseller, upstairs and down.

Yes, there are a lot of contradictions. I have said it before that there are various theories because Penguin themselves haven't given clear information or any sort of lead throughout this whole debacle. When asked about the publication of OWH, at our AMA:

OurChloe · 28/01/2026 18:59

No idea - some in the publishing industry have told me they think it will be published - perhaps she is rewriting it now. We have to wait and see.

Then two of the broadsheets published on consecutive days:

On Friday, bookshop websites and social media channels lit up with the news that Raynor Winn would publish her much-postponed fourth book, On Winter Hill, in October. (The Times, 31 January 2026)

The Salt Path author’s next novel has been delayed until 2028, it can be revealed. (The Telegraph, 1 February 2026)

The Lucky Hacker's information is also a bit strange - about how they thought the book would tank - well it has.

About the books being stocked locally - I may be being hopeful - is it just that they were massively over ordered and there is such a glut of them? The ones on Oxfam online continue to grow, despite there being a sale, some shops offering the 3 books in a bundle and some having the film photo on the cover.

Been running hard to keep up with the charabanc, having fallen off it on Saturday! (IRL computer problems) but all is well now, I've caught up and been hauled aboard.
The Times article in Saturday's print version had all the appearance of being a genuine sales "plug" for OWH. But I'm sure armed with all the info. at our disposal much of the article's allegations could be shot down in flames. The heading - which reads "Salt Path author goes solo after scandal" - is misleading if we believe that OWH was in preparation before OC's investigations.
And how is it that, despite all the uncertainties, OWH can be pre-ordered - with signed copies by RW at a premium! (? signed RW or SW!)

There's no point in being angry. If you knew how many virtually unreadable books were stocked in all newsagents and bookshops you would drive yourself mad. I've read and critiqued manuscripts that were no way even close to being publishable only to have the author tell me that they're self publishing anyway and that makes me cross because the last thing we need is for the market to be inflated with more dross.

'Wrecked with fears for the future'? Oh dear.

One final thought – a chap called Andy Ault and his partner Jo Hawes walked the entire SWCP in 2024 with his after they became homeless. He’s the real deal! It took them 297 days to complete the SWCP but unlike the Walkers they did walk the entire SWCP and yet, even though they were genuinely homeless that encountered repeated acts of generosity from strangers they encountered, including one lady who spontaneously thrust £250 into his partner’s pocket! Oh yes one final thing, they did pick up a copy of TSP which they read in the tent at night. Their verdict? Complete cobblers! Or in Andy’s words “we would just look at each other and laugh it was so obvious to us it was fiction”
'We trekked 630 miles along coastal path while homeless like Gillian Anderson's film' - Cornwall Live

@ThompsonTwin great post and thank you so much for the link to Jo and Andy. I was in tears reading that and looking at his Insta, perhaps because of the heart stuff he was coping with but also they seem so nice. Their attitude compared with that of the misanthrope glumsters is like night and day. I wish them all the very best.

I love the way the Telegraph are referring to her next book as a novel!

I just think the numbers in charity shops are just the usual glut you get after something becomes a big bestseller — at one point you couldn’t stir for copies of The DaVinci Code. I mean, I doubt it’s people shedding their copies in disgust, at least not in significant numbers.

And we don’t know if The Happy Hacker’s friend, assuming they exist, works in editorial or in the mailroom, and is basing their impression of what’s happening with OWH on workplace gossip or knowledge. (I had a friend who worked at Random House years ago, and who walked daily past Renée Zellweger doing her undercover Bridget Jones work experience at Picador without recognising her! She said ‘I just thought I knew her from somewhere’.)

I mean, it seemed pretty plain to us on these threads all along that the pre-revelations version of OWH couldn’t appear as originally written, and the second big set of revelations in December just cemented that.

Maybe after the first Observer story it was just about possible to conceive of SW simply adding a heartfelt introduction in which she refuted the allegation that TW wasn’t ill and saying that she regretted the terrible mistake she’d made at the Hemmingses.

But, assuming that PRH knew that there was more in the wind from the Observer (and London can be very small like that), and that CH and her team were just working on evidencing it tightly enough to be publishable, they held fire.

Now, after the second big story, documentary and podcasts, SW is far more thoroughly discredited. It’s clear that it’s not just lying about TW’s diagnosis and the reason they lost their home, it’s that they were never homeless at all, only appear to have walked parts of the SWCP on holiday over a period of several years, had a long and inglorious history of thefts of large sums of money from family as well as an employer, of pretending illness, and that, far from being stigmatised by other people for being poor and homeless, in fact they were treated remarkably generously by several family members and people like BC. That only a few scattered episodes in TSP ever happened at all, in some form, thought often not as SW portrays them.

If PRH is to publish a further book by her (and in pushing a launch date out that far, it’s not clear whether that will happen), it’s obvious that it needs to deal with all of this, in order for anyone, even her most devoted fans who blame CH for ‘destroying something nice’ to trust a word she says ever again.

I wonder if it has been pushed back so very far to allow for anything of further damage to come out before they have to go to print and gives some wiggle room to stop publication if needed?

Still find PRH actions/inaction astounding.

I am another chasing along after the charabanc and trying to catch up on 160 posts. No wifi where I am on holiday. It’s hard to define my feelings following the AMA session. It was exciting in itself but also depressing because there was nothing in any way redeeming about this couple that could be revealed. They have not tried to put anything right, not without being caught out and forced into it. We know that some people have said that they are nice and apparently good and fun company (mainly TW) but that seems to be it! It seems unusual.

I think that SW is waiting for everything to come out that can. Then, I think she may apply herself to putting forward her side. I am sure she will think there is a book in it! That she was peri menopausal, suffering poor mental health, had a disabled and depressed husband. No money to live and no help. Desperate and trying to keep everything together and a roof over their heads, she did awful things, things that she never thought she would ever do and that went against everything she believed in and her personal values. She was outside of herself at this time. It had a terrible impact on her soul and this was only healed by being on the SWCP and in nature.
SW has already prepared the ground for this narrative. She could never tell this story because she was so ashamed of herself. The letters have brought back clearer memories of that terrible time. Now that everything is in the open she is grateful because it has freed her to move on. Not to live in fear and full of secrets has turned out to be a huge relief. She recommends being honest about one’s mental health and will be opening wellness retreats in order to help others make this leap without all the trauma she has suffered being exposed by the media. This will be together with TW, who has had to accept his own poor health and limitations (even if not CBD). He will be seeking independent reassessment and is relieved that he actually isn’t facing the awful consequences of CBD. It has been a nightmare for them to live with that diagnosis for so many years and now they can only look forward to a much better future.

That might work if there wasn't much more recent evidence of appalling behaviour by both of them AFTER she achieved fame and success with TSP and moved to Haye Farm....

And terrible behaviour before Tim ever got a diagnosis (or seemingly showed any sign of being ill at all).

Definitely and evidence of the different types of bad behaviour, as witnessed in Pwllheli and St Veep, and then the comparing of various peoples' experience of them. This is what I have attempted to round up previously.

This is why the Raynor Winn July statement went into such detail to defend their use of pseudonyms, and even the post, and the DVLA. She knew that her cover was blown but it is her fault that she used her nom de plume to register as a Director, that they continued to have unpaid bills and incur fines for speeding. There was the contrast with what Moth told Bill Cole, and the other man present, as opposed to what was in the book. Ruth Saberton had carefully gone through the books again because of the disparity with what she was told and what was written. The young couple saw Tim's outrage when they came to do the job he hadn't done.

Reading about Jo and Andy's journey really highlights for me how flipping implausible, manipulative and plain stupid The Scam Path is. They make sure he has access to an ongoing supply of his meds (you don't have the option of " forgetting to pack" beta blockers for heart stuff, I've had dire warnings against stopping suddenly) There are frequent Insta posts of where they are, with people who met them on the journey commenting. If they have a break (a night or two under a roof) it's recorded. There seems an effort to eat as well as possible, he talks of trying to keep noodles to a minimum. People are nice to them and acknowledged as such gratefully. He has a potassium spike (I'm having mine checked very frequently so this rings entirely true) and they get medical aid and accept temporary then more permanent housing, acknowledging the Salvation Army's help in this.

I would posit their situation was rather worse than Raymoth's (and not self inflicted) but they really seemed to be trying to make the best of, even enjoy it as much as they can rather than overegging the woe is us hairshirt. Oh and Jo is a breast cancer survivor.

It would be great if OC did a feature on this couple.

Totally agree @PinkPanther57 .

It would say so much.

I am not a trained psychiatrist but I very much doubt whether Sal is capable of making a full confession of all that she has done and feel genuine remorse for the trail of destruction that she and TW have left in their wake.

In the 7 months since OC's revelations first broke, there has been zero evidence of any remorse or admission of guilt by Sal and TW other than the mealy mouthed statement that 'mistakes were made'.

TSP was based on events that occurred in 2013-2014. As Sal has achieved success and fame you might have thought that she might have ratcheted back some of the more extreme claims about what happened on the walk and the impact it had on TW's health. However, even in the most recent interviews she seems to have done the reverse and doubled down on the outrageous claims!

LL was published in Jan 2022, some 8 years after the walk described in TSP was supposedly completed. Yet in LL, Sal doubles down on two of the more outrageous claims.

At the end of the book she claims that the DAT scan lit up like a Christmas tree, demonstrating beyond any doubt that the walk had completely reversed TW's CBD symptoms. A modern day medical miracle.

And in LL she doubles down on the claim that TW was repeatedly mistaken for SA in the following extraordinary passage:

I've never met Simon Armitage. He followed in our footsteps on the South West Coast Path, often days, sometimes only hours behind. For miles of the path people were waiting for a famous poet to pass their house, many of them with no idea what he looked like, just knowing he was a middle-aged man with a rucksack heading west. But in preparation for this stranger, they had made tea and cakes and all manner of baked goods to offer to the wandering wordsmith as he passed. Moth looks nothing like Simon Armitage, but as he went by, middle-aged, with a rucksack, heading west,they came out of their houses with their offerings. We were hungry, sometimes possibly starving and they'd put so much care into their baking, it would have been rude not to accept.

I would say that both Sal and TW need psychiatric help.

I think they would be far better advocates for actual homelessness and its impact than Raymoth could ever be, with never a neckerchief or miracle cure in sight.

So now, not only do we have Schrodinger's Husband - we also have a Schrodinger's Book in OWH!

It is either being held back for publication in order that Sal's mental health can stabilise (with the added option of waiting to see what, if anything, else comes to light about their dreadful fraudulent behaviour) and simultaneously it has been withdrawn for now to give Sal a chance to rewrite, somehow, a walk that she undertook some while ago while the good old Schrodinger Husband was both failing in health and also well enough to be parading himself about on the red carpet.

So OWH is either finished and just 'pending' or is being rewritten frantically in line with the fact that it can't be Sal desperate with worry and flying north like some variety of bird that she probably couldn't pick out of a line up.

@ThompsonTwin it isn't normal. I've read Simon's 'Walking Away' with great enjoyment and actually reread recently to make sure I didn't miss anything in the sepsis haze the first time. He is NOT showered with baked goods like Neil Armstrong et al were with tickertape.

Perhaps the Raymoth advance party had snaffled them all and he thus passed by unnoticed and he should sue for the Dundee cake and scones that were rightfully his? Perhaps not though, because it didn't happen.

I reckon Tom Hardy could have done a Naked Walker on the SWCP and attracted less attention than TiMoth allegedly did.

I would also query whether SA would actually have taken and eaten all the offerings (had he been offered any). While it is a lovely thing to do, it would only take one joker to give him cake laced with something and the whole walk could have had to be called off.

I know it's unlikely, but some people find things like that 'funny'.

I have wondered this before and these are a few of my thoughts, shared previously:

Anyone who believes in any honest, life-affirming, redemptive narrative would do well to examine closely any book, interview, performance, etc., emanating from this couple.

For Penguin to publish anything else, by this author, would be very cynical and exploitative - of both the readers and, in my opinion - the authors.

The author's constant victimhood and the many, self-expressed, instances of delusions of grandeur - need to be talked through quietly with someone - not encouraged to further this circus.

For me, it is becoming uncomfortable to watch. They send us back in time to watching Medieval Strolling Players:
------------------------
Many ordinary medieval people loved the entertainment that strolling players provided, however, medieval people were also wary of them, some thought of them as being vagabonds and thieves who created problems and stole things whilst they visited and then vanished to the next medieval town or village.

Maybe she'll go off on another redemptive walk, this time with Moth and it will be a latter day pilgrimage to Canossa, an opportunity for her to finally spill the beans and reveal 'the truth' rather than 'her truth'.

The problem is, of course, that her reputation is now so severely tarnished, that apart from a few die hard fans, nobody would believe a word she said!

Having read this blurb again (the first time I read it I nearly cringed myself inside out) I don't see any way that this could be published as is. Lots of angsting about Tim and how unwell he is and mountains and cold and scenery... but now they are an incredibly wealthy couple and Tim is demonstrably NOT seriously unwell... If I wereWaterstones I would take this down now. And the constantly calling her 'Raynor Winn'... urgh.