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]

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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 understand that, but Sal and her 'scan lighting up like Christmas' surely seemed to want to prove that Moth was cured? If walking was sufficient to 'rewire his brain', then he's better? Because having good days and bad days isn't 'cured', it's an illness progressing normally.

Well, does anyone have any contacts at a media outlet? Actually, did that Guardian piece about citizen sleuths on Mn ever come out? Might there be an appetite for a collectively-authored article by the Mumsnet Sleuths?

a cravated, silver Lazarus

Thank you for that memorably horrible image, @PinkPanther57 . 😱

This makes it all so much worse!

I honestly think few are reading critically & that was just temporary remission. Sickness still at gate ever beckoning…

Good afternoon all and I hope you are well today.

Up-and-coming:

Our Chloe's HNTDDD short video - date to be confirmed.

BBC podcast - trailer may come out this week and the podcast next week, (to be confirmed).

The 2025 neurologist letter referred to a cardiac condition. I guess it's possible that Moth was advised or decided not to do the C2C walk because of heart problems not because of anything neurological.

But didn't he walk the London Marathon? Maybe I'm getting my dates mixed up and he walked the Marathon years before? The blurb for OWH does make it sound as though he's on his last legs though, with Sal musing over what it's going to be like doing things without him...

He walked the London Marathon in April 2023 and walked the 120 mile Thames Path in ten days in April 2024.

When did Sal do her solo-moan walk?

She walked the London Marathon in April 2024 with her son. The C2C walk was in Jan 2025.

So if Tim did the Thames Path walk and his cardiac condition didn't prevent him doing that then unless he's taken a very severe turn for the worse (which hasn't prevented him from appearing in public) he should have been able to go.

After all, it's not like they'd be having to flog themselves, a few gentle miles and then sit in a nice posh B&B... But I don't suppose an entire book where Sal complains that Tim didn't want to come isn't going to get the buying public parting with their cash...

Edited because I AM getting my dates mixed up.

Thank you for being such a congenial PR person.

I mean, along with all the other roles you didn't think you'd applied for when you first started an AIBU about a disappointing book (charabanc driver, citizen sleuth wrangler, crowd control, cider-making, fudge distribution etc etc).

Let’s not forget he told Bill Cole he was dying. Not planning beyond Christmas 2021 is pretty plain.
PRH can spin this all day long, whenever a book is published now by this con artist author, journalists will refer back to the old stories about what they have claimed in the past, and the whole scam will be examined anew.
Her brand is over.
On Winter Hill is over - how can she write a book about leaving sick Tim alone when he was dancing about on the red carpet?
There are enough people now who are prepared to speak out and say what they knew.
Everyone knows them for a pair of con artists now.

Why am I not much more confident you’re right ?(which you are in your sentiments of course).

People have very short memories & generally are not armed with most telling facts.

More evidence that they are getting sloppy. A book is normally delivered at least six months before publication, according to a friend of mine who is an author.so OWH was delivered in spring 2025. Tim is on the red carpet in June but on his last legs in Jan?!
It’s getting silly now!

According to Sal's IG feed she finished the final draft of OWH on 9 May 2025 and had attended the red carpet gala premiere of The Salt Path with Moth at Newquay on 6th May!

And boy doesn't she look like what she thinks - that she is cleverer than everyone else!

But did he actually use the words to imply he was imminently likely to die?

“Don’t plan beyond Christmas” could mean anything - he might reasonably expect to be needed elsewhere, perhaps something to do with one of their (adult) kids, perhaps an appointment of some kind?

Perhaps… because he knew they were planning to do a flit…?

Waterstones staff used to hand write little notes and stick them under books they’d read and enjoyed. I don’t know if any still do, but I’d love to see an honest note stuck underneath the Raynor Winn books snd a list of corrections.

I reckon such notes might be War and Peace sized if all the lies were addressed, but it would be good if they did something, as it seems clear PRH have their fingers in their ears going lalala we're not listening.

This is an edited extract of the relevant section in The Observer:

But in October 2021, Bill says, Moth surprised him with an announcement. “He put his head in his hands and he said : ‘We went to the hospital this week and I’ve been told not to plan beyond Christmas.’” Bill was horrified. “I just went : ‘Oh my God!’ and gave him a big hug.”
Bill’s friend Richard, who asked us not to use his surname, was present for the conversation. “It was extraordinarily emotional,” he recalls. “Bill was close to tears. Moth also told him he thought he would already be dead if he hadn’t been living on Haye farm.”

Richard remembers that Bill had become close to Raynor and Moth, messaging them most days. Richard says he was concerned for his friend, however, because the farm was losing money. Cider was not being produced and the orchards were not being attended to.
“But he didn’t care,” says Richard. “He felt kind of responsible for them, and for Moth’s well being .”

When Winn’s third book, Landlines, was published in September 2022, Bill read how, in the winter of 2021, soon after Moth had finished another long walk, a neurologist told him his brain scan was “normal”, implying that the walk had drastically improved the symptoms of his condition.

The timing in the book seemed to indicate that this was ­happening at around the same time as Bill recalls being told that Moth was dying.
“I was reading it on a train,” Bill recalls, “and I just went : ‘What the hell?’ It just makes no sense whatsoever.”
Bill couldn’t understand why, if Moth had had such a positive result from the doctor, the couple wouldn’t have shared the good news with him. Bill texted Raynor expressing his confusion. After a few days she responded to him but didn’t address his question about Moth’s illness.

A few weeks later, the chef Rick Stein was due to film an episode of his BBC series with the couple at Haye farm. Bill says he watched as they demonstrated the cider-making process, implying that they were involved in the farm’s production – something Bill says they had never done. “I felt I was being gaslit,” he recalls.

Perhaps oddly, PRH only bought OWH in June 2025. There was an article in The Bookseller about it.

But if she was writing under contract - because she'd been signed for however many books, then they'd 'bought' it as soon as she signed the contract and got the advance. PRH saying they bought it in June would imply that she'd written it on spec and they'd only just agreed to publish it.

I think PRH might be 'massaging language' somewhat and 'mistakes were made'.

That seems incredible with an original release date of 23 Oct 2025

For many die hard fans of TSP, the book seems to have filled some deep emotional need. Whether it was all true or not, they believed in its veracity. If they weren't suffering from CBD, maybe it helped them overcome personal challenges. Maybe they are reluctant to examine its veracity in forensic detail. Maybe for some it doesn't ultimately matter whether it is all true or completely fictional. I'd compare Ray and Moth to cult leaders who have brainwashed their followers, many of whom will never let go, irrespective of what hard evidence is provided to disprove their beliefs.

Agreed. I thought OWH was part of a multi-book deal, anyway?