Thread 25 : To feel disappointed - and disgusted and vindicated now 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 24 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?

After 24,000 posts there are still recent, new and up-and-coming things to look out for on the path.
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:

• 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
• Ask Me Anything thread MNHQ here: AMA with award winning investigative journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou, Weds 28th Jan, 7-9pm | Mumsnet

Up-and-coming:

• Our Chloe's short video about Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's first book How not to Dal dy Dir - date to be confirmed.
• BBC Podcast - date to be confirmed

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. The Observer's new podcast series The Walkers (link above) covers most things.
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 7 months we have done amazingly well together for 24 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.

If you are posting about a podcast, please start your post with the episode number you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so. Many thanks.

After listening to The Walkers: The real Salt Path podcast episodes from The Observer my thoughts are even more with the Walker/Winns' victims. I also believe that the publishers, agent and prizegivers must now act and be seen to act.

As we enter our quarter century thread riding the community charabanc, as always keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 24 IS FULL 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? | Mumsnet

What makes it even worse is that Cathy Rentzenbrink is supposedly a friend of hers,a fellow Cornish author and spokesperson for the homeless in Cornwall as well as somebody she has liaised with as a speaker at Arvon courses in Yorkshire.

Yes, isn't it funny how the 'chateau' in France doesn't count any more? Ultimate middle-class homelessness - 'darling, we're down to only the one house, we're practically the starving poor!'

Cathy’s expression there shows how thrilled and happy she is. I’m speechless.

That’s so true. It’s just a pile of rubble, we couldn’t possibly live there.

The thing that really annoys me is that they have let the French house (which apparently has some interesting historical/architectural features) crumble like that, even after they had money.

Further proof they care about nothing and noone.

Chateau a bit too close to the family they fell out with due to stealing from them?

Might you also send me it as I can’t make it do anything other than say fully booked

No problem!

Oh, I imagine so! Like living on Anne’s farm with them all knowing about her stealing her mother’s savings, only without the mod cons…

In case this helps anyone, I've just been able to book the online event using the Chrome browser on my laptop. I got the 'sold out' error when I tried with Firefox.

I think, if they truly WERE homeless (ie, not considering that they had adult children with places they could stay, relatives seemingly glad to put them up, etc) then they could have gone there. If I found myself with absolutely nowhere to go, I would suck up a bit of intra-family po-facedness just so I had a roof over my head.

After all, they could have gone to the place in France and tidied it up a bit and then sold it to buy somewhere else, even in France. They had money invested in that house and land and they just let it go (to avoid it being developed - I bet there's absolutely no sign of any development at all anywhere nearby, am I right?)

About a week after the Observer's revelations the Times sent a reporter to the French property and the resulting piece was accompanied by a picture. Clearly a roofless ruin but closer examination showed that some attempt had been made at "home improvements" - presumably when the roof was OK. A partition had been built using what I assumed were French "breeze blocks" - much larger than (metric) brick size and of a strange light red colour.
I recall that a villager the Times reporter spoke to said that the Walkers (Sally and Tim that is) had abandoned the project because of "difficulties" with local labour. Possibly a polite way of saying that they had failed to pay the builders for their work?
Total abandonment of the French property is just one of many remaining mysteries!

I think SW said the French property wasn't worth anything. Given, they still had to pay taxes on it when they said they had no money, you would have thought they would have sold it. They both seem overly comfortable with going through life and not paying their bills.

Land is always worth something, even if only to developers or immediate neighbours. But even if they couldn't sell the land, they could have camped on it (as they very clearly had a tent...) or borrowed a caravan to put on the site. It might not have been a home, as such, but it was land that belonged to them and could have been somewhere to stay while they got themselves together. Bearing in mind that Tim was supposedly 'terminally ill' it might have been a better bet than dragging along the South West Coast Path!

But they are not exactly clear thinkers, are they? (Besides, the whole thing was made up).

(Besides, the whole thing was made up).

I keep forgetting that bit.😂

They enjoyed doing up the roof on their last home with their bare hands, and turning it into a lovely home. Same with BC's depressing farmhouse which oozed water and was overwhelmed with rodents when they moved in and was lovely when they left. It's a pity that they didn't do the same on the chateau and that it went to ruin.

When we went into detail, on these threads, about the French property we obviously had no idea what was to come. We then heard about Sally taking relatives money and got the podcasts, including The French Quarter, in quite quick concession.

I mentioned, recently, about Cecille saying that they heard in the phone box that Sal was missing and that her grandparents account had been cleaned out.

I would assume that it is easy to buy things, including French property, if you have not earned that money in the first place. Easy come, easy go. They had this extra 'income' from the Hemmings to buy extras. From Cecille, it was Sally that helped with her mother-in-law's account. The in-laws went to France for a few months and when they got back there was hardly any money. Sally had absconded and Tim tells Jane, in London, that four credit cards have been taken out in his name.

They then didn't bother about the place in France again.

What farm doesn’t have a few rodents around? Why does she make a big thing of that? Is it to upset those supposedly comfortable armchair middle class readers and gain more sympathy again? Rodents lived there but Sally said there was nothing living, nothing growing. So what were they living on? Very good point about the obvious lies regarding their chateau and she can’t make up her mind if Bill’s farm was a burnt out nuclear wasteland or riddled with varmints which would indicate the opposite.

They have overlooked Uricon's version of Wuthering Heights, inspired by TSP....

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/feb/12/best-songs-inspired-by-literature-ranked

Came across an IG post by Sal where she claims her ambition aa a 16 year old was to go to university, study English and become a journalist! Priceless.

Either way, is BC, a big fan of TSP, somewhat in awe of the Walkers, whose purportedly true story genuinely touched him, going to offer them a disgustingly uninhabitable house on his farm?

I can easily believe it was a bit damp from not being inhabited for months, and that it had mice, as a lot of old houses do (mine included), but do I believe it was literally oozing damp like a waterfall and had a literal plague of rodents, any more than I believe that there were literally no birds roosting on the farm? No.

And not for a second do I believe that SW thought that someone had graffitied the farmhouse because they'd read TSP and discovered the Walkers had been homeless, which maddened them enough to draw a ten-foot-tall penis and the word SCUM on the front of the house, to the point where SW wished she'd never published her book:

But “scum”, though. Someone must have read the book; they know we’ve been homeless. That’s why it says “scum” and now it won’t wash off. I should never have let it be published. This is what happens when you let people see into your world.

That's just classic SW glumwashing. Poor old underdog us, having to renovate another house with our bare hands, dealing with peach wallpaper, mice and hostility from everyone else.

😀

Well, it's a new take on the 'I always wanted to be a writer since I was a child fascinated by the penguins on the spine of my books, but my dreams were tragically dashed when my father was told the farm tenancy couldn't be inherited'.

Which never made the slightest bit of sense, anyway.

The tenancy would not pass on; when the estate owner died, the estate, with all the farms and houses that it held, would be sold and the tenancy would end. To be renewed by the new owner, or not. I wouldn’t stay on the farm forever; I would have to leave, to work away from the farm and create another life. That was when I put the notebooks and pens away; there’d be no more stories about the wild things.

I mean, isn't that an obvious reason to think 'OK, I'm not going to inherit a farm tenancy, so I'm going to have to find another way of making a living. Maybe I could train as a journalist'?

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry at Theatre Royal Haymarket | Theatre review – The Upcoming

This is based on a novel but another interesting possible inspiration for TSP, as has been suggested before, published in 2012. The two authors have been put together previously:

Life-changing journeys, real and imagined, are at the heart of the latest bestselling books by Rachel Joyce and Raynor Winn.

From 29.00, Sal at her 'best' on the chemicals emitted from plants. Laying the foundation for the wellness retreats already, for sure.

I always wanted to be a writer, since I was a child. And now I am, because I worked day jobs and wrote in my spare time, and entered competitions and found an agent and wrote and wrote because I couldn't do anything else. I was a single mum to five kids, working in a school and earning peanuts when I signed the contract for my first book.

Sal seems to think that she ought to have been allowed to sit and write all the time with someone else picking up the bills and making her life easy to 'enable her art'. When really she could just have got her head down and grafted like the rest of us.

Vroomie: "When really she could just have got her head down and grafted like the rest of us." Your post made me think what an oddity it is that the word "graft" has two, almost opposite, meanings (one -yours- being good, and the other not).