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

There’s grafting and then there’s grifting @Peladon !

@HatStickBoots
in American English, graft is the illicit acquisition of money or advantage (ie dodgy dealings). Almost the opposite of the virtuous meaning in British English.

Whenevet I hear speeches here extolling graft (Starmer made one recently), I wonder what our American cousins would think.

@Peladon - I can assure you that I have only grafted in the strictly British sense!

Thank you for sharing this. Not come across it before. I had to stop listening not long after she mentions forest bathing and before i developed tourettes but it made me angry at her appropriation of nature's benefits and self-styled guru-like persona. No doubt forest bathing would have featured in her retweats as she breathily circled the group with profound insights into connectedness and healing plant chemicals.

SO many of these type of thing can be summed up in three words 'get outside more.' There. Maybe I should start wellness retreats with my huge level of nature wisdom...

I'm not entirely sure she'd thank me for my little homage @Peladon! 😂

I do think though that (teenage, dark haired) Kate Bush would have been a more convincing (teenage, dark haired) Cathy in WH than the (blonde, 35 year old) Margot Robbie.

The problem (well, one of the many problems) with Salray is that she is taking self evident truths such as exercise being generally a positive thing, nature having beneficial effects especially on MH etc and spinning them into a load of mumbo jumbo which is potentially dangerous. It was bad enough when it was about a condition without a cure or any real treatment but I honestly wouldn't have put it past her to extend it to treatable conditions (thank you Our Chloe for preventing such) It's on the same road as telling people to rely on the power of prayer to eg 'cure' Type 1 diabetes and stop their insulin, which has happened, with predictably awful results.

I think I feel particularly strongly about snake oil like this as I well know (I was repeatedly told) that I'd have died within hours in the summer without bag after bag of Vancomycin and Gentamicin (for over a solid week) being started. I get the worst of vibes from anything she says about any health related matter. Adding nothing to the world of folk music is one thing, dangerous medical pronouncements quite another and I really believe she was heading that way.

@Uricon2 I think you are right. Not necessarily that she might have started out with this intent but because there's a heady kind of invincibility that takes hold when a lot of people start listening to you. I can see her becoming addicted to that feeling and pushing it further and further. Sadly there is always a willing audience for rubbish like this (of the 'Think yourself Well' variety) and Sal could well have found herself their spokesperson.

"I will keep walking and she must keep living" Harold Fry

In the musical and festival links shared above : I thought it interesting that the Stroud interviewer, of the two authors, introduces them, with "weaving and melding the two genres together". I think there can be a problem with this - as personified with the Raynor Winn memoirs - because of the the terminal diagnosis, as portrayed, she was not scrutinised, analysed and criticised as she should have been.

In contrast, the reviewer of the Harold Fry musical, based on the novel, says: Every tragedy under the kitchen sink appears in this show – from cancer and grief to addiction and mental ill-health – and the nuance of such heavy topics is often lost in favour of oversimplified aphorisms.

A welcome critique that I found to be absent from reviews of the Raynor Winn brand.

I really think so Vroomie and that it was a by product of her fame and being made much of. Went to her already dubious head. Being some sort of guru of 'positive thinking and wellness' could well have been the next step IMO and it's not far from that to having all the answers and 'I can cure you'.

I give you the 'chemicals exhaled by trees" etc. Well, half of England was wildwood at one point, sooooo much forestation, didn't stop many of the population dying young of things we can cure now.

Someone brilliant has just posted this on Facebook - seen in a charity shop. I'm now tempted to go looking for books to pair with TSP,,,,

I was gleeful that Boris Johnson's bloated memoir was soon remaindered and popped into The Works to strategically put The Little Book of Lies just in front of it.

Couldn’t agree more!

So sorry for everything you’ve been through 💐

Absolutely and what’s even worse is that she looks for weaknesses to exploit, we have seen this pattern throughout her career.

This was one of the things which never made sense to me from the start. The Walkers weren't townies, lived very rurally, and TM had an outside/hands-on job with the NT. Why was Cornish nature more restorative than Welsh nature?

Vroom I am very happy to assist with such a quest. It seems that there are several books with the title 'Up the Garden Path'...

Alternatively, the esteemed PRH themselves published a paperback called 'Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed'.

I’m not sure that trying to appropriate a Welsh identity worked out for them, whereas it’s much easier for this English pair in Cornwall, as their language isn’t official or widespread.
Don’t forget that poor Tim has very serious Cancer in France.

To be fair to them, it has been suggested that they could have told people in France that TW had cancer for the prqctical reason that this was easier to translate than corticobasal degeneration (in French, cancer is simply "le cancer" whereas corticobasal degenration is the more difficult "degeneration corticobasal")..

The first they knew of CBD, or at least a belief of Tim having it wasn't till 2015 though.

We don't always have proof of the detail with these two but what we always see are patterns.

A pattern of ill health, for whatever reason, or not being able to cope with self-inflicted troubles and the lying - from him.

A pattern of losing jobs, for whatever reason, and stealing money and the lying - from her.

We have sometimes wondered why they did this or that but when the truth has been revealed it has been shocking. Does anyone have a good idea for an extra question to pose to Chloe? The burning extra questions I thought of at the AMA were not picked up because they are to do with Penguin and my opinion that their marketing continues to be disgraceful. Chloe can't do anything about that even if she wanted to.

The event on Tuesday has sent an email saying: Q&A with Chloe Hadjimatheou next Tuesday, to answer your burning questions about her podcast, Chloe will be answering as many questions as possible during the session. To make sure yours is considered, please submit it over the weekend

Yes, I received that email from The Observer, too @BrandyAndLovage. My question from the AMA wasn't really addressed (does Chloe know anything about why SalRay left the Burton Court job?), and I'm not sure whether to bother asking it again, as I'm guessing OC has no intel on that.

In other news, DH (who does conservation building/decorating work these days) had to visit a neighbour in our little south coast conservation area about a job she wants doing this week. We only bought our cottage here 16 months ago so don't know all the neighbours yet. Turns out this elderly lady is an artist whose late husband was too, and it came out in conversation that she knows Angela Harding.

DH was telling her about my 'obsession' (as he terms it 🙄) with TSP scandal and she knew all about it and called RayMoth charlatans. Annoyingly, he missed the opportunity to ask her if she had any idea how Angela Harding feels about being forever associated with the pair of shysters. I gave him a bit of a bollocking for that when he came home 😆

Well, great your local artist called them charlatans @LibertyLily ! I see this opportunity with Chloe as rounding things up and out now, really. I realised she can't know much about Penguin and, likewise, Sally left the job you mentioned 40 years ago and Anne just said her grandparents wouldn't talk about it. I still can't see there is a podcast coming up on the BBC - the Abersoch hotel is another interesting one.

Tragic development in TSP saga...

To be absolutely honest, if I were Moth I would be watching Sal like a hawk. I'm sure she'd even manage to make an accidental fall somehow relate back to 'I told you he was ill!!' and use it to rehabilitate herself.