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

Following on to say this is what I call the 'Fifty Shades' effect. People RAVED over those poorly written, dreadful examples of what a BDSM relationship should be. They absolutely went mad because it was a book with sex in!!!

Because they hadn't read a book since school, they didn't realise that many many books (nearly all of them better) also have sex in.

Did anyone check the DVLA regulations regarding CBD? I'm just listening to OC's podcast again and it was discussing the unpaid fines. A quick Google and I found this 'Driving and PSP/CBD
You are legally obliged to inform the Driver and Vehicle
Licensing Agency (DVLA) and your insurance when you have
received your diagnosis. You will be medically assessed based
on severity of symptoms and a decision will be made whether
you can continue to drive.'

I’ve been saying this all along under many different names. It’s clear from many of the most positive reviews on Amazon or Goodreads that the reviewers aren’t habitual readers. They were responding from a place of total inexperience and nothing to compare TSP with, and believed they knew Raynor and Moth as friends .

I do scratch my head and wonder how anybody seeing this image of Moth on the LL walk of 2021 on Sal's IG feed, could seriously have thought that this was an individual who had been suffering from CBD for 16 years!

That is very interesting. I have just copied in items from our original timeline - with a few relevant additions to your post:

2020 – early/mid 2022
Sally Walker states that two brain scans taken before and after their walk of various UK long distance paths show that pre-walk recorded damage to brain has disappeared by the post-walk second scan, which is ‘clear’ (Landlines)

October 2021
Tim Walker tells Bill Cole that consultant has advised not to plan past Christmas (Observer)

October 2022
Publication of Landlines

Winter 2022/2023
The Walkers leave Bill Cole’s farm for pastures new (Observer)

A year later:
Maxine Farrimond and Bill Cole compare notes, in a phone call, including speeding fines, letters from DVLA

July 2025
Observer publishes articles by investigative journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou, including information that Tim Walker still owns the property at Village du Dropt (Observer)

9 July 2025
As anyone who has ever lost their home knows, when you are evicted, changing the address on your driving licence is the least of your concerns.
(R Winn statement)

I have to say, that last addition encapsulates the distraction and manipulation of her whole literary output!

The address on your driving licence is irrelevant for speeding fines. It's the address on the logbook (V5C) which determines where the speeding fine gets sent to. Something dodgy was going on if Maxine Farrimond was receiving speeding tickets years after the Walkers moved out.

I don’t have instagram or follow anything on social media. I had no knowledge of CBD before reading those books but I do have knowledge of Parkinson’s so as she kept using Parkinson’s as a comparison in her books and interviews I was guided by that. I obviously looked up CBD on the nhs website and wiki. For me, I am forever ashamed that I was afflicted with the classic Emperor’s new clothes syndrome because I trusted everything was being presented as honest. I was amazed at the transformation in Moth and wondered why, why him? Is CBD milder than Parkinson’s? Can it be cured? It must be! This couple of downtrodden hippies are proof that doctors lie.

Well, better late than never. My feeling when I witness the antics of this self-obsessed man is "hoist with his own petard". (Hamlet, act 3, scene 4)

"Hoist with his own petard" is a phrase from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet that has entered proverbial use in English. Literally, the phrase means a bomb-maker was blown off the ground (hoist) by his own bomb (petard). It commonly refers to an ironic reversal in which one is taken down by one's own scheme.
(Wikipedia)

""Hoist with his own petard" is a phrase from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet that has entered proverbial use in English. Literally, the phrase means a bomb-maker was blown off the ground (hoist) by his own bomb (petard)."

IIRC, the petard was a type of bomb that woukd be catapulted through the air (hence the hoisting bit). And the word derives from the French word for fart. Which brings us back to the general theme of hot air.

How very apt and amusing @Peladon :)

It's interesting that as @PrettyDamnCosmic says, DVLA can use the address on the vehicle logbook to issue penalties. Ruth Saberton said that even though she recommended against it, Moth had bought a Defender when they were at the cider farm, I wonder what address that was registered to and how long was it before they changed their details. I can understand the licence change not being done immediately, but years cannot be explained away by the excuse of eviction given by Salray, with her usual emotional twist, as shared by @BrandyAndLovage. Unfortunately lots of people lose their homes in difficult circumstances, others manage to do what is legally necessary, if not immediately, then soon after, this excuse as with the many others Salray gives shows no contrition.

9 July 2025
As anyone who has ever lost their home knows, when you are evicted, changing the address on your driving licence is the least of your concerns.
(R Winn statement)

The gall of the woman. Not having ID with proof of a home address is a real issue for homeless people, something RW should know given her purported interest in the homeless. On the other hand, failing to notifying relevant banks, official bodies etc when you owe money to people / have just been arrested is an entirely different matter.

I agree @SaltyTea, and unlike so many others, Sally and Tim had relatives who wanted to help them, a niece who offered them a home to get back on their feet. They had addresses they could use, unlike those with no support and no one to turn too, those without proof of identity are persona non grata.

I also wonder why Tim seems to find the need to be photographed in all these unusual poses. He planks on trigs. He hovers around on ornamental gateposts. He levitates with joy.

What's wrong with standing and smiling at the camera? It's almost as though he WANTS everyone to notice how lithe, supple and strong he is...

Interesting that on P217 of TSP as they leave Polly's they " packed their things., taxed and insured the van ... and handed back the keys to the shed" before they supposedly started the second leg of their walk.

I've always wondered what they then did with their van (or was it a Land Rover ) as there is no mention of where it was parked during this time until they moved into the flat in Polruan a few months later. I suspect they were speeding around in it with their rucksacks in the boot, stopping for the occasional photograph.

Thick with the huge emotion of Moth being on death row - they make off with ammonites. The chapter starts:

Living with a death sentence, having no idea when it will be enacted, is to straddle a void. Every word or gesture, every breath of wind or drop of rain matters to a painful degree. For now we had moved outside of that. Moth was on death row, but he’d been granted the right to appeal. He knew CBD hadn’t miraculously disappeared, but somehow, for a while, it was held at bay.

Later, I should think the van came in useful:

Leaving the sea, we entered the woods, our packs weighed down with fossilized ammonites from the beach

Well, I suppose they couldn't leave the beach with UNfossilized ammonites... Sal's usual overblown writing again.

But... but...Vroomie... don't you remember the chapter " Swimming with Cephalopods" where she berates them for having a cosy shell to live in while she and Timoth are at the mercy of cruel fate and SW holidaymakers?

Lucky them finding ammonites, I've never had a sniff even around Whitby. I'd think they would have been reluctant to burden themselves so though, unless they planned to flog them, but then again, Raymoth.

“Thick with emotion” yes, this is the verbal equivalent of Moth’s supposed master plastering skills. Every bit of her emotion is completely made up! None of that was true, isn’t her language designed to deceive? It’s conniving and very wrong to have done this and to continue with the pretence despite everything that’s come out to the contrary, is sick.
I agree with you Vroom, the man is an utter show off and a complete plank himself.

@Uricon2 :"I'd think they would have been reluctant to burden themselves."

One of interviewer asked SW about the inconsistency between (1) SW having packed a notebook before the 630-mile walkies and (2) SW having writiten TSP from memory and TW's marginalia. SW explained this by saying that they did a thorough repack on the walk to remove surplus weight and therefore threw away the notebook.

The interviewer could have gone on to ask: (1) why would you then weigh down your rucksacks with rocks, or (2) how did TW's radio remain forgotten during this repacking. But what would have been the point.

A notebook hardly weighs anything. Interestingly a transistor radio is mentioned in 500 mile walkies as well as the peeling nose palaver and the tramp references. Moth allegedly had his “battered” old well loved copy of Beowulf while Mark Wallington had his Seven years in Tibet. There’d be no point in referencing that book as Moth’s battered old favourite though because that wouldn’t affiliate them with Simon Armitage and that was a crucial plot line to draw comparisons with him. They forgot that Beowulf was Moth’s favourite when Moth got all gussied up for the photo shoots and a new copy had to be sent for.
Their gigantic egos and whopping great lies are carried with ease.

@HatStickBoots I was thinking of you when I was listening, again, to Ep. 7 of The Walkers. The memoirist, Clover Stroud, is talking about emotional honesty and how she would be undermining the reader and, herself, the artist if this was not so. From about 10 mins.

Remember, everyone, the whole series of podcasts The Walkers is available for anyone to listen to currently. I really like the Ep. 7 one - health warning it has Sally talking for a while near the beginning.

The Walkers: The real Salt Path | The Observer

Thank you the health warning @BrandyAndLovage ! I think we’ve found Jack Bauer’s new method of torture!

I noticed that the Mumsnet ads for The Salt Path seem to have finally stopped. Instead they're advertising "Tell Me Lies".

Did a bit of research into where TSP ranked in Amazon bestsellers by year. It seems that the film and the controversy definitely boosted sales in 2025:

2019 #37
2020 #60
2021 #78
2025 #93

Currently TSP ranks #1893 in Amazon books with TWS at #17,551 and LL #19,610

Doesn't appear to be much wrong with Moth's left arm at the Salt Path premiere at Newquay last year!!!!

Lauren (@laurenkwm1256) | TikTok