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

Quite. Hmmm...

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

@HatStickBoots couldn't agree more. Kiefer whispering sexily at you or Salray droning on.

No. Contest.

Fun fact for @HatStickBoots (forgive digression!)

Sarah Clarke (Nina Myers) was married IRL to Xander Berkeley (George Mason). In the infamous scene where Jack whispers in her ear and she looks utterly shocked, he was meant to say " I will hunt you down etc etc"

What Kiefer actually said was "Sarah. I love you. I wish you hadn't married Xander", as he thought (correctly) it would get a more authentic response of total incomprehension and horror.

Erlack! I can't stand these men who use any excuse to jolly you into accepting a hug from them (especially since he would have known that she couldn't have pushed him off (if she'd wanted to) infront of all those cameras). Pervy or what.

Bafta?

Baftas 2026: Which films are in the race for outstanding British film? | Features | Screen

Prince William (at the Baftas) doesn't seem sure (or is pre-occupied by other matters...)

🤣 I didn’t look at this at first because it was TikTok I wasn’t sure if I could…. Suffice to say, I just have! 😅

You forgot to warn that the video which immediately follows it has Sal talking to camera!!! 😬

Awww thank you for this @Uricon2 ❤️ totally agree. Faced with Sal I’d be spilling like President Logan after less than a minute! Thank you too for the fun fact, that’s brilliant!

Will to Kate

"If the bloody Salt Path thing wins anything, Richard 3 and Henry 8 will have nothing on me"

Kate "Never mind dear, we can go home soon and listen to a nice podcast by Our Chloe"

Just think… if it does win something, Sal and Tim will have to make an appearance 😲

Not nominated for anything thank goodness.

Not sure if anybody has shared this article from the Daily Express which was published in 2018 just after TSP came out. In it Sal claims:

• she was kicked by the lady with the dog in Lynton who accused them of being tramps

• the doctors told Moth he would never be able to work again and CBD would see a rapid decline in his health

• they paid the rent on the Polruan apartment with the remains of Sal's income from sheep bagging

• they walked 380 miles of the SWCP in Aug-Oct 2013 and polished off the remaining 250 miles the following year

Couple walked 630 miles and lived in a tent after being made homeless | UK | News | Express.co.uk

Sal also claims that they foraged for blackberries, mushrooms and dandelions!

I’m so relieved about this.

Gahhh, her appropriation makes me so angry. How she pitched herself as being perceived as drunken tramp crawling around on a pavement while also championing the hidden homeless, which are essentially distinct demographics. You can't be both SalTim! Either you are hidden homeless (i.e. sofa surfing, registered for emergency council housing etc) or you are completely homeless sleeping rough. We all now know they were neither, just a regular walkers avoiding responsibilities, with a track record of fraud.

It’s incredulous. All that material was filched from Mark Wallingham. All the appropriation makes me angry too @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree . They have no morals at all. So many lies and not an inch of conscience! They really don’t gaf. Ugh. How any of those interviews was performed with a straight face I do not know. I can see now why Tim often had to hide out of sight.

I’m glad someone else thinks this! In most of the photos with women TW is invading their space, cosying up etc. I think he makes them very uncomfortable and sometimes they are laughing out of embarrassment. GA doesn’t look at ease beside him either.

I agree. I think GA looks very comfortable and relaxed with JI on the red carpet, etc but I don't detect any warmth from her towards TW.

I can't find it now but am sure I read somewhere that GA/JI are planning to work together again on something. I know it won't be what we all wish it were 😂but I genuinely hope they have success. 2 good actors dragged into this nonsense and a lot of emotional investment from JI in particular.

I also agree. Of course the man is at Death’s door! It would be sooo ungracious to show any displeasure towards an extremely sick, dying man. What a farce!! The man bounces around like a young golden retriever. If Sally thought she could control him with her fictional depiction of a man clawing his way back from death thanks to her devotion, she’s sorely mistaken.

The man bounces around like a young golden retriever.

I remember on the very early threads we were castigated for suggesting there was nothing wrong with this charlatan because of his seemingly boundless energy and athletic ability. (It was mainly about him atop a trig point I seem to recall.)

So it's easy to see why the Walkers thought they were on to a winner - no one can question if this man with a supposed disability is actually suffering from a life limiting and disabling illness because it's "wrong" to do that.

No wonder they got away with it for so long.

What you have written nails it - and I know because, although I didn't believe it, I told myself off.

The article shared above by @ThompsonTwin about Baftas 2026 describes the film as "the joker in the pack". This is what the Moth myth is also. The director of the film made a big thing about the main players behind it being women but all the time they were hoodwinked by this man and the woman who is held in sway to him.

Marianne Elliott describes Tim as a "positive, gorgeous, charismatic man", from 14.50

Woman's Hour - Weight-loss jabs, The Salt Path director, Tennis at Queens, Part-time teaching - BBC Sounds

Copied from the BAFTA’s post:

“The joker in this particular pack is surely Marianne Elliott’s The Salt Path, adapted from Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir, and a bona fide box-office hit for Black Bear: £8.1m ($10.7m) in the UK and Ireland. The Salt Path failed to land a single nomination at the Bifas, but the film seems better aligned with Bafta voter taste. The negative fallout from an evident glossing of inconvenient truths by Winn in the source material could prove a hazard.”

Could prove hazardous? I should say it’s dead in the water and once again other talent has to take the rap for their careers because of those two. It’s not so much that the “inconvenient truths” were “glossed” over, they were omitted altogether and alternative circumstances put in their place. Sally also gave both of them complete personality overhauls or transplants when she wrote them as Raynor and Moth.

Couple that with the mystery miracle nature cure that modern medical science cannot explain but might have something to do with plant chemicals. It's a double whammy defence to avoid the question "but Moth how are you seemingly so bouncy like an excited dog?"

Yes and we have also wondered about the professionals who would wish to monitor this unusual condition. Well there is a system set up so that, when you have a diagnosis of CBD, your clinician would then register you for this very reason. I did not know this before and I am surprised that, if there had been a firm diagnosis, it is not referenced in any of the letters in the R Winn statement of July? Or, surely because it is unusual, and relevant when there is a miraculous improvement, mentioned in any of the books or articles?

Coincidentally, it was set up in 2015, from the NHS website under the condition, as follows:

If you have CBD, your clinical team will pass information about you on to the National Congenital Anomaly and Rare Diseases Registration Service (NCARDRS).

This helps scientists look for better ways to prevent and treat this condition. You can opt out of the register at any time.
Find out more about the register on the National Disease Registration Service website.

Excellent find @BrandyAndLovage .

There was some pioneering work into rare (really rare) blood factor deficiencies in the 50s by the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Two of my aunts presented with such, one more severely affected although able to live quite normally and were referred to the team. I can't remember which factor it was and despite the whole family at the time being extensively tested, they couldn't identify whether my grandfather or grandmother was the carrier. Nan's view was grandfather as his line were in her opinion " too closely bred" (they weren't, genealogy shows) and the Professor told her that she had a "very unusual family" (not wrong there, possibly in a non haematological and quite baffling way)

It was all apparently written up in the Lancet and BMJ and various other academic publications and because it was fairly benign, the only advice was to avoid cousin marriages at all costs as they had no idea if or how it could mutate (they clearly hadn't met all the cousins, such advice was superfluous)

On the couple of occasions I've had to give a detailed medical history a casual mention of this has lead to a fanatic gleam in the eye of the doctor and production of a syringe, even with assurances that I am bog boring, entirely unaffected and know little about the whole episode. Most symptomatic aunt was pursued for decades to give samples, updates etc.

I've shared this boring (sorry) insight into the health of Clan Uricon2 because I think there is no way in this world that Timoth wouldn't be the flipping poster boy for neurological assessment and testing if he'd had a diagnosis of CBD or anything related and had miraculously improved. Just no way.

Wow @BrandyAndLovage ! Thank you!
@Uricon2 not in the least bit boring! Thank you sharing that. I agree. Gosh, what a pity nobody presented them with any of that knowledge during one of their interviews. They have painted themselves into a corner now, as the saying goes, because gregarious Moth, the man with the big heart who wants to help everybody else (in Sally’s works of fiction) can’t really mutter that he doesn’t want to physically do anything that would help give an understanding of CBD (because he isn’t afflicted with it) because there is no reason not to (other than not having it). He was happy to be a poster boy for a charity, that’s entirely different.