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

That's a really good point @HatStickBoots . If you honestly thought you'd improved from a terrible and fatal condition, by doing anything you'd cooperate. The cynic in me also thinks that it would have been marvellous for sales and interest, given how people were affected by and invested in his 'story'.

Of course, if it's all a pile of made up bat guano, you can't do that.

Yeah. And because they’re such a lazy pair of grifters who have lapped up the adulation, they would have welcomed all that extra if Moth could fake it and she could somehow tamper with test results.
This is why they’re holed up now and not sharing anything apart from a few airy tokens about the time of day and weather. She shared photos of Moth being marvellous and spoke about him to interviewers as though he was just a normal middle-aged man eg after the marathon and Thames walk “he’s good yeah”, all sounding very humble and modest to the onlookers who believe she’s the reason he’s still alive but that could change at any moment. Well now would have been the ideal opportunity for them both to back up their claims that Chloe’s findings are all misleading (including the neurologist’s?) with some firm evidence. It seems there isn’t any 🤷🏼‍♀️ ho hum.

Just noticed she has deleted the most recent Instagram post with the foxes. No idea why but thought I’d mention it.

Strange. Does anyone think that she's trying to stir up interest that is possibly a bit lacking ATM?

Look, Raymoth, we might notice if you post n delete, but you are not the sub Cornwall version of the Beckhams so it will be of limited interest.

Is she posting regularly now? I think the last post mentioned here was the light at dawn. Has anybody mentioned one about foxes until just now? I would have liked to have seen that.

What's also strange is the post count is now at 327 but a week ago it was 323 with the now deleted fox video post. Maybe an IG glitch.

It was spotted a few threads ago (I just checked - 22nd Feb thread 17) and first commented on by @NecklessMumster . A video of foxes crossing a field. SalRay started posting again just before OC’s podcast but very occasionally. It seems to be a way of trying to show everyone that it’s business as usual.

And her posts have words and sound now, trying a slow come back? I wonder why last one deleted tho

Also lost another 200 followers the past week.

Thank you @Anythingbutheadlands and @NecklessMumster I don’t remember it now sadly.

An interesting blog post from a fan back in July who felt betrayed by Winn's "conspiratorial fiction". Though I can't say i agree with their open letter (at end) to SalTim - far too forgiving IMO.

https://medium.com/the-honest-perspective/sadness-for-my-salt-path-heroes

Agreed @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree . I'd be interested in what she now thinks in light of OC's further revelations.

Yes, I agree with you @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree . I’ve read that before but refreshed my memory. The problem I have with some of the thoughts shared there are that they’re based on the assumption that Sally Walker and Tim feel things the way that she thinks they do, the way that law abiding people do. She expects them to have felt an overwhelming guilt which shadowed their journey but I see no evidence of that. They felt so little guilt about it that they wrote three more books in which they continued to use the very same tricks and ploys to fool the more widespread general public because they’d succeeded in doing so with the people in their own familiar circle so why not? They were thrilled to have got away with their crimes and no “deeply sorry” from them means anything. All through their books you read their judgement of others while they hold a shining light over themselves. They’ve shown themselves to be hypocrites, liars, thieves with not even a modicum of guilt. It’s their superiority complex which seems to make them believe they can lie about the most awful things. This fake death sentence that Tim carries around his neck has successfully put paid to any criticism they may have been subjected to. Like many of their readers and supporters, I am a very empathetic person and this is what they exploit at every opportunity. There are people who really are facing death after a short or long illness who really are having to say the words “I won’t be able to make it past Christmas”. Tim and Sally don’t care about them or the fact that they have fooled and caused pain and anger to those who believed there was hope for them too. They’re so arrogant that they think their message is a hopeful one despite being a lie.

Sorry, I thought I posted this at the time! V delayed response to a post several pages back...

-
It's not quite the same though. You bought a book, you got a book, not a piece of cheese or a vacuum cleaner.

What's being disputed, I suppose is more philosophical -- the genre of the book and its associated truth quotient.

Is buying a book you are brought to believe is a substantially true memoir, but which turns out to be a remarkably self-serving fiction about two criminals cosplaying homeless and illness, akin to getting a leg of lamb delivered when you'd ordered a lobster? You open the box immediately in the food delivery, see it's the wrong thing and get onto customer services, who (one hopes) apologise and rectify it.

With a fake 'memoir' it's more complicated.

If you pursue the comparison, in the case of TSP, it's sold as lobster, it looks like lobster, it tastes like lobster, lots of people are talking about what an excellent lobster it is, it wins a prize for being the best lobster, and a film is made about this particularly good lobster.

Only after an investigative reporter gets involved are the buying public made aware that this enormously popular 'lobster' is, I don't know, cat food squished into a shell and masquerading as high-end seafood.

I suppose we also need to factor in the intent of the seller. We know that the intent of the person who put the cat food into the lobster shells was to deceive. What is less clear is the extent of the knowledge of the company that acted as the middleman and did the packaging and advertising. Did they genuinely believe they were selling lobster but failed to do robust enough checks on the product? Or was it a cynical exercise in false advertising?

Is it more like putting a vegetarian certification on a foodstuff which, it turns out, after it's been eaten by millions believing it's a vegetarian product, to contain pork gelatin, isinglass and veal? Or, given the whole CBD nonsense, is it like flogging a miracle 'health' capsule which not only has no active ingredient but brings false hope to seriously ill people? Only of course there are much more stringent checks on the whole food and medicine industry than in the book trade, so it could never happen.

(I now need to go and lie down. There are lobsters literally dancing in front of my eyes...)

I completely agree. Another shortcoming of the blogger's assessment is they fail to recognise (like many fans) that the inspiration gleaned from the TSP walk is no longer valid because the walk was never one of redemption. But to be fair, her blog was early days before more came out so maybe she has changed her view.

Walk yourself better. Nope.
Walk yourself out of homelessness. Nope
Walk yourself to process grief. Nope.
Yet Penguin persists to market the book with such claims.

Yes the books are being sold as if nothing at all has changed. A week ago I sent this to [email protected]

In essence I said this:

I would like to enquire about the way the books are still being sold, please. The medical claims have been discredited by neurologists. It is upsetting for people with this disease.

I had a standard acknowledgement but nothing else ......

Well done for trying. I wonder if complaints need to go directly to the editor or higher. Didn't SW's niece say she got no joy going through customer services?

I think it is important, thanks. I started at the top with Tom Weldon, the self-confessed gambler/CEO and didn't get a reply. That was months ago but I want to show some efforts, to make contact, to be able to then go to Citizens Advice and see what they say.

In Waterstones today, and did my usual turning the Winn books around, but thought they are less prominent. None displayed on a table, one of the only ones without a card recommendation from staff and because of the surname just in the bottom corner. They obviously have a lot of copies to shift everywhere though.

It is the fraudulent health claims that are the most convincing that it is right to take some action, surely?

Excellent points @SableGules ! I suppose a better analogy might be that that someone buys a free range organic Sutton Hoo chicken (or similar) and later finds out it was a poor little battery farmed thing. It is chicken, but not the chicken they bought. I just don't understand why anyone would have to prove they never read fiction to be unhappy that what they purchased believing it to be a factual account was untrue.

I'm sorry if I've added strutting fowl to gavotting lobsters!

Excellent post @SableGules . That really is something to ponder.

I have to say that while I can completely understand people loving TSP because of the story they believed to be true, there is a dissonance with me as to why they thought it well written. I've managed a bit more and oh dear no. Also, I really, really love Our Simon's Walking Away but don't feel it would be an homage of sorts if I walked TSP (I won't, I know the area a bit and understand why it was *a slog for someone much younger and fitter than I am now)

I suppose I'm underestimating the emotional impact on people who read it before the expose and it isn't their fault, at all.

*that is if you're actually walking it consistently and not the odd few days when the fancy takes you.

I agree. It does seem ridiculous! I don’t understand that logic at all. Who checks to see if you only ever read non fiction? If your lobster or chicken was mis-labelled deliberately at the source and then marketed as top of the range without having been properly checked…. Later you become violently ill, demand a refund and for those products to be labelled correctly so as to avoid ever contaminating yourself in the future.

You’re absolutely right. It’s not well written at all except for the bits that have been plundered from other writers. You see that she tries to copy the humour of Mark Wallington in some parts and also scoops out from his 1986 publication, a few social commentaries from Cornwall as well. I think the only original content are her imaginary feelings about Moth’s imminent death from a disease that he has not been diagnosed with and all the bitter hypocrisy she is full of.

I think it most certainly was the emotional impact of TSP that held the most weight.

I think we have to remember that this about reading non-fiction was the case in the US, as @SableGules told us in the original post. We know that a different stance was taken in Australia with health claims in a Penguin book. What we know in the UK is:

In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) regulates advertising across all media, specifically prohibiting unlicensed claims that a product can treat or prevent disease (Rule 12.6). This mirrors prohibited practices under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, s.19(1). Therefore, if PRH’s marketing implied that walking alleviates CBD, this could be investigated by the ASA, despite the disclaimer.

This is from an article, published in the summer, a very helpful article with a terrible A!-generated photo!

The Salt Path Scandal - The potential legal repercussions for factual inaccuracies in memoirs — The WS Society

Thank you @BrandyAndLovage I don’t think I’ve read that one before.