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

True, @ThompsonTwin could have provided where the info came from (i.e an anonymous source) when initially divulging the info, esp as it was joined with a link that did not contain the info so understabdable some felt mislead, confused or whatever. But also not appropriate to dismiss it in a way that suggested TT was trying to somehow gain kudos for knowing something. Was an unnecessary remark imo. Mistakes were made etc etc.

I am bemused that RW didn’t mention any of Moth’s extraordinary experiences in the Americas when she in her books she waxed lyrical about his fabulous credentials. Only his pre-Sally passion for Scotland is referenced. As they met at college (6th form, or further education, not HE), it’s a lot for him to have managed as a teenager, unless he did some sort of school exchange or student programme, but a) those trips are probably expensive and b), I just feel she’d have been sufficiently awed to have to include it in her memoirs as part of what made him so fascinating.

I do know someone my sort of age, 70s, who did a six months on a USA visit in her late teens, an exchange visit between Young Farmer’s Club and the American 4H, which I suppose may have been the case for Moth.

We know he is a peacock, quick to flash his feathers, but it just doesn’t fit the rest of RW’s narrative.

I don’t believe Moth went to the US or Guatemala, nor that he sprayed crops or herded llamas or whatever it was! Either he’s a massive joker (herding llamas with cats) or he is absolutely a con artist who specialises in emotionally manipulating people he sees as being in a position to give him something he wants (developed a neurological disorder as a result of spraying crops, shouldn’t plan beyond Christmas). It sounds as if @ThompsonTwin ‘s friend had a lucky escape!

I’ll grant that he may have been a talented sportsman in his youth, even that he visited the US where he ran on a track and chucked a football around. But again you would’ve thought those things would have been added to the heap of things to worship about the amazing Moth, and paraded at any opportunity. Perhaps Ray doesn’t like to talk about it because she wasn’t there, or because he had a girlfriend in the States/Nottingham Forest football club?

The Young Farmers 4H exchange thing might have worked if TW was from an agricultural background, but SW stresses his 'townie' credentials, and his family had a building/plastering business. The whole reason (supposedly) that SW's parents didn't approve of him was that he wasn't a farmer, even a tenant one. He seems an unlikely candidate for Young Farmers, unless he was cosplaying a farmer in order to pick up girls or something.

The possible timing of any of this is interesting, isn't it?

Either he did it before he met SW when he was 20, in which case it's strange that she doesn't mention it as part of his exotic otherness. Or he did it after they met, either by himself (which waters down the We Were Together and In Love Every Single Day Since He Sexily Dipped His Mars Bar in His Tea narrative a bit) or with SW before they had children, in which case it's also strange it doesn't get a passing mention in any of the books, especially TWS which focuses so much on their early period together.

You'd think that she'd lean into the poignancy of him having been an athlete in the US OR a rugby player OR a youth player at Notts Forest with the Tragic CBD narrative.

Or maybe his US adventures just don't fit the brand.

Is it possible they went to the USA as a family and went to Universal Parks. They may have related to a particular character, and his team, who had a thing for bandanas:

A prop crate in 2025 had a Global Discovery Group manifest of supplies to be shipped to the Poseidon dig-site by request of Professor Baxter. Dated to 1999 and 2001, the contents included bandanas and megaphones

Professor Elias Baxter | Universal Parks and Resorts Wiki | Fandom

I seem to recall that on FB their son told his American football coach that his father played wide receiver in Alabama!

I do find the notion of (young) Moth in the US, fascinating. Although there is no allusion to Moth's escapades across the Pond in Sal's books, there is quite a lot elsewhere:

• deleted FB posts by their son which reference Moth's American Football skills

• comments to locals about time spent by Moth in the US working as a crop sprayer

• claimed US track and field prowess

• claimed experience as a gaucho in Guatemala herding sheep with cats

• numerous Americans encountered in TSP

Is there any evidence that Moth has ever visited the US or is it all Walter Mitty?

Elias Baxter

How not to Dal dy Dir, surely?! Ellias and Baxter.

I’m still trying to get my head around the stolen carpets and the glued locks after they split… then the revelations about Moth’s prowess before the Mars bar incident… and now this!! That can’t be a coincidence @DisappointedReader and @BrandyAndLovage ?! No wonder she sticks to the script.

Is the plot thickening even further at this late stage!?

It’s interesting either way, isn’t it? Either it’s all or partly true and SW has suppressed it in the books for some reason, and never alluded to it in interviews, because it’s not part of the script, or it’s complete fantasy that TW was happy to spin to randoms or to his kids but he knows perfectly well wouldn’t stand up to any scrutiny.

Could he have done something like Operation Raleigh? Probably too old for that exact project - and probably it required a less free-spirited nature, and more commitment to team work!

Sounds like complete Walter Mitty to me.

Hello everyone, apologies for radio silence for a little while. I'm sorry to have to tell you that my absence from recent discussions has been for a sad reason. The Wild Pooing Rovering Correspondent died suddenly a couple of weeks back. As you all know, he had come through some health trials in the past couple of months, and he had seemed to recover well. Unfortunately his arthritis got the better of him, and there was nothing further to be done. He died v peacefully with his head on my lap, and he is now out of pain and at rest. He was a one in a million, and we miss him.

I am snorting with laughter at the image of herding llamas/sheep with cats in Guatemala. Do the WWs just chuck a load of vocabulary into a random phrase generator and hope for the best? Walter Mitty was a total amateur compared to this pair.

I’m so sorry, @TonstantWeader. 💐💐💐

So sorry to hear that @TonstantWeader...sending you hugs and 💐

So sorry @TonstantWeader, that's very sad news, it is good that his end was peaceful and you were with him 💐

Sorry to hear your news @TonstantWeader

@TonstantWeader ' so sorry to hear of your loss.

Sorry for your loss.

So sorry to hear your very sad news. Sending hugs. x

Very sorry @TonstantWeader ♥

So very sorry for your loss @TonstantWeader such sad news 😞

Very sorry *@TonstantWeader to hear of your loss.

Thank you all so much for your lovely messages. They really do help 🤗

I was laughing today as there was a v funny article in the Times about Simon Armitage doing a meterology stint at Reading Uni, from where he'd been rejected in his UCAS applications. He was v cross with himself as he guessed wrong on a type of cloud, but was v self-deprecating about it. I did note the comparison with the over-emotive glum-washing style we know so well from SW.