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

Yes, I think enough beginner writers quite probably would.

My point is only that SW would have to DIY it as I don't think any of the credible 'teaching writing' providers would now want their brand to be associated with hers.

And obviously, from Sally 'Keep Schtum' Walker's POV, that there's nothing to stop a journalist signing up for one of these Write A Bestseller courses and either use it as an opportunity to ask awkward questions (and say, innocently, 'Oh, but I just want to know about what is ethical in terms of transforming real life into memoir!') or to stay undercover and write it up afterwards in a hostile way eg 'Inside the Writing Workshops of Disgraced Salt Path Memoirist'.

Yes, great take re: beginner writers. TBH, when I read TSP - putting aside the fact I didn't like the writing and was left with a feeling of niggling doubt - I could see why it was successful based on the narrative hooks (and the way it was structured) and also how it could be viewed as a sort of blue-print for how to write a best-selling memoir. It wouldn't surprise me if a few burgeoning writers have since used TSP, or been inspired by it, in their approach to their own work. A course/writing retreat by Our Ray(Sal) would probably be right up their street.

This is inline with the BBC's annoying habit of reserving BBC Sounds for the latest episode of certain podcasts that aren't made available on Apple Podcasts etc until a week or more later. I suspect that these episodes will be trickled out at weekly intervals over the next couple of months on the non-BBC podcast platform.

I didn't think of the 'journalist taking a place as an opportunity to ask questions' angle!

But I think Sally would have her answers down pat if this happened - or she'd rely on everyone else on the course rounding on the journalist and whingeing about 'how could they be so meeeeeeaaan!' She seems the sort who wants other people to fight her battles for her.

But they can't stay in that massive place on their own with no intention of using the facility forever, surely?

Isn’t BBC sounds free?

< shaking my head and laughing! > My brain finally sent me the word I’d been searching for .. servitude.
🤦🏼‍♀️

Yes but I think you need to register for a free account in some cases. I listened to something on BBC sounds recently and was surprised to not have to sign in, so some need an account and some don’t. I haven’t tried these yet, will do soon.

I seem to be unable to access more than the first episode -- I'm outside the UK, though, which I assume is the reason.

I just want to say that when I chatted about the “best seller” aspect of TSP, I didn’t mean that she knew it would be but rather that she or they as a couple had put in a lot of groundwork beforehand to come up with an easily readable style with all the elements of mystery, emotional drama, peril and intrigue that readers like in a true story. (Their true story when stripped of all the fantasy is dirty and no one would care.)
That is before the editing and marketing.
When I talk about SW scheming to make it a saleable package, I assumed that most memoir writers wouldn’t be like that because it’s really taboo to pretend about such serious issues. They took a chance that they’d be protected somehow by the rarity of the condition and the ongoing research of it. I’m really only talking about their success and not that it can be copied or taught… in case that’s the impression I gave.

What was LSB like in comparison with TSP?

She had a savvy agent according to the BBC. I imagine she saw the potential in LSB and then used her expertise to shape it into TSP which had all the ingredients to excite Penguin. Nothing wrong in that, it’s what a good agent would do I should imagine. Sally probably told her the CBD story and why doubt it - but the agent must have known the death of Sally’s mother didn’t take place in TWS if she had read LSB…

Somebody mentioned the other day that LSB had a lot of vitriol in it towards Cooper, which was edited out. Can that be expanded on please? Where was this information?

Hi @HatStickBoots - it was me. It was from the other podcasts, The Observer, The Walkers, ep. 7.

I made a note that said that a striking omission from LSB to TSP was the business deal that went wrong and Sal's evident venom towards their old friend.

I wish we could see what it says!

Hello all. I hope you are well today.

Yes please, do put the episode number of the BBC Wales podcast you are commenting on at the beginning of your posts. Here is the link again in case anyone needs it:
BBC Radio Wales - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available now

Just a slight detour, but it occurred to me today that another benefit of all the exposés of Saltim is that we are thankfully not having to put up with the involvement of Salray in the publicity for this:
King opens world's longest coastal path around England - BBC News

I once spent a week on a walking holiday with a woman who apparently made a very good (6 figure) income from writing self-published fiction, and from selling guides on how to emulate her success. It appeared that she broke down her writing process into innumerable small steps, then wrote another tome on how to complete that step - fans who aspired to copy her could have spent a year's advance just on buying her "how to" guides and signing up for webinars etc. It seemed very easy money tbh; I read a chapter of one of her books and thought it a real potboiler, and she was open about the fact that she was going to claim the cost of the holiday (for her and her OH) against tax on the grounds that she needed to visit the area for research!

I throw this in to wonder if Salary might try something like this. It would avoid having to have any awkward real-time or F2F meetings with folk who might ask awkward questions!

Thank you so much! I still haven’t got through them all yet. I’m only up to Bill Cole. I blame Simon Armitage and his Shed podcasts for leading me astray.

Oh dear oh dear! I've just looked again at the website of the woman referred to above - it's years since we met, years since I read her stuff. She's now marketing books on solo walking as pilgrimage, apparently perfect for people who like Raynor Winn's stuff!

And having read an excerpt, I'd wonder if she was actually SW in disguise, had I not actually met her!

Arising from the BBC Wales podcasts - news article.

The Salt Path author Raynor Winn confirms she wrote secret first book - BBC News

Well, well, well…. 👏 thank you @BrandyAndLovage what an interesting read! So she finally admits authorship but it changes nothing with regard the CB prize or committing fraud by trying to con people into a raffle for a house steeped in debt that they were passing off as the opposite. They also refused to be interviewed and it’s a shame that Penguin refused to be interviewed and still claim that the delay of OWH is due to their author’s distress, not their readers.

@BrandyAndLovage : Thank you for this interesting article.

I wonder why SW did not answer the programme's list of questiions yet chose to admit that HNTDDD was her first book (and therefore statements that TSP were her first writings were untrue).

I also wonder whether SW made that admission before or after Christpher Bland trust took the position that TSP would still have been eligible for the prize (because, in that year only, authors could enter books even if they had previously self-published).

It’s certainly confirmed that she and her husband are a couple of liars, pretending she’d never written anything before etc. I believe you’re right @Peladon .

Having admitted (through lawyers) that TSP wasn't her first book, maybe the next step is to admit that TSP was, as is now patently obvious, based on a pack of lies and the opposite of "unflinchingly honest"

Despite The Salt Path scoop by OC, things not looking great at The Observer.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/3a0b5f13fa73eaca

Follow on from the BBC Wales article

Raynor Winn Wrote a Secret Book Before The Salt Path to Escape Debt - Altitudes Magazine

She is the epitome of “smug, tight lips”.

Although the BBC article is obviously not “news” to us, I’m appreciating the way that they quote both Sal and Tim claiming it was her first book - so that their capacity for blatant lies is made evident to all.