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

This is quite true, but usually the 'debut' book by a previous author who's just changed names is associated with a change of genre too, so someone who has previously written, say, romantic comedy under one name might bring out a 'debut' women's fiction novel under a new name. It does tend to be that everyone in the industry, and most of their fellow authors, know that it's a pen name for XXXX.

If an author has a series of publishing bombs and their books genuinely don't sell, then it's unlikely that they will get another chance to publish JUST by switching names, as it's obvious to everyone that there's something about their voice or storytelling that just doesn't gel with readers. They might be advised to switch genres and names to see if they get on better writing in a different style or with different content, but if that also dies a death they don't get continuous 'goes' at it.

Does the BBC podcast highlight the disparity between the CBD narrative in TSP and the initial tentative diagnosis after the epic walk had supposedly been completed and draw the conclusion that the CBD theme was cynically retrofitted into the narrative to emotionally manipulate the reader and maximise the chances of commercial success?

DH and I passed a red Vango tent pitched on grass and tied to the railings next to the beach yesterday. He immediately asked if it was Raynor and Moth.

Welsh cultural appropriation is something I hadn’t even thought of.
Great post @EdithBond . We’ve compared them to parasites, cuckoos and now we can add miners to the mix! I agree with you, they did seem to ‘mine’ the homelessness aspect of their so called journey. It really sickens me, what they’ve done. If they hadn’t lost their home due to their greed and criminal activity they probably would have been only too willing to work on Polly’s farm and Bill’s offer would have been the most joyous thing to have ever happened. Instead, Tim and Sally are lazy and just not wired that way. Sally had to invent problems for Raynor and Moth which would make the reader sympathise with their decisions all the time. I do think they consciously used the BI and the Pavement magazine as springboards but the cosplaying of homelessness in the books and off the page makes me incensed. Exploitation! The pair of them have worked together continuously or else he would have divorced her a long time ago.

The BBC podcast focuses more on the genesis of Sally to Raynor and focuses, logically, on the Welsh origins of the pair. It appears to stay clear of Tim until the end in terms of whether or not he is really sick. Again, if he is, I cannot understand why he would not ask his own neurologist to make a statement on his behalf and put all this to bed for once and for all .I thought it did a good job of showing how blatantly they both lied to the public and countless interviews. Judging by how the Press have picked up on this, it would seem that there is no coming back for the Walkers. I imagine penguin are looking at the comments on the articles and taking the temperature.

There might even be some coming back from the scandal for the WinWalkers if it were just the books & film. Unfortunately Sally has given no end of interviews where she doubles down on all the lies. For example in many interviews she gives the distinct impression that not only did they walk all 630 miles of the SWCP but that they did it all in one go.

Very good points @IvyGoldenM, Tim's consultant did talk to Chloe, podcast 4 The miracle, he agreed to talk in general terms, when Chloe explained the details of Moth's recoveries to his consultant, he said that was something he could not endorse, he also made it clear that he had never come across anyone who has reversed the symptoms of CBD or even halted the diseases progress. This is the consultant who reviewed TSP and told Chloe that he had not read all of Raynor Winn's books.

Great comments about Welsh cultural appropriation. Some time ago on the thread we talked about what appears as Salray's fragile sense of personal identity and her sequential efforts to adopt all sorts of pseudo identities and trying to place herself at the heart of various communities seems to be part of this. So far we've had pretending to be the daughter of a tenant farmer, fake 'I grew up a child of nature isolated from all' (when in reality she grew up just outside Burton on Trent and went to a perfectly ordinary sixth form college) fake Welsh identity, pretending to be a long distance walker, fake Cornish identity, pretending to be homeless, pretending to be a cider farmer, and overall pretending to be Raynor Winn. All these serial reinventions seem to speak of a fragile identity with not much at the core. Does anyone know who she really is as a person? Does she?

That was my initial question when I researched (rather than read) TSP via online marketing copy and interviews. I remember reading they were homeless on the SWCP for two years, i.e. implied they walked the whole lot in one go and had no option but to sleep rough.

I questioned that. It’d be incredibly tough through the winter. It’s hard enough to survive in a tent sheltered in woodland etc. through the winter. Even if young and in good health (or as good as your health can be while camping out in winter). Even with a home to return to. But on the coast? Plus, most areas have winter night shelters. You can’t always get a bed, and they can be hellish places, full of lots of desperate, traumatised and unwell people. But they can be an access point to hostels, advice etc.

So I dug a bit deeper and pretty sure I read they overwintered on a friend’s farm or somewhere. So, basically we’re only walking the path and wild camping from spring to autumn. While physically the same (i.e. out in the elements) there’s a very big psychological difference between choosing to walk and wild camp on a coastal path, as a form of pilgrimage or challenge, and being a rough sleeper.

I have no idea which the Walkers were. But the opportunity to stay with a friend over winter suggests the former. Sounds like they wild camped while knowing (even if they chose not to avail themselves of them at the time) other options were available. Such as staying with adult kids or wider family/friends until they could get a job or sell the land in France. Or asking DWP if they could claim housing benefit until it was sold - then repay.

This is very different to rough sleeping with no or few options: no one to stay with even temporarily; no entitlement to temporary accommodation; no one to help out with a tenancy deposit or act as guarantor, not even a council scheme; not enough housing benefit to afford the rent (even on the crappiest room in the worst house); no landlord willing to let to you; few opportunities for healthy food or a hot shower; no one to turn to for moral support, apart from others in the same position.

With the latter, what pervades is a feeling of despair that this is it: there are few options to ever get out of your situation, however positive and resourceful you are or however hard you try. Every step you hit a barrier. It’s degrading. Health (physical, mental and psychological) deteriorates v quickly for obvs reasons. You have to be very tough to survive.

@EdithBond, things on their children’s social media suggest that the initial stint wasn’t even a full two months of walking and wild camping over August and September (in a different year to the one they claimed)— that they took time out to do other things, saw their children etc. Their son lived in Newquay, and gave them a lift to Bristol at one point.

Also, testimony from SW’s niece (who housed them for 18 months, after which they went on to live in SW’s deceased mother’s house for six months, covering the entire period of purported homelessness) on the Observer podcast suggests that their stints on the path were undertaken as walking holidays while they were living on her farm, and were funded via TW’s PIP and money SW made from wrapping fleeces.

And there’s no evidence they ever walked the second part of the path, other than individual bits on days out or weekends, possibly undertaken once SW had decided to write the book.

So their ‘homelessness’ is a complete fiction.

So their ‘homelessness’ is a complete fiction.

They own a place in France. It might not be a habitable 'house', but they could have put a caravan or tent on the site. They were never even slightly homeless.

I suspect they 'gave up on' the French site at some point when Tim's family (some of whom lived nearby) found out something about them that they didn't like. So they couldn't face them and so left the 'chateau' deserted.

Wow. So, it was the niece’s farm. Didn’t know that. In the film, don’t they stay in a friend’s glamping hut in return for doing it up, implication being it’s only for a few months?

TBF the legal definition of homelessness includes people who have no legal right to occupy their accommodation, e.g. staying as a guest of family or friends, who can ask them to leave at short notice.

But when it comes to help, councils are usually so overrun they tell people in that situation to come back for help if asked to leave. If the family/friends are tenants, they can be risking their own tenancy if they let people live with them without the landlord’s permission. So sometimes they do have to ask people to leave. Depends if the niece owns the farm or asked them to leave.

Definition of homelessness includes having accommodation it’s not reasonable to continue to occupy (due to poor condition etc), likely to be the case for the ruin in France, which they claimed they couldn’t sell. But agree they had the option of making the ruin more habitable or living on site in a cheap van, rather than tent in UK. Must read all the threads - have they ever said why they couldn’t do that? Guess they had better options in UK.

The thing with the French ruin - I mean, it didn't even have to be a habitable house,; but surely, SURELY, if (as Sal maintained in the book) your husband has just had a terrible health diagnosis; or you feel awkward about throwing yourself on your relatives - you take the tent that you are going to be living in anyway and live in it on land that you own? While you get yourself sorted either with a permanent address or even just to get yourself together? Nobody can move you on, you've got the basic facilities (assuming that the house had plumbing), and you're safe.

The niece, ‘Anne’, essentially explodes the entire fiction of wintering in Polly’s half-converted meat shed on sufferance with TW forced to work himself ill and no work available. The shed was fully converted and furnished and centrally heated and rent-free, and their adult children also stayed with them there at times, and Anne was the third family member to house them after their house was repossessed. She emerges as an almost saintly figure, as do other members of SW’s family, who were helping Anne out on her farm as she had young children and her DH was recovering from a brain injury — and she housed them for free for a year and a half out of family loyalty despite knowing that SW had stolen her mother’s (‘Anne’s grandmother) life savings.

The expectation had been they would use it as a base to get started again, declare bankruptcy to get debt collectors off their back, get jobs and find somewhere to live (and presumably make some commitments repaying the theft), but they never did any of this, so when it looked as if they were intending to stay there for life, she asked them to leave, pointing out that they could move to SW’s mother’s now empty house while they figured out their next move.

So while yes, absolutely homelessness can cover sofa surfing and moving around between family and friends, I don’t think most people expect to be put up for free for a year and a half while they don’t t attempt to get jobs and quit the one you get for them after a few shifts, leaving you in an awkward position.

Anne never sneakily found a paying tenant and threw them out, leaving them with no option other than to return to living in a tent on the SWCP. They spent six months living in SW’s mother’s house after that.

They had two years of being voluntarily unemployed and living in free accommodation. They chose to spin this as ‘homelessness’, implying they were alone in the world and forced to live in a tent. In reality they were hiding out from debt collectors.

SW’s statement just says it was an uninhabitable ruin that they’d tried to sell but were told was worthless..

https://www.raynorwinn.co.uk/statement

@TheBookShelf Does she know who she is? Good question! We know that nothing in TSP happened in the way that the reader is told and we’ve seen a very defensive and angry person trying to deny the truth with yet more emotional blackmail. This is a person who mocks outrage and tries to subdue people by making them feel guilty. The questions around Moth’s illness provoked the most “rage”, yet she knows full well that moth doesn’t have CBD and isn’t faking something like that a far worse crime? I think she thinks she is superior and elevated from others, she seems to think that she is very special.

The WWs said that the French property was uninhabitable but they also claim to have renovated practically every property mentioned in TSP, TWS and LL - the Burton house, the 'farm' and outbuildings in Wales, Haye farm, Pollys cow shed, only the Polruan flat didn't get a makeover. Maybe it was down to money for supplies. Also, saying the French land was worthless does not seem like a good reason for not selling because surely there would be some French version of taxes and rates on it. In my experience, saying it's worthless is just a way of saying that they would have to sell at a loss, but surely any small return would have been worth it.

And they could have camped on it in the interim!

But they knew the property (which she told everyone was a 'chateau') was uninhabitable when they bought it (allegedly to 'save the land from developers'). So what was their end game? Leave it for the building to fall down? In what way was any of this going to benefit the wildlife or whatever they bought the land to save from the developers? Land has to be managed, so they must have intended to do something with it... and why buy land with a building on it if you don't want the building - buy land that's completely empty!

Agreed. It’s baffling. She was bragging about this at work so I think it was bought with stolen money and probably for some romantic impulses that were fashionable at the time and she seemed to like status symbols. As they don’t seem to be able to treat people properly, I’m sure the fall out with Tim’s family made them scuttle off without having achieved what they’d set out to do. I think saving the land from developers is a Raynor Winn statement rather than Sally Walker because it sounds suitably Eco warrior-ish and forgivable. If that had been true, you’re absolutely right, they could have packed up and gone to camp on their own land. I think they had debts in France though and probably a few enemies. They do leave ‘a train of destruction’!

@SableGules Wow. Thanks for filling me in. So, they stayed in a holiday let on the niece’s farm for 18 months and kept going off for walking/wild camping holidays, rather than sorting out the debt and getting work.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat, @RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays and @HatStickBoots, I agree it does seem rather odd not to live on your own land if you have nowhere else to go. It doesn’t take a huge effort to get a ruin semi-habitable (unless structurally unsafe), or build a shack, compared to walking hundreds of miles and camping in a flimsy tent in the elements. It’s possible to get materials for free (e.g. pallets, freecycle etc) and I assume they had tools etc from their previous home.

But I guess they’d need a vehicle if the ruin was quite remote. Surely they had a car to get to their house in Wales. Was that repossessed/sold too, I wonder.

And the value of the land doesn’t seem to add up. If they paid €50k to save it from developers, then how could it end up worthless with no buyer interest? Why would developers lose interest? I know places can take years to sell in rural France, but then why be in such a rush to buy it? Sounds like someone saw them coming and sold them a pup! Possible there are financial liabilities attached, like local taxes. So perhaps didn’t turn up there, as debts there too.

What with the land in France and the shocking terms of the loan (secured on their home?) taken to pay back the allegedly embezzled money, they seem financially illiterate.

I think they act on impulse in the moment. Tim's brother had bought a (genuine) chateau near the land they purchased, and I think that Sal or Tim or both thought that they deserved a bit of the French landowning action, so they just bought a gite on some land with no real plans as to what to do with it - nobody is falling for the 'to save it from developers' lie.

And she borrowed the money at high interest to pay off the embezzled money because it was all that was on offer, again, in the moment. She could see a way of buying her way out of a prison sentence and never thought through the consequences.

They both have absolutely no ability to project forwards and see the possible outcome of actions, which is proved by all Sal's very high profile advertising of her books and her public appearances - did she really NEVER THINK that someone would recognise her and drag up the thefts?

I mean, I have ADHD, I'm given to impulsive actions, but that was just stupid.

From what I understand, Tim's brother Martyn bought the pigeonnier in Le Village de Dropt sometime around 2004. Tim and family went to stay with them and helped renovate the property at least once and in 2007 Tim bought the property adjacent to his brother's property for 50,000 euros. According to one of the villagers who knew the Walkers the aim was for both properties to be renovated, partly to help the brothers reconnect but also presumably to sell the properties on at a profit at some point.

The fly in the ointment was the discovery that Sal had stolen £20k from Tim's parents in 2007/8 which created a rift between the brothers and ended any plans to renovate the properties. Martyn went on to buy a chateau while both properties in the Village de Dropt fell into rack and ruin. In reality their proximity to each other probably meant that without both being renovated and sold as a single job lot, each on their own was not commercially viable to be sold, either to an individual or a developer.

That still begs the question, was the 50,000 euro investment into the French property in 2007 the real business deal that went pear shaped that led to Pen-y-maes being remortgaged and tipped Tim and Sal into increased theft from the Hemmings and ultimately led to Pen-y-maes being repossessed?

The project to jointly develop the French properties and sell at a profit may not have been completely bonkers. Tim and Martyn were qualified master plasterers with a building background so could have cut out the middle man costs when undertaking renovations. However Martyn bought the Chateau de la Barriere in 2006 and from then on his priorities may have shifted from the derelict pigeonnier in the Village de Dropt.

Without the help of his brother and probably without local connections or French language skills, Tim may have had little choice but to abandon the renovation project. The 50,000 euros tied up in the derelict property may have been very difficult to monetise.

www.sudouest.fr/lot-et-garonne/lagruere/restaurer-un-chateau-un-projet-de-vie-a-part-entiere-8735929.php

BBC Wales Ep. 1 The Dreamers

Interesting that Tim left his NT job in 2004 to go and work on the renovation project in France. That would be 3 years before he bought his own French property and the pigeonnier doesn't look as if that much was restored, either.

They were running Pen-y-maes as a holiday rental and this was a major income stream so presumably there would have been limited time available to flit across the Channel for French renovation projects!

They also still had a double income from Sal's part-time job. All the Hemmings' money that she also liberally pocketed. Then Mr and Mrs Walker senior's money. So yes the renovation would have been hard work in comparison.