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

Clearly the French property investment doesn't fit well with the victim status that defines TSP, so (perhaps unsurprisingly) never gets a mention in any of the books or interviews....

Doesn't someone in one of CH's podcasts say that SalTim's French house was perfectly habitable when they bought it, and the only reason it became uninhabitable was that they left it unoccupied for years because they didn't want to face family (next door) after things had come to light?

Does anyone know when TW acquired Master Plasterer status? Was it before or after (or during) herding llamas with cats?

(BTW, this is from Google AI, so treat with caution: "While many tradespeople call themselves "master" plasterers, a true master plasterer in the UK is recognized for having high-level skills, often over 20 years of experience, and a portfolio of complex work, according to The Worshipful Company of Plaisterers.")

Just a thought, apologies if it's already been covered.

When the Walkers were renting out Pen y Maes, was that as a B&B (with resident hosts) or as an independent self-catering holiday let? If the latter, where were the Walkers living, and who was looking after the property on their behalf?

Yes, a lady in the village tells Our Chloe what you have said. It is at 12 min on The Observer ep. 5 The French Quarter. We then get to hear about the stealing from employer and family so I think that is all we are left with about the property.

Visitors stayed in the barn conversion.

doc04.pdf

I’d actually forgotten that Sally had stolen from Tim’s parents! 😵‍💫 Yes, that would have been a very big fly in the ointment indeed!!
Also… do we know that they ran a holiday let business? Or was she pretending it was while they took rent money from the ousted parents?? No previous holidaymakers have come forward and said they stayed on that property.

@EdithBond They had two cars (at least) when they lived at Pen y Maes — one of the other people working at the NT garden where TW was head gardener remarked on him having a flash new vehicle in the Observer podcast, and when SW skipped bail and went on the run from the police, she abandoned her car at a railway station.

But they definitely kept a vehicle during the whole ‘homeless’ period. SW says in TSP that they left their van on ‘Jan’s drive before they started the SWCP. (She specifies it’s ’too small to sleep in’.) At the end of the ‘winter’ at ‘Polly’s’ she refers to taxing the van, implying it hadn’t been on the road since they’d set out on the path, as they’d travelled to ‘Polly’s’ farm by rail and, she implies, never left until Polly got a paying tenant instead of them. That’s probably pure fiction, though, and they will have had the van/car with them all the time.

Ooops sorry! I was writing that last post before the page turned. Just seeing the new posts now.

This is access denied..

I always got the impression from her books that the “van” was an old, clapped out thing they’d had for years. She was trying to pass themselves off as a couple of hard up hippies trundling around, not into wealth or big status symbols whose love for each other conquered all. The reality is naturally the Looking glass version.

Well, given that they gave the impression that a one-acre plot with a few sheep and hens was a fully-fledged farm (she even depicts TW in TWS reciting, purportedly from memory, prices and statistics for livestock and farm machinery), I suppose it’s perfectly possible that their barn conversion was never anything as organised as a ‘business’, just something they let occasionally, when TW’s parents weren’t staying in it because SW had stolen their money and they couldn’t afford rent!

Them only working on the farm/being too busy with the court case to have a job/TW being too unwell to work seems to have operated as a kind of alibi for the fact that they just spent a lot of time not working.

As well as covering up for the fact that SW was presumably unemployed locally because of her record of embezzlement from Martin Hemmings.

I guess you can do it in bursts, couple of weeks at a time, if a few of you get stuck in and work long days.

Struggling with all the financials. Am I correct in thinking the financial woes began because they remortgaged Pen-y-maes to buy the French place for €50k, then struggled with the mortgage repayments. Then covered the mortgage repayments via the alleged embezzlement? Even though she’d also allegedly taken £20k from his parents? Plus, they somehow paid for the big new car he was driving at NT job (Chloe podcast). Was that maybe bought to go to and fro to France?

Obvs the gamechanger in 2007/8 was the financial crash. Not sure how that affected property prices/sales in France. May have affected plans to renovate and sell on quickly?

Roll up, roll up all ye salty pirates and form a disorderly queue for the freshly cider and fudge stocked, fairy lighted, charabanc ride over to Thread 26:
Thread 26 : 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? | Mumsnet

Extra rations of course to all charabancers who fill this thread up before departing and repost this link before turning the lights out and collecting up the empties.

That’s definitely the effect they were going for! In fact, if they did own a clapped out old van, it was in addition to some far more flash vehicles that may have been repossessed.

They may also have invested heavily to renovate the barn for holiday rental and the return on investment may not have covered the cost of remortgaging the property. Prior to hitting the jackpot with TSP, their track record on business investment (Gangani, French property etc) appears to have been pretty dire.

doc04.pdf

Champagne tastes and beer money, I reckon, plus (possibly, with no evidence other than my gut instinct) a desire to rake in loadsamoney and perhaps over-value things as a result: we saw them overvalue and fail to sell Pen y Maes, perhaps they did similar with other assets inc their own labour value? Moth as Master Plasterer rather than a bog standard one (at what age? Did he have the actual certificate for it?). Sally paying herself more than her salary. Blue Agas and brand new Landrovers. Cravates and moleskin trousers to garden in! But maybe the holiday let was also overpriced so never successful?

Thanks for clarifying what it says in book 🙏

Though I’m struggling to see how a van could be too small to sleep in. Sure, you may have to curl up. But with a mattress it’s surely comfier than two-person tent. I guess they may’ve not had the money to make it roadworthy (tax, insurance etc) to get to France in it. But they could’ve slept in it off-road in Wales/Cornwell.

Obvs didn’t need to if staying on niece’s farm, mum’s house etc.

Until this week, some people will have felt unable to take a view on the Salt Path scandal, because they saw two competing accounts and felt unable to evaluate which of the two versions of events was right (i.e. "CH says X, but RW says that X is untrue and that CH is just being a meanie - there's no way to know who to believe").

The admission by SW that TSP was not SW's first book (and therefore that all of the emphatic statements suggesting that it was were untrue) seems to me to be a game-changer. Not to people on these threads, who have spent time considering the factual detail carefully, but to people who have not looked in detail and didn't know which "side" to put their confidence in.

It’s hard to put a precise timeline on the financials, because as well as buying the French property and essentially taking out another private mortgage on Pen y Maes to repay Martin Hemmings, apparently SW took out multiple credit cards and maxed them out. ‘Anne’ makes reference on the Observer podcast to the Walkers laying low from debt collectors while they were staying with her, and saying they wouldn’t find them.

Presumably the £100k loan was far from the only one being pursued.

And that’s not even taking into account all the fines and financial demands etc that kept arriving at Pen y Maes after Maxine Faramond bought it.

Absolutely to champagne tastes and beer money. A particularly bad combination with whatever the opposite of a work ethic is!

@EdithBond : "I guess they may’ve not had the money to make [the van] roadworthy (tax, insurance etc) to get to France in it." The buyer of Pen-y-Maes received speeding tickets, which suggests that they were driving around in at least one vehicle.

It’s an odd choice for a family with young kids, as well, Pen y Maes. The bedrooms are unconventional so difficult to see where you would put young kids and be able to hear them in the night. Again, it makes me wonder at SalTim’s priorities even when their kids were very small. Really an odd and uncomfortably intriguing relationship.

Apologies if this has been mentioned previously, but according to that estate agent blurb, the last update of which appears to have been 10th February 2014....

"Agents notes: Please note the current EPC is now 5 years old. There have been some changes made to the property since that date including the removal of the heating system."

I'm guessing that the '5 years' dates to when RayMoth first tried selling Pen y Maes and that 10th February 2014 is when the property was being marketed as a repossession.

Therefore does the reference to the removal of the heating system imply the property had been vandalised between the Walkers eviction and the present? Or did they strip out the heating system themselves* in order to sell it/make a bit of money ahead of being forcibly ejected by the bailiffs?

*We once bought a Belfast sink unit from a couple facing repossession in Hampshire. When DH went to collect it he found them apologising for the lack of floorboards in their top floor flat. They explained they were removing everything they could to raise cash before the mortgage company repossessed the property.

Off we go ...