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

Just a side note but this is typical of these sorts, I recall someone who let an older relative stay and was repaid with all kinds of damage, a bad attitude and an attempted malicious report to environmental health after 6 months of free lodgings.

What OC's research and the threads here have uncovered over the last 7 months, beyond any reasonable doubt, is that the core themes of all three of Sal's books are essentially a complete con:

• they weren't evicted from their house because of an investment with a childhood friend which went wrong
• they were never really homeless in the true meaning of the term and they always had somewhere to go and stay at the end of their short walks
• Moth never had CBD and the entire premise of TSP as a redemptive walk against time was based on a falsehood, as the initial tentative diagnosis of a neurological condition didn't occur until after the walk had been completed
• Moth was not mistaken repeatedly for SA
• it's highly unlikely that they were ever shunned as being homeless tramps
• they had access to more than WTCs for much of the walk
• they never walked all 630 miles of the SWCP over 13 months
• they never rewilded Haye Farm and made cider there
• they didn't walk 1,000 miles from Cape Wrath to Polruan in 4 months
• there is no evidence that long distance walking helped alleviate whatever ailment Moth may have had let alone be a miracle cure for CBD
• TSP wasn't the first book that Sal had written
• TSP wasn't the product of margin notes in PD's guide to the SWCP which became a birthday present for Moth and was then worked into TSP
• statements from former employers, friends and family all point to the fact that Sal and Moth are criminals,con artists, serial fantasists and pathological liars as well as possible benefit fraudsters, who have a tenuous grasp of what most people would understand as 'truth'

In any other sector of public life, by now Sal would have been cancelled based on the weight of the above evidence.

Yet PRH, continue to stick with her, simply it seems because she is a money spinner and she has a core holding of devoted fans who uncritically lap up anything she writes and who will ensure that anything she writes will sell reasonably well compared to a much less well known author.

As for Sal, well she continues to cling on to her truth:

9 July: The Salt Path is about what happened to Moth and me, after we lost our home and found ourselves homeless on the headlands of the South West.I can't allow any more doubt to be cast on these memories, or the joy thay have given so many

14 Dec To everybody who has read and loved my books, thank you. Nothing has changed. The Salt Path remains my honest recollection of the time when we lost our house and found hope on the Coast Path

What a joke.

The more I think of it, the more I can't rationalise just WHY she didn't use depression as Moth's 'signature illness'. Losing the house et al could have been put down to him making bad decisions due to depression - losing focus, unable to foresee future results etc etc. Walking in nature (fresh air, Vitamin D) helping alleviate symptoms which recur at random times. Needing to get him motivated for even the smallest actions....

It all almost makes sense (if you leave out the fibs and downright whoppers mostly related to Sal's dodgy financial dealings). If you swap 'CBD' for 'Acute depression' then the story actually holds together much better. Leaping about and planking on one day could well be succeeded by days of dragging steps and an inability to concentrate. More relatable to millions of readers too.

I hope the throat gets better soon @Uricon2 I hope you can stay in bed, you're not missing anything weatherwise.

Perfect summary @ThompsonTwin

It really is sad, it makes me feel crushed actually that her face is on that marker post, unless it’s a photoshop.
I agree that she would have been cancelled and all the time Tim’s illness claims are respected and inscrutable, they can continue with this martyred silence. Her latest statement is incredibly vague. It is only one small piece of an expanding jigsaw and “lost our house” is incredibly passive. It gives nothing away.

Her photo on the signpost is photoshopped from a Dutch article on the Salt Path Scandal

Phew, I'm glad it's not for real!

I suspect depression would not have been a strong enough hook for the publishers. CBD was a perfect condition. Not many people knew about it and it automatically provided them with a defence barrier to put up whenever awkward questions were raised.

Yes, I think you're right.

I take absolutely @Vroomfondleswaistcoat 's point that depression would have been a far easier thing to fake, and to sustain the scam in a credible way, in part because there's considerable research to suggest that exercise and time in nature ameliorate it, but it's (a) pretty widespread and (b) not anywhere near as hooky and gripping as 'Blameless middle-aged couple go on a desperate and ultimately redemptive 630-mile walk after the double-whammy of losing their home and the husband getting a terminal diagnosis in the same week.'

And the 'miracle cure' wouldn't have been at all miraculous. The reader would actually have been expecting adorable, sad, trudging Moth to start showing flickers of his old stuff within about twenty miles of the start of the walk, and to have been dancing with high spirits by mile 300 as nature works its cure.

For patterns of behaviour, I was looking again at the case of Samantha Cookes. I have only sampled some of the coverage of this fraudster, on the BBC - Bad Nanny is a 2-part documentary on iPlayer and Sue Perkins, with a journalist, host a 10-part podcast Carrie Jade does not Exist on Sounds.

What I have only just read, that is particularly relevant to our discussion, is that she combined her fake illnesses and a literary career. So she won the prestigious Bodley Head essay competition, for a writer under 35, about her diagnosis with Huntingdon's Disease. She was also awarded lucrative Arts Council grants.

Every time she was found out about her latest scam, she moved to a different area and adopted another pseudonym.

Another potential problem with using depression as a hook for TSP, might be that it's a bit too common. We all have either had episodes of depression ourselves or know someone who has, so it doesn't have the exotic kudos of a rare, difficult-to-diagnose disease. And of course you don't need to be running around the country visiting "top dog" doctors to be diagnosed with depression; neither are you likely to be picked up as the "ambassador for depression" (what a miserable concept in itself!). It's a rather overcrowded field!

Another problem is that exercise as treatment for depression is hardly a newsworthy story.

And another problem is the natural history of depression. Sadly, for some people, depression is a terminal illness. But more happily, most people will recover either naturally or through intervention (either medical or non-medical interventions). So all that prose about Moth facing a slow crawl towards certain death, and Sal carrying around this great grey cloud of despair covering her future, would have to go. That would take one of the raisons d'etre away from the book ("Look! We've found a cure for an incurable disease!" - oh no you haven't!) and make the book a lot slimmer!!

I liked David Blake-Knox's comments about TSP in the Dublin Review of books, likening the walk to a modern pilgrimage. Maybe there is also something of the medieval morality/mystery/miracle play in TSP.

The Salt Path also has a specifically English dimension. The route that is walked by the Winns takes them far away from the great urban centres of England. Instead, the path they chose leads them – and their readers – towards a romantic vision of that country: a mythical ‘Albion’ whose beauty and integrity have managed to survive the confusion and detritus of modern life. Nature can be understood from this perspective to embody some essential and universal truths that may be revealed to those who seek them out. This has been described by one critic as ‘a kind of cosy bedtime story for the adults of middle England …’

Viewed in that context, Raynor and Moth might even be considered as contemporary pilgrims who not only sought physical well-being but were in pursuit of some form of internal or spiritual enlightenment. Indeed that is just how they were portrayed by one excited critic of The Salt Path who wrote: ‘This is not a postcard journey. It is the slow, real-time geography of presence. To walk such a path is to be transformed … Moth and Raynor become part of the landscape, their bodies broken down and remade by the terrain …’ Just as the practice of ‘wild swimming’ can seem to ground and comfort city-dwellers, the notion of ‘wild walking’ can hold out the promise of a deeper and mystical communion with natural forces. Such communion may be of particular appeal to those who live in urban environments and feel that they have grown out of touch with the primeval world.

It may, perhaps, be too easy simply to accuse Raynor Winn of bad faith in the stories that she has told. Those stories were embraced with uncritical enthusiasm by very many people for one basic reason: they wanted to believe they were true – a common feature of many types of scam. The images of nature that Winn projects in her book may be awe-inspiring – but they are not threatening. Instead, they present a view of Nature as a source of support and succour: almost – but not quite – tamed yet still retaining some sense of danger or edge. Winn’s readers were clearly willing to buy into the kind of quasi-spiritual fantasy that was on offer – and that included literary critics and reviewers as well as members of the public.

Long comment here. I have been watching this unfold and following all the discussion. Today I think I managed to work out why it has upset me so much and I wanted to share. I hope this makes sense.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I have found this subject so deeply upsetting. What is it that has led us to thinking about this for over six months? 25 threads on here? Why have I not been able to just let it go or accept it’s ‘just a story’ and ‘there are more important news stories’.

This morning I came to some kind of a conclusion and I feel this is the only place I can voice it where people may understand.

For me, The Salt Path scandal, and the behaviour of Sally and Tim Walker and their publisher has felt oddly familiar.

Sally’s statement where she says ‘mistakes were made in the business and attempts to shift the blame onto Martin Hemmings and discredit him, the victim of a crime, seemed familiar. As did the bleak reality that until OC broke the story last summer the victims in this sorry saga were not able to have their voices heard - even though some tried and had even contacted Penguin.

Their truth had been canceled by TSP’s alternative truth. For years, nobody listened. They had to watch as the Walkers enjoyed fame and fortune and adoration from red carpet to podcasts to adoring A listers to television interviews. Who would listen to their voices? Who even cared?

When OC broke the story and exposed the staggering scale of the deception - all so clearly summed up in an earlier comment by @ThompsonTwin - it seems the tide might turn. The victims/wronged family had a voice. They were no longer silenced. Everything was evidenced and the truth was out. OC delivered the facts, clearly evidenced and checked thoroughly by the Observer’s legal team.

We were looking at solid evidence so now surely there would be accountability? We waited for the publisher to speak. We waited to see some kind of justice for all those wronged from the Hemmings to cafe owners to Tadge to the family.

It has not been forthcoming.

This doesn’t sit well. It makes us upset and confused. It makes us feel helpless and angry and exhausted.

I believe this is why people here and I’m sure outside this community have continued to ask questions, have not allowed the story to fade away and expected Penguin to show some accountability.

Over the last few days it has become clear to me that what we have been looking at here is a microcosm of a much wider malaise

. The glut of horrendous information which has been released from the Epstein files has been shocking. For years, the victims of this man and his associates have not had a voice. They have been silenced. Discredited. Not believed. Now they have a voice, and nobody is questioning the truth of their claims. However, there appears to be very little justice for them and accountability for some people, one in particular mentioned over 6000 times, who seems untouchable.

Nobody with any power has called this person out. I’m not getting political, but I was glad to see there was a heartfelt apology from our Prime Minister for his error on judgement, but it is a small voice in comparison to the ones that need to be held to account.

You can probably see my thought process. What matters in the microcosm matters in the macrocosm. If truth is silenced and wrongdoing not held accountable at any level, it is corrosive. It exhausts us. It wears us down. It makes us cynical. Then the danger is that we give up.

The facts of TSP are out there and evidenced. . It is on the record now that the books are mostly fantasy and are not unflinching honest. People like Ros Hemmings and Cecile and all the others who were used by the walkers to further their own rising literary star deserve better.

There needs to be accountability

Society functions by people telling absolute truth, and by justice not simply being done but being SEEN to be done. By those who do wrong being held to account, not for public shaming, but because accountability is the scaffolding of civilized behavior.

I think at some level all of us here have been feeling this, and we have kept speaking about it because we know on a deeply cellular level that TSP scandal is indicative of a much deeper rot at the heart of government, politics and society.

We have to call these things out.

I know you are all right about why Sal didn't choose boring old depression for Moth to suffer from. Not catchy enough, too well known and also well known for its relapse rate. My main point was that, if she had, she might well have got away with it, because so many of the points she covered would be the same for depression as CBD. Plus very much harder to point the finger and say 'he does NOT have depression.'

I don't know about Moth, but the whole thing depresses me. Well no, the fact that she continues not to face HUGE repercussions is what depresses me. As soon as she is confronted she slips into the passive tense (so she can't even put her name to the mistakes, just they 'were made') and maintains that she wrote the truth as she saw it.

I agree @IvyGoldenM, I think your analysis is correct. We are at a point of time in society when truth is becoming a rare commodity, AI is blurring the boundaries, a feeling of distrust is descending. Even though the evidence is overwhelming in this case, PRH are keeping quiet, money is more important than integrity. The victims in this are not Tim and Sally, they have had plenty of chances for their voices to be heard.

PRH are seemingly ignoring the evidence that has been put forward, showing their contempt towards the people who bought these books. They are protecting two dishonest people, because they have made a lot of money out of them and they presumably hope to make more. We have been slipping down this slippery slope, of profit before people for many years, it's somehow ok to lie if you can make money out of it, some people will even applaud you, the victims are often viewed as losers. People need to see that there is accountability, if PRH had dropped Raymoth, in the same way as the charity did, then I don't think the charabanc would still be rolling.

It's quite possible depression was originally the hook, if she began writing pre-June 2015. Like you say, the story holds together, esp with the notion of nature being beneficial. Then the CBS suggestion came along and they ran with it, maybe because a quick google suggested it is usually an awful terminal illness and much more dramatic.

I think you are right in your theorising @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree, they could still have claimed PIP if it was depression and made the story work. But along came CBS/CBD, something rare and terminal, they took a suggestion of some symptoms and turned them into a retrofit, imminent decline and eventual death. Moth couldn't just have depression that would be far too common place, events conspired unfortunately to allow this to happen, people who could have stopped them didn't. So Salray who we know was quite used to lies and deception, was given free rein to write whatever she liked and call it the truth, those that could have and should have checked, didn't bother, allowing two more books and a film that should never have happened.

Hope you feel better soon @Uricon2 💐

I very much agree with this. I also think there are some parallels to wider politics. I remember the days where when an MP had an affair he had to stand outside his house with his sad looking wife and children apologise and resigned. We’ve since had prime minister(s?) who will lie to Parliament, never apologise and face no consequences. There is something about the wave of horrible things that happen where people have realised that they can just keep on keeping on and unless they’re literally stopped by the police, they won’t actually face any real accountability.

I agree the PRH come out of this very badly. I don’t want to divert onto another subject at all, but some of this does draw comparisons with the Kate Clancy case. Whatever you think about that, there was something cowardly there about her publisher being happy to make money off her but then not standing by her. I wonder if PRH have looked at that and thought that as they’ve made so much money off Raymoth they’re just gonna stand by them and wait for time to pass.

@IvyGoldenM is right; we don’t like injustice, we want the truth to prevail and I think a part of that is that it bothered us when it isn’t heard; despite people shouting.

A diversion, if you have the time this succinct piece by George Monbiot about ME, voices not being heard and truth being ignored.

https://www.monbiot.com/2024/03/27/first-do-no-harm/

I agree with pretty much all that you are saying @OneOfEachPlease, except I don't think PRH are standing by Raymoth out of loyalty, they are just waiting to see if this will pass and they can make more money, if they decide no more money is to be made, then I think they will drop her.

Yes, actually I expect you’re entirely right. The publishing industry seems like a very old-fashioned place and just about money.

@IvyGoldenM Thank you for your excellent post. I agree with you completely and would just like to highlight what I have felt for months and really resonates with me:

Everything was evidenced and the truth was out. OC delivered the facts, clearly evidenced and checked thoroughly by the Observer’s legal team.

We were looking at solid evidence so now surely there would be accountability? We waited for the publisher to speak. We waited to see some kind of justice for all those wronged from the Hemmings to cafe owners to Tadge to the family.

It has not been forthcoming.

Well, like any other industry wanting to keep its goose that lays the golden eggs, if it can do so without undue reputational damage, litigation or cost !

I was just listening to an episode of The Rest is Entertainment where RO and MH were discussing Harper Collins dropping David Walliams. He was an absolutely enormous bestseller for them, to the point where his sakes made up a significant percentage of the children’s books market annually.

If some of the reporting is true, his behaviour towards a female employee meant she left the company with a five-figure payout, and female staff dealing with him were routinely warned to work in pairs, and not to ever go to his house if asked. Which looks very like a company protecting the talent at the expense of their employees for quite a number of years.

It’s not clear why they’ve dropped him now. Combination of new female CEO, possible end of his contract, threatened legal action by employees? But enough to make them decide to end their dealing with their golden goose…

TRIE talked a lot about the value of his back catalogue. If PRH declines to publish further books by SW, I wonder what her contract says about her back catalogue?

The claims about rewilding at Haye Farm are as spurious and scandalous as the claims about homelessness, recovery from CBD and walking the 630 mile SWCP in TSP.

The couple who rented Haye Farm before BC before the Walkers (the Vincents) and the current couple who have introduced sheep to graze the orchards in an eco friendly way, can attest to the complete b-s re-wilding claims in both TWS and LL.

Ray@Haye. What a joke.

Best-selling author and her terminally ill husband became homeless after dodgy investment - Cornwall Live

I’ve read a lot and listened to the observer tortoise podcast (well the free episodes - I can’t have another subscription 😂)
Do people think that the reason they’ve got away with it (so far…) is that someone who is directly affected enough by one of the properly criminal aspects has to make a claim to the police and sadly many of those most affected are dead?
I just feel so much for her in-laws and aunt and the hemmings! It seems madness to me you can throw lawyers at something and make a criminal matter into a civil one and gag people.

TSP continues to inspire. Tragic that it is essentially snake oil.