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

Well, the Hemmingses’ money was repaid, the businessmen who bought James’ debt were eventually repaid (since the Observer story appeared) and the family members SW stole from chose not to go to the police in their lifetimes, and, as you say, are now dead. No idea about the unpaid parking and speeding fines etc and the credit cards SW is said to have maxed out.

The only party I would have said with a potential legal case against SW would be PRH, if she signed the standard memoir contract to say she’s responsible for the truth of the book’s contents, but as they can’t claim loss of earnings, it’s hard to know what grounds they could bring an action on. Her lies have been a big money spinner.

ETA Or BC for unpaid utilities? But I doubt he would contemplate legal action. He sounds far too upset about it all.

A good question@OneOfEachPlease, I think @SableGules, has already highlighted the things that could have brought some kind of legal action (there could be more) PRH don't look likely to take any action and BC probably just wants to forget the emotional pain that Tim and Sally put him through for five years. Raymoth have been lucky that all the people who could have brought action, have decided for whatever reason not to.

It's understandable that the Hemmings felt that it was better to get the money back, and they didn't want to see Sally go to prison. The same with the family, though they didn't get their money, there are not many families that press charges against their own, unless they really have to. There were the grandchildren to consider as well as Tim and Sally, also there is a stigma for the family if one of their relatives is prosecuted for theft.

Unfortunately Salray didn't stop, she has had multiple second chances. In writing TSP Raymoth have pulled off a massive confidence trick in a book, financial gain without theft. This walk, however many miles they actually walked, and is claimed to have transformed them, sadly did not make them honest, accepting awards that were not deserved. Salray emotionally manipulated many readers who thought it was her true voice, but worst of all is Raymoth making false health claims and giving false hope.

Meanwhile on the Helford estuary, life continues as if nothing abnormal has occurred!

Nothing has changed.... Keep calm and carry on!

@IvyGoldenM thank you for that post, I agree with every word. When times are so hard (CoL etc) and for years now- since austerity, or since Brexit, maybe, depending on your politics- our leaders have outright lied to us and disappointed us and let us down over and over again. I was in my early 30s when I felt let down by the promise to introduce proportional representation and not to raise tuition fees and let’s just say that I feel things have gone downhill since then. That’s not even getting started on how women and girls are disbelieved and put down (still) by systemic patriarchy. So for those who wonder why on earth we are still discussing it- for me, it’s symbolic of all the decay in probity and trust in the whole system. When it’s publicly permissible to lie, and be on the take, and make millions from behaving corruptly or dishonestly, while at the same time people attempting to make the best of their situation who don’t have a lot of money are absolutely pilloried- well, it becomes apparent that we haven’t really moved on from feudal times; it’s still all about money, and who you know.

ok as you were. I’ll keep my feminist rants for the feminism board 🙃

(this may be my first post here with this username, I used to be a series of cats- alert, weary, indolent, and doubtful.)

Ah, so she is still there - well that's interesting. They are used to creating unpleasant drama - they have done it in so many ways to so many different people. It is us that find it abnormal!

I feel the same way about TSP as I did during various Boris Johnson incidents amd the Post Office enquiry.

Anyone else find that latest photo and message really passive aggressive?
It really is a beautiful morning, a beautiful sky but it doesn’t make you beautiful by association Ms Walker, sorry 😞

"mist lifting and light coming through"....

A metaphor for the great re-write of OWH perhaps with the light of my truth deployed tactically to explain away the mist that descended when OC's Observer article appeared last July?

Shameless.

Yes, you’re right, I think that’s exactly what it is, a metaphor for herself of course. Everything has to be about her. We’ve seen her patterns and the way she twists things. She never just “waxes lyrically” for its own sake like a true writer, it’s always got an ulterior motive. That’s what I’ve noticed anyway as I’ve backtracked through her books.

Anyway the good news is that OC's Sky documentary has gone down a storm with quite a lot of people on SM who have woken up and smelt the proverbial copy and thus, I suspect, won't be buying anything she churns out in the future to justify her appalling behaviour

Instagram.

As with most people's lives, there will always be someone willing to criticise you, that’s part of life. (R Winn. 14th December 2025)

The light has not come through to Sally - she is still not taking responsibility and always blaming others. Someone may comment that we should now forgive and forget, or, it is time to move on. These attitudes are good principles but the perpetrators, Tim and Sally, need to acknowledge, at least, they were wrong and that they are sorry. They then would try to make amends to show any real contrition.

All I have heard from her is a defensive, batting away, stance. Also, from the above statement:

Nothing has changed.

I agree with @Peladon - this is all giving me the same impotent feeling that the Post Office scandal did. I want to stand up and shout 'can't you all see what's going on here!' at people. I actually had to avoid reading about the PO because it made me feel so uselessly angry - that wrong was being done in plain sight but nobody with any power to change it seemed to care.

This feels the same.

Yes, I know it is discouraging. If you want to talk about resilience in these matters let's think what it must be like for Ian Hislop. He must feel like Cassandra of Troy, at times. I was listening to his take on Mandelson, as interviewed by Andrew Marr for LBC, Private Eye ran a headline on Epstein in 2011. And you are all right to link the inactivity of the authorities on the PO scandal - also run by PE in 2011.

“As with most people’s lives, there will always be someone willing to criticise you, that’s part of life.”
I resent this sort of statement. You hear this sort of thing a lot from people who try to justify their actions by inventing a pretence that there are people who have an agenda to discredit other people, no matter what they do. She makes it sound as though the world is full of petty minded people who have nothing better to do than make someone else’s life miserable just because they feel like it. The sort of miserly, overly fixated, negative whingebags that make a person feel like crap for no reason other than their own nastiness. There’ll always be someone willing to criticise you. She really believes that they have done nothing to warrant the backlash that has occurred since we discovered their true stories and that we don’t like being robbed and that the people in their own families are just being like that because they don’t like them, didn’t like Moth, didn’t like his wedding suit, was jealous of her etc no doubt.
In this case, it is Sally who is the fly in the ointment, discrediting people, making them feel like shit, being two-faced, lying and stealing under their very noses and going so far as to push people’s faith to the limits by pretending that Moth was dying. Not many people would believe that somebody could just lie about something so serious. Even those with doubts might not want to voice their concerns to their faces because it is a sacred sort of thing, people wouldn’t want to be speaking inappropriately. But the truth is out there and we have said it, a medical miracle like that would definitely be worthy of examining. Moth himself would be only too thrilled to help others, wouldn’t he? The golden poster boy? No? Why not, Moth? Something wrong? Oh they’ve disappeared.

Absolutely sickening that SW is still posting on Instagram. This woman must be incredibly thick skinned.

Sal may think of herself and Moth as a couple of lovable rogues who have pulled a fast one on the great British reading public, but it doesn't matter because people enjoyed her books even if it was all fiction.

The truth is rather more sinister. Sal and Moth have 20+ year track record of emotional manipulation, fraud, and deceit of the most sinister kind:

• steal £64K from your employer (Martin Hemmings) despite being trusted and befriended to the extent that they attended Xmas lunch with them

• write a work of fiction (HNTDDD) as a thinly veiled act of revenge against Cooper, whose £100k loan effectively kept Sal out of jail

• steal £25K from your husband's parents and impoverish them to the extent that they end up living in virtual penury, unable to pay the rent

• steal £10K from your own mother

• accept the offer to live for free on an idyllic cider farm on the banks of the Fowey for 5 years and then emotionally manipulate BC, whose wife was suffering from breast cancer, by claiming that Tim had only weeks to live. Having been treated by BC as almost a member of his family and being allowed to not produce any cider at all, they then cancel their tenancy agreement a year early, don't even bother to say goodbye and leave after putting a short note on the kitchen table and putting the front door key under a flower pot!

Somehow I don't think that Sal is going to undergo a Damascene conversion, see the light and admit her sins any time soon. She and Moth are pathological liars. That is the sad truth.

Yup. Everything that has been uncovered in the seven months since the original Observer article shows how absolutely right the nephew was when he described them as 'pathological liars' back in July last year.

Thanks all for your good wishes, I'm quite a bit better and getting past whatever it was. Normally I'd have thought it was not worth bothering about but I've had dire warnings re any sign of infection, because sepsis can recur in the months/years after recovery. However, I'm now more poorly toadlet than diseased bullfrog so fingers crossed!

Thanks @IvyGoldenM for that insightful post. I believe that the complacence around TSP scandal in some quarters does reflect a wider malaise around truth and accountability. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is depressed by what the Epstein files have shown, that powerful rich men still see women as nothing more than meat and I don't see the full reckoning that should happen coming to pass, sadly. Power and ego, sex and money.

On a different level (of course), in a different way, it's happening with Raymoth. The struggle of victims to have their voices heard and get any kind of justice is overwhelmed by vested interest and the protection that money and fame can give people who have something to hide. That is the equivalence and in their case propped up by the fatuous 'be kind' mantra and accusations that any criticism must be inspired by 'jealousy'. It is brainless pap and fewer people need to fall for it

as @HatStickBoots said

“As with most people’s lives, there will always be someone willing to criticise you, that’s part of life.”

I resent this sort of statement. You hear this sort of thing a lot from people who try to justify their actions by inventing a pretence that there are people who have an agenda to discredit other people, no matter what they do. She makes it sound as though the world is full of petty minded people who have nothing better to do than make someone else’s life miserable just because they feel like it.

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 …’

Thanks for quoting David Blake-Knox with this @ThompsonTwin . It is indeed a vision of what someone once called 'Englandland', a bucolic made up place that never actually existed, free of battles, Black Death, the Enclosure Acts ( many etcs) and centuries of our ancestors toiling all their short, hard lives on the land, in factories, down mines.

Earlier I did a search, as I wanted to see if I could find out when the video about HNTDDD would come out, and the first thing that came up was the very first of these threads. It is so weird when that happens - especially when you see your own post from months ago. Anyway, a prophetic poster had said this:

06/07/2025 20:17
I think a new thread will be needed as this isn't going to go away anytime soon.

It was someone called @Uricon2 💐

Well hit me with a haddock and call me Cassandra!

Thanks @BrandyAndLovage

Another brilliant bullet point post from @ThompsonTwin ! I really love when you set everything out that. I agree, their actions make me speechless. They wanted people to think and to believe that Moth was going to die in the immediate future and used that repeatedly throughout their scamming career as their trump card. They just wanted to dump Bill. They are truly gutless and the very opposite of the brave, fearless people they were desperate to portray in their story. She adopts this passive stance “mistakes were made”, “as with most people’s lives” etc as though everything happens by chance.
It is the old underdog routine again with the “criticism” announcement. She expects nothing but because all through the fictional TSP they were looked down upon and even wee’d upon at one point. She is completely mistaken, this isn’t criticism it is judgement of criminal activity and a collective voice that is angry at having been manipulated and lied to.

Thank you! This is a fantastic summary post that I would love all the people who are still fans to read.

I am reminded of the person in my life. We had to go by what we saw and the evidence, their deeds, not their words. Believing and trusting become major errors. That way lay madness and chaos.
It can be hard to keep a straight face when they assure you how honest and truthful they are!
If the Observer have been told via legal letters that SW has been impacted psychologically and financially, then that is only her word. Which we now know means diddly squat.
I would typically be compassionate and considerate of others’ feelings. I have had to learn the hard way that some rare people will exploit this and it turns out to be a route to manipulation and control. I strongly suspect that SW is as hard as nails when it comes to getting what she wants. Whatever it all began as, it feels to me that this is where we are now.
For a moment I considered whether Penguin would be exploiting her to continue with publishing her works. Now I wonder whose foot the shoe is really on.

I think several of us on here seem to have known very manipulative and morals free people who will without a shred of qualm try with all their might when cornered to turn themselves into 'victims', often to the detriment of those they actually victimised.

They walk amongst us, unfortunately and when you've experienced even one it does change your view of what some are capable of, which is breathtaking to anyone with scruples.