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?

[DisappointedReader]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL

Please see the OP of Thread 25 for all the links to The Observer's reporting and podcast series, our threads one to 24 and so on.

After 25,000 posts there are still new things to discuss:
BBC Sounds - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available Episodes
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.

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 excellent podcast series The Walkers (link in Thread 25) 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, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea: please do not engage with drive-by scolders 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 over 8 months we have done amazingly well together for 25 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.

As ever, as we embark on our 26th thread riding the community charabanc, keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5485730-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?

Tim is the eldest of 5 siblings, Martyn the second eldest. The other three (two other brothers and a sister) all gave Moth and Sal accommodation at various points after they lost Pen-y-maes and it seems that these three siblings still support Moth and have decided not to speak to the press.

Interesting psychology. As with all their behaviours.

Oh yes! It is as @NervesofSteel has said except Mr Walker Snr. only died in April 2025.

You may not be surprised that their 'flexible recollections' also extend to both mothers. TSP features Sal's mother as having already died in what I feel is quite a gothic excerpt.

Tim appears to have told the consultant that his mother died in her fifties but I have read from another poster that she died in her eighties. See 2015 letter:

Statement — Raynor Winn

Welcome back aboard or newly aboard everyone. I hope you are well today. Some nice new usernames again to confuse us!

On the holiday let, as well as the kudos of being holiday property owners, at that time could there have been financial reasons beyond any rent received? Grants towards the renovation? Access to Working Tax Credits? Positive Council Tax or tax implications?

And then there is potential competitiveness, jealousy and vindictiveness to consider between the brothers and/or their wives (thinking of one wife in particular). We have discussed it before. Was there jealousy if Timmoth's brother Martyn was going to have paying guests in France, hence the holiday let in Wales for Saltim? Was there jealousy because Martyn had the pigeonnier and chateau in France, and so Saltim had to buy some French property? More jealousy because Timmoth's brother had received a loan from their parents and so Saltim should by rights have some of their money too?

What if 'the developers' Saltim say they were saving their French property from were actually Martyn and his family? To have the pigeonnier and neighbouring property could have been more lucrative for him. However long Saltim's land and property become ever more overgrown and derelict, that could have had a detrimental impact on the value and prospects of the pigeonnier.

Both Martyn and Salray wrote self published books. Then Salray wrote a best seller with two sequels, potentially three, leading to a high profile and a film. As well as the financial benefits, was this about Saltim saying to Martyn and family 'Na-na na-na na, our book is bigger than yours and we're richer and more important than you'?

It could be interesting to compare HNTDDD, the TSP series and Stopcock. Are they 'she said, he said' about what happened in the past? Had Timmoth even been twinkling his blue eyes in the wrong direction?

Charabancers, the floor is yours.

I think Tim only has 2 brothers and a sister, so 4 siblings altogether inc. Tim.

I wonder if he was being Tim Walker or Tim Scott? He seemed to be planning to attend the smallholders' get-together.

It would be interesting to know if there's a 'lasagne and massage' type scene in Stopcock.

Where is the old laughter reaction when you need it?

The title of the book is certainly interesting. Is it the plumbing meaning, the Frankie Howerd 'Ooh er, Mrs!' meaning or a combination of the two?

Sorry, ridiculous typo on my part — I did know how recently he’d died! Poor man. And yes to the flexi-deaths of both mothers. Maternal death being a moveable feast according to whatever fiction you’re currently spinning, whether ‘unflinchingly true memoir’ or medical, in the Walker world.

@DisappointedReader, yes grants, possible tax implications etc seems perfectly plausible as a rationale for the barn conversion. Though it seems to really come into its own, along with the hobby ‘farm’, as a sort of alibi for Not Doing Very Much Work For A Long Time for both of them.

SW represents herself in TSP as being unfairly disadvantaged in the job hunt during the ‘winter at Polly’s’:

It didn’t count that I’d been a farmer, plumber, builder, electrician, gardener, decorator, designer, accountant, tree surgeon, and run a holiday let. I had neither a piece of paper nor an ex-employer to prove it.

(It’s brilliantly self-deluding that she claims to have unrecognised accountancy skills, and is bitter about the absence of a reference from an ex-employer’, given her creative accountancy at Martin Hemmings’ company!)

The barn is of course also a cover story for the injury TW supposedly got after falling through the roof, and which ‘explains’ why he’d been unable to work for some time, and the nagging pain in his shoulder which smoothed over the incredibility of being diagnosed with a terminal neurological condition out of the blue.

That barn does a lot of narrative work in TSP!

Just as TW being ‘dying’ appears to have done a lot of work in both TSP (SW can’t get a job and rent somewhere after they lose the house because she’s too devoted a spouse to miss a single minute he has left) and in RL, in persuading neither family to go to the police after the family thefts.

ETA, I just noticed that SW says that she couldn’t find a job when living at Polly’s that did more than ‘cover the petrol costs to get to the job’, suggesting that they’d magicked their van from Jan’s driveway to the midlands. They certainly tax and insure it before leaving ‘Polly’’s, but there’s no reference to what they do with it when they go back on the path. Because in RL they never did, obviously, but in TSP terms, they wouldn’t want to give the impression there are helpful friends and relatives looking after their vehicle.

Indeed. I don't think the title is just a reference to the trade of the protagonist builder. In the same way Riders doesn't only refer to being members of the show-jumping set!

I’ve always assumed the title was both the literal punchline to some story where the chateau floods catastrophically after someone bursts a pipe and no one can find the stopcock and everyone sits about, sodden, ruing the day they ever bought it etc etc, a bit of Frankie Howard or Carry On Up the Chateau, and some kind of metaphor for the flood of feelings, family secrets etc that greet the hero when he returns to Staffordshire to Confront His Past.

I've just smiled at this, posted on r/UKhiking last year. In fact there is no support for the Walkers at all on the entire thread - people who do actually walk LD paths tend not to put up with crap, I think!

As someone with Parkinson’s I’ve got to say I was surprised by the walk!! Not necessarily all of it but in the book Moth couldn’t easily stand after one hour on the floor of a workshop in Glastonbury before the walk. They then did 100 nights wild camping and 600+ miles walking. In the days I had Parkinson’s and could still walk ok it would take a week to recover from pushing it for one day. Everyone’s different but given the choice my neurologist told me I was lucky to have Parkinson’s and not CBD. Amazing that this year, 10+ years after diagnosis, it seems Moth is fit enough still to walk 120 miles to London to take part in the London marathon 😀. If they bottle up whatever he’s having they’d could be on for the Nobel prize for medicine. The book is brilliantly written and I loved the film. Ray needs to now turn her mind to achieving world peace 😂

I had the impression from some Reddit hiking threads too, that they’re not unaccustomed to people claiming to have broken LE to JO’G records in wildly unlikely circumstances, and as experienced hikers themselves, they take unlikely claims with a pinch of salt, and are good at spotting evidence of misleading narratives. I said this many threads ago, but they did a (very funny) takedown of some teenage YouTuber claiming to have wildcamped LEJOG, pointing out his fresh haircut, boxfresh trainers and that when he filmed himself talking to camera via a selfie stick in a ‘remote’ location, it was almost always close to a road with a convenient lay-by or car park.

The agent will have double checked with Sal, absolutely. Not just assumed that TSP was her first book simply on account of that being the first book handled by the agent - Sal might have been with a different agent previously and have half a dozen other books. Agents don't just nod stuff through. So Sal will have been asked at some point whether or not she had anything previously published. And she will have bald-faced lied.

The agent couldn't check because it was published under a pen name, so it was incumbent on Sal, a woman who couldn't tell the truth if you asked her if it was raining, to admit that she'd already had a book out. And we all know that her immediate response is to tell the 'truth' as she sees it...

Afternoon all and thanks for the new thread, @DisappointedReader . Lovely shiny charabanc after a hosedown, I see <hops on board, waves at everyone and settles down for the new ride>

Fascinating that SW has finally confirming she wrote HNTDDD. I mean we all knew it was highly unlikely it had been anyone else but this is the closest we've come to an admission of falsehood so far IMO. Even before re the Hemmings theft it was all 'mistakes were made etc etc'. To make the BBC front page says to me that this isn't going anywhere. The statement also made the Times yesterday and interestingly they'd put it in the print version just underneath a half page story of a woman who's under suspicion of using AI to write a bestseller. So definitely in the category of known frauds now, I feel.

My brother sent the BBC article on to me having heard the story from me over his last visit, with the comment "Doesn’t really help her case that she didn’t lie through her teeth about the salt path" 😁and @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, I thought of you instantly when I read it! Anyone with integrity would give back the prize and the fee, but you can all finish that sentence yourselves.......

Of course...and it could help explain the bogus "haven't written a thing since school" script. It seems very likely she spun that yarn as soon as she created Raynor Winn and began approaching agents and the Big Issue. Thereafter it was a necessary part of her script.

And this is where it's the small lie that proves the large one - she said she hadn't written anything since school. THEN she had to come out and admit that she had, in fact, self published a book. Which then starts to call into question absolutely everything else she has said.

Lie about one thing, but don't then get surprised when nobody believes a word you say afterwards.

Reading what @Vroomfondleswaistcoat writes above and this post - do we think it is most likely she started her IG in 2016 at the suggestion of an agent?

More likely to have been her reading stuff online about getting an agent — at one point there was a lot of stuff about your online presence and the potential for bringing your SM followers on board as readers of your putative book being terribly attractive to agents you were querying.

(However, this advice means more like ‘Do mention it in your query letter if you have 1.6 million Instagram followers for your gardening tips reels and are querying us about a gardening book.’ )

The Walkers would have had to have built up a following over a period of years doing ‘lovingly restoring our Welsh farmhouse with our own hands’ videos and photos (Tim twinkling from the barn roof in his bandana, Sally feeding Smotyn and the children adorably frolicking among the chickens etc) and then documented the house repossession and the entire walk (shivering in the tent, holding hands over the umpteenth packet of noodles, sunsets, SW emoting on a cliff edge).

Which obviously means it would have to have happened as SW claims.

Oh my, now I am worried as her guru status has been confirmed by her aura:

Raynor Winn | Editorial Herder MX

Or she forgot to wear a close-fitting hat while fleece-wrapping?

Or, alternative explanation, the spirit of Smotyn the Sheep is reaching out from the Great Beyond?

You're right the publication is called Herder!

rejoining the charabanc after a busy few months but listening to the new pod with interest. strikes me a shame the copy of HNTDDD couldn’t be shared from OC to BBC for their expert to analysis.

also despite what this pod says, I still think the first version of RW appeared with the creation of the IG account in Oct 2016 as that has not changed names (according to IG). That predates the big issue email, article and agent acquiring.

Indeed - curiously her IG account went live in 2016 within 24 hrs of her agent's (Graham Christie Maw).....⁹

Good to see you @ipathi - I quoted you on this subject in the last thread as I remembered you asked Chloe this question. I wanted to know if that is the first evidence we have of 'Raynor Winn' which would be 2016, as you say before the email and articles in 2017.

Thanks. So if that was accepted as too much of a coincidence - she already had an agent in October 2016 ... it would indicate that some of the emphasis on homelessness in TSP may be an afterthought. Some of it certainly appears that way. And the email to Big Issue and subsequent articles re: homelessness were influenced by her friend.

Definitely Jo Parsons, having met them in 2015, thought it strange that they shared ill-health and homelessness but only shared the former trouble.