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?

As you say @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree Sally must have been aware that the con could collapse, the children must know what their parents have done and are happily profiting from it. It's interesting reading the comments following the DM piece, I can't understand why some people still think it's ok that Sally fabricated so much, particularly about Moth's health.

I keep looking online every now and then, to see if there is any information about TSP film being released in America. It was supposed to have been released already, but I can't find any reviews. One site is suggesting that the film will be released on the 28th August 2026, is the USA film release being pushed back, like the book I wonder?

Might it suggest SW has legal concerns?

I know nothing about company law (and obviously it's completely normal for writers not addicted to fake memoir to set up as a company for tax purposes and things like being able to claim tax relief on, say, energy bills for a home office, research travel etc). But, as far as I am aware, being a limited company makes a legal boundary between the company's assets and your personal ones, so if someone sued you (ie your writing business) for libel or copyright infringement or whatever, your personal assets would be protected. At least I think so.

I don't know whether SW no longer being a majority shareholder of the company set up for her earnings would make a difference, though.

Four Hares doesn't have much money in it, compared to SW's total earnings, so clearly most of the money is elsewhere...

if you were bookish, an obsessive reader since childhood, who'd always wanted to write, would you name your daughter Alice, if your surname was Walker?

I agree @NervesofSteel - we can talk about this now, I did think this when I first saw Alice. However, being on this side of the Atlantic, this is what made me laugh (for nearly a year now!): I disliked my name Sally Ann, it made me think of ringlets and gingham dresses
.... so when I had my own daughter I decided to call her - Alice.

A woman truly in Wonderland ...

(edited to say - I love the name Alice, it's just the statement that is so ridiculous)

WRT the Daily Mail article - I suspect it's all been done for tax reasons. After all, it's not exactly newsworthy that parents who have made a significant amount of money are going to want their children to benefit from it. My agent has made me sign something to say what I want to happen to my royalties if/when I die, because obviously books are going to continue to sell even after my demise.

So I wonder if this is less a newsworthy happening and merely Sal being advised on how to make sure her children benefit from her income after she's gone without having legal wrangles and massive tax bills.

I agree. I've been following Sam Cully's daily updates on Facebook since he started walking the SWCP several weeks ago. Like you, having seen the level of fitness required and the level of difficulty of the path as a whole, I have found myself thinking that it is extremely unlikely that Raynor Winn and her sick husband walked the entire path in a single summer. Sam's been walking almost every day for nearly six weeks and still has 100 miles to go.

I've concluded that what Raynor and Moth probably did was maybe walk a few sections of the path and maybe they camped for a few nights but I do not believe for one moment that they hiked the whole thing: that simply cannot be true!

I was also a bit puzzled by reference in the Daily Mail article about the Walkers living on an estate with 190 acres 'perfect for camping.'

Are they really suggesting that Tim and Sal are going out camping in their own garden?

I think it was a tongue-in-cheek reference to her claim that she couldn't settle down in a house again - she had spent so long (not) walking 630 miles of coast path . So she had to put up a tent inside The Old Chapel, Polruan! 🙄

I remember that, but the Daily Mail article didn't seem to have any other tongue in cheek references, they really did seem a bit po-faced about the whole thing. But maybe they were trying to be subtle?

I think that's probably true. Maybe more interesting that the DM clearly now sees the Walker children as fair game because of there being clear evidence of them benefiting significantly from a scam. I know we've always avoided talking about them on here, as they're not the ones who perpetrated said scam -- I don't think I even knew their names, and only had some vague sense of the son as a surfer and the daughter a tattoo artist.

On the subject of the DM, does anyone recall CH saying somewhere that SW had an offer from a tabloid to do a "tell all" story for a great deal of money?

Yes, I think now it is obvious that they are mid-30s and doing very well from parents who have lied and stolen money. I have slavishly deleted their names - even from when they were toddlers and Tim was a gardener. Tristan and Alice had a free ride with using Walker until Chloe revealed the truth. I knew they had supported as they were credited for photos, writing positive reviews of a performance (!), etc.

I just thought it was important we stuck to the facts and were crystal clear who the main culprits are - so that would not be undermined.

We know they didn't. "Polly" confirmed it to OC that they did sporadic walking holidays across 3 years (2013 - 2015) with other evidence hinting their bimbles went into 2016 as well. Just one of their many cons.

The photo with TW in the England football shirt was from the their daughter’s boyfriend’s fundraising page last year.
www.justgiving.com/page/edaysldn25

I think Sky (not a tabloid) offered a large sum for an exclusive interview - ironic that Sky (another division) made the documentary released in Dec!

If the DM piece is accurate with Tim appearing to be the picture of health after being doorstepped in Gweek, it's now another year on so that's 19 years that he has presented with symptoms of CBS yet still no word of any studies of his miraculous case to help benefit CBS sufferers. Quite extraordinary given it is such a rare disease with no treatment and no cure.

This is making me think of that scene in Trading Places where Eddie Murphy’s character has been pretending to be a legless, blind Vietnam vet, and, when apprehended, pretends he’s experienced sudden miracle healing and starts shouting ‘I can see! I got legs!’

Kind of like the Christmas tree DAT scan…

Does anyone at all still believe it, I wonder? Take this boyfriend of Alice, Ethan Days, who is photographed with his best bro - Tim. This was raising money for PSPA - it was only about a year ago that Ethan was doing this.

The comments, after the DM article, are overwhelmingly calling out the Walkers, now.

SW’s most egregious lies are not in the books but have been in the various interviews she has given. She has frequently claimed they walked all 630 miles of the SWCP in one go & that walking cured his CBD.

Yes and Penguin still continue to publicise this miracle that defies medical science, on their website:

The couple’s situation was worsened by Moth’s brutal diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration, or CBD: an incurable degenerative and chronic disease. Still, they walked – and amazing things happened. Moth’s condition improved, drug-free.

This is one of the elements of the psychology of it all that interests me the most.

As I've said before, TSP itself bears the hallmarks of a legal read in that there's no definitive claim by a medical authority that TW definitely has CBD (though 'Raynor' behaves throughout as if he does, and as if his death is imminent) and a lengthy medical disclaimer is added. But that caution clearly goes out the window the moment SW starts doing interviews, when it's definitely CBD, he's definitely actively dying, and the SWCP definitely miraculously cured him. That's her media script, from which she seldom deviates.

What I wonder is

(1) what the PRH legal department made of her much more dramatic interview claims, or are claims made during book publicity media completely outside their zone of influence/interest, and did they ever warn her?

(2) for SW. was it a matter of seeing that everyone appeared to have swallowed the illness/cure premise of TSP, hook line and sinker, and thinking 'OK, let's run with it -- everyone believes me, the fools! Yay!'?

and

(3) did this throwing caution to the winds then extend to TWS and LL, which both make far more definitive claims about CBD, imminent death, depict TW as far more seriously ill, and in LL in particular make the claim that TW has been miraculously cured, as shown on a suddenly normal DAT scan? But where on earth were the PRH legal team in relation to TWS and LL? Did no one ask for copies of the 'CBD DAT scan' and the 'normal' one? (I mean, even the miracle bureau at Lourdes, which believes in medical miracles, has a standard of evidence that includes a medical board examining x-rays, scans, and other medical evidence!)

Also (4) I desperately want to know whether the Walkers actually discussed the detail of the health scam together eg 'Will we start fundraising for PSPA to make it look credible?' or 'Here is what you have to say to Rick Stein'?

Beautifully set out @NervesofSteel and I think you are spot on to mention Lourdes. I have thought of how the Vatican requires independent evidence, from a non-Roman Catholic affiliated doctor, when promoting beatification.

It is so good that these wellness retreats did not go ahead. I don't think it is too much of an exaggeration that there was a cult following and who knows where it would have gone?

I can see Sally in the role of the Pythia (the Oracle at Delphi) ritually absorbing herbs and getting devotees to 'know thyself'. The reincarnated form of Apollo may have appeared, in the form of Tim. Maybe, I am getting a bit carried away now .... 😉

Hello everyone. I hope you are all well today. I was just thinking that it's been eleven months now since Our Chloe broke her investigation in The Observer and we started this unexpected journey together. It's a good job we've kept the charabanc running. I sensed something was about to blow in on the salty wind, not knowing that it would be the DM doorstepping Timmoth and putting the spotlight on to the Walker-Wyn-Winns' adult offspring. Perhaps they didn't know everything in the beginning, but as adults in their mid 20s to now 30s, they must surely have become well aware of the fishy aroma around their parents' 'non-fiction' books and interviews in contrast with the reality of their real lives? Continuing to love and see your parents despite 'mistakes were made' is one thing, but involving yourself in those lies (giving lifts, packing and posting out journals, for example), covering them up (deleting posts, staying silent, for example) and benefiting from them is a choice. I wonder how they square that? Or have the apples in this particular orchard not fallen far from the trees? Perhaps time will tell, as it so very often does.

Great post. Re: point 4. I started thinking about this while watching Mother of All Cons (which basically involved creating a charity that was then used to embezzle from)...my thinking being, could setting up a charity (via the wellness retreat plan) have been their next move and long term strategy, a bit like the Captain Tom saga?

Probably not given they had the book and film money coming in, but we'll never know thankfully. The PSPA fundraising could have been a step to do that though it was more likely a way to hide in plain sight by giving Tim's illness credibility in the absence of any obvious symptoms and his continued survival.

@AgitatedGoose The photo with TW in the England football shirt was from the their daughter’s boyfriend’s fundraising page last year.
www.justgiving.com/page/edaysldn25

Ethan Days repeats the claims that 'Moth' has CBD and that the whole 630 and 1000 miles were walked. In the comments from the donors, Moth is called an inspiration and a hero, and reference is made to him charming some WI ladies. This was of course before OC's initial investigation was published. I wonder what those donors think now.