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?

I would love to hear what the judges now think. Ditto Jason ("you can't say it but I can - you were conned out of everything") Isaacs.

Radio Wales Ep. 5 The Movie

I found this whole series to be inviting me to hear a story rather than an investigation. It gives a fact and then poses a tongue-in-cheek question, eg, we are told that they are living:

a quiet, almost idyllic life on a Cornish cider farm. Moth is still alive - remember he was given only a couple of years to live ... about 8 years ago. Is everything almost too good to be true?

the actors in the film:

How deep below the surface would they be able to scratch?

Jason: Moth is so open
Gillian: She was much more guarded than Moth was

James Churchfield, Radio Cornwall, relates that they were given a very clear instruction that Moth was not going to be spoken to at the Newquay premiere.

So, again, so much deference given to the Walkers because of Tim's condition.

I think that must have been what won it, but I really hope that the CB prize has worked out its criteria for what makes a Best Book since. If all it takes to write a 'great book' is to ladle on the misery and then finish with an unproven incredible claim ('walking cured Tim!') then I can foresee some truly tragic literature heading their way.

I wonder who it was that issued that "very clear instruction", and what they understood the reason for it to be.

It might have been up against a tome on obscure 17thc weaponry by a retired colonel, a history of a village in Cheshire mostly of interest to other local historians and a misery memoir in rhyming couplets, mind you.

Not intending to be ageist, but it might have been competing against two celebrity memoirs and a book in origami, given the stipulation is for a debut by someone over 50 in fiction or non-fiction.

This might well be true! But I think you would be surprised by how much popular fiction comes from first time authors over 50. I was 48 before I had my first novel published - people tend to have more time to write as they get older; the kids are older and don't need you as much, you have more disposable income and don't have to work every hour of the day, the mortgage may well be paid off...

I mean, I was still working full time, but I do know others who have gone part time or taken very early retirement because they've always wanted to write and this is 'their time'.

@NervesofSteel : your post really made me laugh.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat : I also get you experienced take on it.

I think somewhere in our back catalogue of threads, someone turned out the shortlist for the CB prize, that was up against TSP. Iirc our disbelief that it won against the list we saw was audible from the moon.

I enjoyed the BBC Wales podcast more than I expected. It doesn’t pull its punches but is quite subtle and lets the facts speak for themselves. There’s a good sized contribution from the Hemmings (mother and adult daughters) and from a Pwllheli bookshop owner, and lots from Ruth Saberton. Worth listening to.

There was an interesting Mumsnet adjacent crossover in the BBC Wales podcast when they had a linguistics student, I think, from Aston University talk about recognising authors across multiple works. Given that's the university that had the contentious Mumsnet corpus. Just made me perk my ears up when I heard it!

I know we've discussed it many times before on these threads, but now that all the revelatory TSP bombs have been dropped ( via The Observer, Sky and the BBC podcast) what now for Raymoth once the dust settles?

There have been no photos of them since May 2025, no appearances, a couple of denials of guilt by Sal that aren't worth the paper they are written on and a few quasi mystical posts on IG.

Will OWH ever see the light of day? What do they do until it comes out in nearly two years time? Do they remain holed up in their 6 bedroom farmhouse on the Helford Estuary ad infinitum? Will Sal ever have the brass neck to appear at literary festivals and talks again? Is the Raynor Winn brand effectively dead and buried or will she rise once more like a phoenix from the ashes?

@ThompsonTwin I think Sal and Tim will wait for the major fuss to die down and then quietly move somewhere 'off the beaten track'. I've said before that I don't see how, given she's so desperate for somewhere to call 'home', they are still renting, surely someone who's lost houses to bad investments (yeah, right) and who has a husband in a health decline (YEAH, RIGHT) could continue to carry on in rented accommodation. Surely Tim will need adaptations made?

OWH may be slid out as a very soft release without any real fanfare, but I doubt Sal will be doing any publicity for it. Given their ages, I don't think Sal and Tim would wait it out for long enough for their duplicity to be forgotten (I'd give that about ten to twenty years, Sal), so their best bet is to buy a little place somewhere relatively quiet and move there under a different name.

After Escape To The Country, maybe A Place In The Sun?

Given that Tim is supposedly under the care of a consultant for his 'CBD' - how would they square moving abroad with continuing care? I suppose they could pay for it, but surely exorbitantly expensive, particularly if he's going to need a modified house, plus the caring costs...

Unless, of course, he's not really ill at all.😀

What are SW’s options, if we assume they’re reasonably financially comfortable and she hasn’t been ditched by her agent or publisher?

And what can we conclude by looking at past patterns of behaviour when the shit hit the fan?

Things she’s done in the past:

(1) kept schtum, been evasive, refused to answer questions and brazened it out, as when TW’s parents tried to question her about the thefts and when CH kept trying to make contact

(2) confessed (at least partially) as a way of garnering sympathy and manipulating victims to not take action, sometimes along with a melodramatic gesture, as with the ‘confession’ letter which begged her sister not to go to the police because she’d get significant jail time, or showing up weeping at the Hemmings’ house with a cheque, claiming to have sold her mother’s things

(3) used TW’s supposed dying as an excuse or relied on other people being reluctant to take action against a terminally-ill man (see TW’s parents being reluctant to take action against SW in case it impacted on their dying son, and Bill Cole repeatedly backing down over them not meeting the terms of their tenancy when TW told him he’d been advised he had only a couple of months left)

(4) cut and run (SW skipping bail, them making it clear to ‘Anne’ they were hiding out from debt collectors at her farm, fine notices showing up at Pen y Mars long after they’d left, leaving Haye farm surreptitiously, mid-tenancy, when BC was clearly beginning to doubt the ‘dying’ thing)

(5) paid people off and bought their silence (Martin Hemmings). Is it possible they’ve used money to buy other people’s silence, too? (The family members who appear to side with them, Dave and Julie? And obviously, TSP having made serious money for PRH and GMC means they’re reluctant to denounce her)

(6) relied on family goodwill to bail them out (‘James’, Anne and others who put them up)

(7) played for time (the entire court case about the house repossession seems to have been delaying tactics, and I suppose it’s what she’s doing now?)

(8) relied on their image, especially TW’s friendliness and charisma and her own shy woodland creature/‘What, little old me?’ thing, to disarm suspicion

(9) relied (naively?) on a change of name hiding their past, and on people from different parts of their past not making contact (till Maxine Garamond phoned BC and CH started digging and brought different sides of the family into contact). It worked surprisingly well for surprisingly long, mind you. I was ‘hmm’ enough about TSP to do some googling at the time and obviously found only that ‘Raynor Winn’ had no online existence before TSP…

(10) relied on ‘little’ people from their past not knowing what to do once they recognised ‘Raynor Winn’ (Hemmings family thinking they might still be bound by his NDA, ‘Anne’ (or was it Cecile?) phoning a couple of police stations about the thefts, and calling the PRH switchboard)

(11) forgery to cover up crimes (at Martin Hemmings’ business, her mother’s bank statements, arguably the copy of Paddy Dillon they ‘annotated’?)

(12) their victims’ reluctance to speak out, whether out of family feeling, embarrassment or simply not wanting their name in the public domain

I’m sure there’s more.

I can just hear SW's voice telling the presenter "hiding under the stairs ... putting one foot in front of the other ... lit up like a Christmas tree! ... looking for a wonderful new home ... must have headlands ... "

She can stand and place her face into the wind as much as she likes, (it’s North westerly today, Sal) but her career is over and the Instagram feed is a joke. Their silence tells us everything we need to know. The first rebuttal was of hissing and spitting outrage and the last a cool “nothing has changed”. Oh yes it has Sal! Unless there has been another moonlit flit, they are very stupid to continue staying at that house and I wonder if they are paying their bills? It will surely eat a lot of their money. I wonder if they have turned on each other yet? They ought to just leave for somewhere to live quietly as Vroom says.

Thank you for outlining all those possibilities @NervesofSteel - I just want to pick up on the bit about their wider family (not their children).

The family members who appear to side with them

Since we have been going into everything in more detail I am always reluctant to accept anything at all from the mouth, or pen, of Sally. I do not know that anyone at all 'sides with them'? This is from Sally in her statement:

Tortoise Media’s Observer and documentary makers are now seeking to drive a wedge between our family members. The family have always been able to share their concerns privately, and they still can.

I did not steal from family, as others can confirm. Nor have I confessed to doing so and I did not write the letter suggesting I did.

Sal and Tim stayed by far the longest with the family member who spoke to Chloe the most. In the Ep. 5, The French Quarter, it was Cecille's aunt who told her about TSP.

It seems to me that some of the family members have just not cut contact with Tim and Sally or wanted to say anything - either to each other or publicly. What Chloe has said is that none of the family members have contradicted what she has been told by other members, they just have not wanted to take part.

I suspect that any quiet creeping out of hiding is going to be accompanied by loads of 'my mental health' gubbins and she's going to use that to try to shut down anyone who asks questions. She can talk up her fragile mental state (caused, no doubt, by all the 'bullies'), throw in a bit of speaking in tongues, a hint of agoraphobia and then ladle on a lot of 'couldn't leave Tim as his health fails'.

She's great at blame shifting, so I think she's going to try to heap heavy helpings onto anyone who has tried to investigate her (I suspect Our Chloe is going to come in for a fair bit of stick) to explain why she's been so quiet.

none of the family members have contradicted what she has been told by other members, they just have not wanted to take part.

And that seems fair enough!

Outgoing Tim must be doing his nut in that house unable to get out and about and be charming in his bandana and waistcoats.

I have also wondered elsewhere on here about how she's keeping Tim indoors and out of the public eye. Horse tranquillisers is my best bet.

🤣🤣🤣

Absolutely they should, but every time they've had an opportunity for a new start, they've screwed it up.

Anyone with functioning braincells should have realised that TWS should have contained some kind of face-saving climbdown on CBD, saying TW had possibly been misdiagnosed, or the diagnosis was looking increasingly insecure because he was still alive, but that they'd genuinely believed he was terminally ill when they walked the SWCP.

If SW had done that, and, having taken advice from PRH's lawyers, subsequent editions of TSP had contained a tiny note at the back saying 'Our medical advice is now suggesting a different diagnosis, but the book reflects our belief at the time that Moth was dying', TSP would still have sold well, they would have covered themselves, and CH, whose interest was solely initially in the health claims, would never have started investigating and found out all the theft stuff, the retrofitting of the 'diagnosis', the real story of the house repossession etc.

Ros Hemmings and 'Anne' would probably just be seething silently, separately, the two parts of their families would never have realised they'd both been stolen from, and the Walkers' reputation would be safe.

OK, SW would have had to dial down the 'Moth will die if I don't take him on a long walk right now!' jeopardy in the sequels, but she'd have had an ongoing career writing platitudinous books about wild green stuff and how fabulous Moth was, plus her teaching and Gigspanner gigs, plus this wellness empire they were starting.

But no, she had to lean into the 'Moth is even more dying!' narrative in the sequels, and her increasingly outlandish claims, and TW being curiously unavailable for interviews, but looking the picture of health when glimpsed, piqued people's suspicion, someone got in touch with CH, and the rest is history.

At Haye Farm, they should have abided by the terms of their tenancy and made the cider, not consistently refused to do so, and, when things got sticky, made excuses about TW's imminent demise and then cut and run mid-lease, leaving a mess of unpaid bills and an unhappy landlord very ready to share information with Ruth Saberton, Maxine Faramond and CH.

(It would have been still cleverer to say 'Did unspecified bad things I regret that led to us losing our house' in TSP, mind you.)

Which is a long way round of saying that I wouldn't rule out SW not making the intelligent choice and quietly living the rest of her days on her earnings, but putting herself out there again because she feels genuinely put upon and unfairly treated and can't let it go.

Well, that's the other possibility -- that the Devoted Spousal Unit develops a crack, one day TW only pretends to swallow his 'vitamins', packs his bandanas and sneaks away to Kiss and Tell, because SW controls the cash and he will need a hefty payout from someone to fund his crisp white shirts and flash cars.