Thread 27 : 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 26 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:
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? | Mumsnet

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse are always welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from some of Investigative Journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou's excellent exposé items before posting. Chloe's podcast series for The Observer 'The Walkers' covers most things:
The Walkers: The real Salt Path | The Observer
Another suggestion:
BBC Sounds - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available Episodes
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 nearly a year we have done amazingly well together for 26 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.

We are still here after 26,000 posts and fast approaching our one year anniversary together on 6th July 2026, 12 months on from the start of our first thread in response to Our Chloe's somewhat stunning initial exposé. Little did we know what else would come out. Our longevity comes as both a total surprise and a pleasure (mostly!). We've seen charabancers come and go, come back again, delurk and join us for the first time. All are welcome. Threads have both filled up in a day and moved at a more stately pace. Thank you everyone for sharing your time, thoughts, opinions, experience, questions, sleuthing (there's that word!), kindness (there's that other word!) and great humour with me and with each other. As ever, as we embark on our 27th thread riding the community charabanc - this time all holding our brollies and fans aloft for much-needed shade and breeze - keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider, (but not too much in the current heatwave).

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 26 IS FULL:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5506717-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?

Re the pointed quotation marks, I've noticed that putting quotation marks around quotations can sound sarcastic when that is not intended.

In this instance, I would also have put quotation marks around the word "invested", not as a way of expressing contempt but simply because it's not vocabulary that I would myself have used in that context (but would want to be clear that I was trying to answer the question asked, which used that word).

Sorry for this probably-over-laboured discussion of punctuation.

ETA: The word "sensible" is also in quotation marks, but I don't think appears in the question, so (on any view?) that instamce of the punctuation isn't rebuking.

It is true that this thread got mentioned by those investigating the scams perpetrated by the Walkers. Everyone is welcome to contribute to this thread - we have always been like that. Unfortunately, as @Oeufs has said, no one is taking the Walkers to court. The whole story is best outlined in this podcast series:

The Walkers: The real Salt Path | The Observer

@Oeufs I'm with you now and the milkman from Croydon analogy was helpful. Perhaps the reason I'm more detached is that I've never read any of the books, and won't now I know it's a grift and they're liars, and not seen the film.

If Raynor Winn/Sally Walker fessed up to her grifting and Penguin withdrew her next book (On Winter Hill - scheduled for publication in late Jan 2028), I suspect this thread would soon disappear.

You may be surprised to know that, as someone who has read all the threads, I have not read any of the Raynor Winn books and obstinately refused to see the film! We are quite a mixed bunch on here 💐

It's more that there would be no particular motive for these threads to be in the media, as the story broke over a year ago and has been thoroughly well documented in newspapers, documentaries and two different podcasts. It's old news now, and I doubt there will be any further media interest until/unless 'Raynor Winn' actually brings out a new book, which isn't scheduled till early 2028.

And yes, I agree @ThompsonTwin -- if SW said 'Whoops, my bad, I accidentally forgot to mention I'm a repeat offender in theft and embezzlement, and we lost our house to get me out of a criminal conviction but were never actually reduced to living in a tent, we always had property in France and relatives to put us up, and Tim is as healthy as a clam, plus we only did a few short sections of the SWCP', these threads would go puff. But SW is still insisting every word is true (or 'emotionally true'), in the teeth of the evidence.

It's the equivalent of David Niven's books being revealed to be, in fact, by the imaginative milkman from Croydon. Once that's established, what does the milkman do next? Does he write another 'memoir' of skinnydipping with Ava Gardner at Bogart and Bacall's house, even though he spends his weekends playing darts at the Queen's Head? Does the general public still want to read a 'memoir' when it's clear none of what is recounted actually happened? Or does he rebrand it as fiction?

I think there would still be a case for the thread unless satisfactory justice could be seen to be done (reparations paid, perhaps? And TSP et al being labelled fiction or 'based on fact'). It's the unfinished nature of the story that keeps us going, and Sal's resolute ignoring of any accusations, as though she can make it all go away by just stonewalling everyone.

I still want to see an acknowledgement of the fact that she was unjustly awarded the only award that TSP actually won (the CB prize). That's £10k that she shouldn't have. Oddly enough, if HNTDDD had been self published I would have bowed out on that by now, but because they started their own publishing company to publish it (THE HUBRIS) I genuinely feel that TSP was ineligible.

The publicity you are concerned about is simply an unavoidable consequence of the very thorough analysis and discussion of the issues presented in the threads. Such publicity, if there is any, is tolerable on balance and indeed 99% of it is negative.

I'm intrigued @Fast800goingforit, you must have some interest to have bothered to comment, as @BrandiedAromatics says, there is always a seat free on the charabanc and @DisappointedReader keeps us supplied with plenty of fudge and chilled cider, though if you get @Vroomfondleswaistcoat's pot of ire bubbling again, we will all be wilted :)

@Freshsocks disbelief at the 27 threads

Not for you then. Like someone complaining about a sport they have no interest in and can't fathom why others do. I think comments above have answered the questions you posed.

I’ve just realised I implied that Pa Ingalls murdered people and ran away, and the Little House books covered this up — I meant unpaid ‘debts’, not ‘deaths. It’s hot here. My brain melted.

Similar disbelief at Raynor Winn selling so many books on the back of lies, deceptions and misanthropy.

Quite a feat to become a millionaire best selling author and achieve national treasure status while alienating so many people whose path she crossed or whose communities she trashed in TSP!

I like to give the old pot a good stir now and again. It is the Righteous Froth of Anger, you know.

There’s been a helluva lot to unpick.
As @ThompsonTwin says, the disbelief that she made it that far is astounding. She exploited the most vulnerable and trusting people in society, people who probably think they ought to know a scam now when they see it but this one was endorsed by a trusted publishing house no less and this couple have been playing this part for decades and it has served them well. The fact that they got even greedier and ramped it up for nationwide public consumption is so unscrupulous, such shitty, shameful behaviour. They have earned their money legitimately by selling a story that actually made people love them. The writing itself has borrowed unreservedly from other, better authors. She was awarded a prize and accepted it whilst knowing that it wasn’t her first book and therefore robbed someone else of that chance. I’m suspicious that the prize was awarded out of sheer admiration for what was thought to be an amazing journey and story but every single damned thing was based on lies. Still she carried on, taking the money, blagging her way through interviews, lying to people’s faces and absolutely loving her new status as some sort of guru who can cure terminal illness. The next venture was going to be a luxury wellness package at her latest retreat. A far cry from from her supposed sympathies for Cornwall’s homeless population and the problems faced here. Where is “Raynor Winn” now? Amazingly she’s still trying to cosplay her way forward on this path. It is only to be expected that there are people who feel very strongly about that. Hence 27 threads.

And that is what fuels the Righteous Charabanc. Well, that and the cider.

The fact that there was such a media blitz promoting the WinnWalkers means there is no end of material to pore over. Sally is more extravagant in her lying in interviews e.g. claiming they walked all 630 miles of SWCP in one go etc Lots more lies about Tim's health too. Then there is TV e.g. all the bollocks that Tim told Rick Stein about them making cider on Hay Farm.

Actually, if SW ever apologises for the Christopher Bland Prize and it's re-awarded, I would like to be teleported to wherever @Vroomfondleswaistcoat is.

As this strikes me as about as likely as the UK establishing a thriving colony on Mars, ruled by Count Binface, in my lifetime, I won't be holding my breath, though...

The two Eco Warriors could have used their celebrity prowess and fortune for the causes which you’d assume would matter to them. Instead, apart from using charities as a form of camouflage and credibility, you don’t see them being involved in anything. If they are, why don’t they say? Why use Instagram at all if it’s just decorative nonsense? Well obviously that’s a rhetorical question.

It is interesting, especially as she makes such a big deal in the books of her and saintly TW giving money and food to homeless people when they've got almost nothing. Now that they're rich, suddenly diddly squat, as I think it's highly unlikely they've been secretly donating all along.

I imagine SW is inwardly fuming at the PSPA charity for dropping them publicly immediately after the story broke. and she probably thinks they're ungrateful 'haters' after everything they did for them.

One wonders what the backstory is there. The charity did drop them so quickly it suggests they'd either had their doubts already (hardly surprising as people who would have had all too much reason to be aware of CBD symptoms, life expectancy etc and hence how deeply unlikely TW's perfectly healthy presentation was after so long) or had had advance warning of the content of the Observer story (from CH?) and had decided in advance that these were not people they wanted to be associated with, or to give credibility to, so their statement was ready to go.

I have this vision of SW running about trying to get a charity (nature? homelessness? walking? conservation? rewilding? RSPB? women? writing? woodlands? something? anything to fit the brand!) to allow her to be associated with it for the purposes of credibility.

'Please let me fundraise for you so that I can be listed as among your ambassadors/trustees as I prepared to launch my new, post-scandal book!'

'Nah, don't think so, dearie -- high-profile light-fingered people aren't an association we're dying to have...'

'You haters! Every word I wrote is Emotionally True!;

etc.

It will, of course, be one hell of a party and open to the entire charabanc. I'm thinking a cider-and-fudge fountain...

New IG post from Sal/Alice. A tent under a tree as the sun sets :”Worth every step”.

Another one of those carefully-curated camping posts where there's none of the clutter or any indication that anyone has slept or is planning to sleep in this picturesquely-sited tent.

I mean, obviously, you could stow all your packs etc inside the tent once you've put it up, to make the photo prettier, and it's obviously entirely possible you've walked 20 miles that day to get to your camping site.

But equally possible someone, possibly not even you, drove there and set up the tent for a photo, and that behind the person taking the shot is a car park with a hut selling pizza.

I was very amused, when the TSP scandal first broke, by UK hiking reddits exposing some Youtube teenager who claimed to have vlogged being the youngest person to walk from John O'Groats to Lands End non-stop while wild camping. Very instructive to see how an apparently remote spot can turn out to be a short walk from a main road and a car park!

I assume that the message "worth every step" is intended to convey "up yours!" (but deniably).

But what ARE these steps? She's obviously not going out walking and camping now - reports would have come in if that were the case. So what is she talking about?

Maybe I'll start posting my old holiday snaps and pretending that they are current and I'm actually in Slovenia right now. My pictures of Lake Bled fifteen years ago are about as relevant as her 'it's a tent!' pictures.