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?

So what is the point of highlighting a one person tent?

She walked the C2C in Jan 2025 staying in BnBs rather than camping.

Moth is clearly relatively fit and healthy - sighted a few weeks ago in Gweek at a social event with cravat et al with no obvious health issues..

The books sell with the hook of walking with Moth as he struggles against imminent death and then undergoes a miraculous recovery.

So does OWH frame Sal on her own, frothing about social and media (OC) injustice, global warning while highlighting her own attempts to rewild and turn back the tide of human planetary destruction? Epic dualistic struggle of Good vs Evil.

Who knows. It all seems a bit contrived and part of the tried and tested Raymoth playbook!

Thank you so much for these, they tell a lot! What a contrast between the busy author speaking and making self deprecating wise-cracks to her audience and the heroine of TSP who from the blurb of OWH, I always picture as being like Alice in the pool of tears. An incredible difference. I agree, this hearty, jolly sounding jaunt does not mention the beloved husband or the emotions that we expect to be expressed. It’s quite obvious now that those emotions were always fake and I am so annoyed about that. It’s no wonder that when people met her they were struck by something they couldn’t decipher. There is a stark lack of genuine depth in these SM posts.

That silly hat is incredibly impractical also, in any weather.

I saw a couple in their sixties walking across the beach today, hand in hand, looking just like you’d expect Raynor and Moth to look: been together forever, battered and well worn clothing and it struck me that when thinking about her characters, these are the types of people they might have met or passed during their brief holiday on the SWCP who are entirely unlike the materialistic, designer clad, trophy vehicle owner Walkers and who she used as inspiration for Raynor and Moth.

She mentions chest infections etc but seems to brush them aside, however there’s no anguish over leaving Moth.

Exactly. He was either too sick to walk with her (in which case she ought to be torn between staying with him - after all, she couldn't work, could she, because she wanted to spend her time with him, or agonise over leaving him) or he's 'cured' (in which case why walk alone?) You'd expect her to at least mention him in one context or another... He's the great love of her life, after all, and yet - nary a namedrop.

Could it possibly be that Schrodinger's Tim is now a millstone around her neck? Don't sleep with a pillow, Tim...

Love that @Vroomfondleswaistcoat “Schrodinger’s Tim” perfect.
I thought I’d take the liberty of re-copying and pasting the blurb from the Penguin website. I know we all know it by heart but I want to put it close the IG posts for comparison.
This hardback will set you back £22.

“After a turbulent year, Raynor Winn embarks on the Coast to Coast Walk in winter, unexpectedly alone. Despite 45 years of walking together, setbacks in her husband, Moth's, health have led him to see his decline as inevitable, which Raynor refuses to accept. Feeling trapped, she is drawn north, like a migratory bird, seeking the peace and hope that walking brings her. Navigating harsh weather and tangled emotions, Raynor reflects on the mountains they've climbed. Her journey becomes a meditation on our connection to the land and its power to help us remember, rebuild, and reclaim what is lost.”

Oh! Re-reading her list of busy things that don’t include any hint of her husband, she mentions tutoring! Good god. I’m imagining lots of little Raynor Winn’s scribbling away and crying buckets of tears and egging each other on to steal fudge from the village shop 😀

Thank you for this. What also stands out for me is the absence of utter despair and inability to work as descibed in TSP because every moment must be with Moth. Here it seems that going to work (writing, tutoring, gigging etc) is perfectly acceptable as well as leaving Moth on his own to walk C2C. What has changed since TSP other than having watched Moth's "inevitable decline" for 10 or so years?

I agree entirely. In TSP she went to a lot of trouble to explain to the reader that she had no qualifications, her age was against her and of course Moth. Good excuses which nobody would query and perhaps a lot of sympathetic women would relate to, which she relies on. Nobody would hire a corrupt bookkeeper and those lies were so easily written and with so much despair as you say. Real desperation. You truly got the impression that they were at the end with no hope in sight.
edit:
Its so clear to see Author and character and so shocking.

I think we've postulated on here before that OWH could have originated from something rather mundane:

• Sal was contracted by PRH to write a 4th book

• She had the film and Gigspanner commitments from May 2025

• There was only a narrow window of opportunity to do a walk and write a book (Jan - April 2025)

• Clearly the weather in Yorkshire in Jan wasn't ideal for wild camping!

• Maybe Moth simply didn't want to accompany Sal as his physical condition and health would be much more evident to outsiders if they were staying in AirBnBs. Maybe he had a routine hospital appointment or simply wanted to stay at home reading books and watching TV! I seem to remember (a now deleted) IG post from Sal which showed Moth with piles of batch cooked ready meals which somebody had prepared for him to eat while she was away.

• As it turned out, Sal didn't even manage to finish the C2C due,apparently to poor weather.

• So without Moth and wild camping and without much in the way of nature, I suspect there is going to be a lot of navel gazing on the part of Sal in OWH!

Yes, but it is still very important to show the differences between fantasy and reality for anyone who has any doubt about these stories and their “truth”. The SM posts of the bestselling author do not marry up with the emotional tangles that are written in the books by apparently the same person with the same character. It’s such rubbish and needs to be shown as the sham it is.

Don’t forget TW was also the one to say he didn’t want them to fully stock Haye Farm and run it as a commercial enterprise in TWS , because he wanted to come along with SW to her book events.

Obviously we know that Bill Cole disposed of most of the farm separately, so this was never on the cards, and the list of stats and figures the purportedly frail and forgetful TW miraculously remembers from their farming past in this scene in TWS is pure fiction, as the closest to a farm he ever came was their single acre at Pen y Maes, but the message is clear. They can’t ever bear to be apart. Which is a wonderful alibi for workshyness. ‘Sorry, I can’t get a job to put a roof over my dying husband’s head so that he has a stable base from which he can access medical care — I love him too much to miss eight hours a day of his company ! I’ll just have to drag him on a famously taxing LD walk and make him live in a tent on noodles.’

And ‘Oh, I can’t make cider, even though those are the terms of our tenancy. I’m too frail, plus I want to travel around with Sally to her gigs. We can’t be apart! Apart from when she’s doing a cold, unglamorous walk in January. Then I’m definitely too frail and have to stay at home with batch-cooked meals and the fire.’🙄

I wonder if she undertook the C2C in January as a panic response? She knew she had to turn out another book for PRH and the deadline was most likely looming. She'd done the south, and eyebrows would definitely be raised if she took off overseas without her beloved Tim by her side. Because walking even part of the C2C in January was never going to result in much nature seen to be able to pontificate on - January up here is bleak at best and often too foggy to even see a view if it's more than a metre ahead of you.

So why do the C2C? If she just wanted a solo walk to think things over, surely there were plenty of walks closer to hand down south? South Downs? Ridgeway? Even walking one of the towpaths along a canal? Avoiding the Grim Up North winter weather, in which solo walking can be very dangerous actually.

Remember the other variable in the equation which appears in all 3 of Sal's previous books and isn't a million miles away from the C2C....

I am jumping back on board the charabanc after a week's holiday in sunny Northumberland (a beautiful part of the country, and DW and I had a very relaxing break) We have been holidaying there for the past 20 years, and the past two holiday's we have stayed at a new location - a former farm overlooking the Coquet Valley, at the cottage we have been lucky enough to see deer, a barn owl doing it's evening hunting and hares. Last year we had a leveret come into the garden early in the morning and nibble on moss on a stone garden ornament. We feel lucky and honoured to have been able to see such natural beauty. So I find it such a shame that The Walkers call their new company Four Hares (how dare they appropriate hares!) I think vultures or hyena are more appropriate for SW and TW - carrion feeding off weak and/or vulnerable prey!

I read with interest @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree summary of SW's IG posts regarding the C2C walk. I smile through very gritted teeth at the information SW posts, that for someone who allegedly should be an experience walker, she seems to be the most inexperience and ill-prepared walker - ever! Is SW putting forward that she did the walk on a diet of bananas and chocolate biscuits!! Dear Lord! We we did the C2C our overnight B&B stays were either in the same place or near to a pub that could provide you with a very decent meal. Also, doing the C2C in the winter! Walking in the Lakes is demanding enough, but it would be utterly treacherous in January, and I am sure we have all read and seen news stories of mountain rescue having to rescue inexperience walkers from such environments. Only a complete ill-prepared fool puts themselves in a dangerous situation walking in dangerous or risky terrain. But then remembering the OWH promotion piffle SW is "drawn north, like a migratory bird" Which is her justification. But saying that the C2C walk impacted on her heatlh (a frozen lung) she makes herself a victim out of her virtue and stoicism. But then again did she really walk the C2C, and the Wainwright book details the route, features of note on the walk and there are a number of coffee table photobooks on the C2C. A truly dishonest person could make out they had done the walk without leaving the comfort of their armchair!

Belated thanks to @Vroomfondleswaistcoat for posting the Girl Friend Explains podcast. I was glad to see Lindsay and Connor's disgust (and Lindsay's rather 'salty language' to describe The Walkers and their crimes) I found it refreshing two young people from the US shared our views and feelings. I don't know if TSP film has been released in the US, hopefully awareness of the real story will reduce its box office appeal. Having said that I feel sorry for the film director and production staff who worked on the film in good faith that they were filming a true story. And there will probably be some financial impact on the production if the film is a box office bomb in the US.

I have also had to smile (through gritted teeth) at TW's youthful exploits. Telling a shepherdess that he had trained cats to herd llamas! Utter tosh!! Being a cat owner (or more likely being owned by cats) one of our vets aptly describes cats as "timid tigers" and our timid tabby tiger would not approach anything larger than a mouse! A llama would certainly be avoided. I think TW is a man who loves the sound of his own voice and a captive audience where he can talk about his favourite subject himself. Regarding his sporting exploits, I wonder if such things could have been reported in the local press back in the 80s (not that I believe the stories) but I have vague recollections of team tryouts being reported in my local press back in the day. It is possible that the central libraries in Burton and/or Nottingham might have microfilm or microfiche of local newspapers. A few years ago I had to research information using the British Library newspaper microfilm collection at St Pancras, I didn't realise that the local newspaper I was having to search had two regional editions and there were three editions per day of publication - early, middle and late edition. That was an arduous job going through all that microfilm!

I have no idea how I came upon this fascinating thread, but I thought I’d pop in that I saw Moth last week in Truro going into a bank ☺️

How was he?

I agree. The mismatch between author's fantasy and lived reality is so blatant when one puts the SM posts against the OWH blurb. The big red flag being the then upcoming Salt Path film release that we know Tim helped promote and appear on red carpets. Yet apparently in OWH he is in inevitable decline and unable to join RW on the C2C. A load of nonsense. I wonder what she had written before the C2C walk because she posted on 01 Jan 2025 that she was already working on it. Probably the opening pargraphs of despair to set up an emotional reason and hook to head north like "a migratory bird" mixed with an info dump on th3 C2C path history. I think it has been suggested by someone here before, that it seems highly likely the book was going to purposefully tie-in with the C2C becoming a National Trail this year, at least for marketing purposes. A hint pointing to this is she wrote the hashtag #nationaltrailsuk on her March 2025 C2C related post a year before it officially became a national trail. One can't help but wonder if the folk behind the national trail were working with RW/ Penguin given back then she was an official ambassador for the SWCP.

...[accidentally posted twice]

And was he frail, sunken, obviously dying, probably using a walking aid of some kind if not a wheelchair, given this advanced stage of his horrible terminal illness, @Spondoolie ? Was his devoted spouse at his side, guiding his faltering steps?

Or did he look like a perfectly well, rather dapper man in his sixties going to visit his healthy bank balance?

Very interesting, thank you. I always keep my eyes out for them here and there but haven’t seen them yet.

(For the Terry Pratchett fans among us) Maybe Tim should wear a sign around his neck whenever he goes out saying "I Aten't Dead"?

This story is very different to TSP but, because the authors write about healing the land in Wales, there is a bit of overlap - although there are crimes against the person and tragedy.

I did follow the thread - but I am sharing it just because, for some unknown reason, the publisher Harper has put it back to be published January - it was due to be released in a few days. There must be some questions?

Absolutely fine. He’s quite a striking chap and looked tanned, healthy and strong

Exactly that. Tanned, toned, healthy and striking. He was striding confidently down the street which is what caught my eye.

I saw them in the Arts Cafe about 3 years ago so before the hoo hah, and recognised Moth from then.

I'm intrigued by SW's mention of acquiring a 'frozen lung' from her alleged C2C walk. Another fiction?

Google tells me that 'frozen lung' (also known as 'trapped lung') is a specific and serious medical condition involving scar tissue surrounding the lung, and can result from conditions such as severe pneumonia, tuberculosis, or certain types of cancer. Apparently 'frozen lung' is resolvable only by surgery. I would put money on this being yet another fiction or wild exaggeration, with the reality being more like 'I was slightly breathless at times while walking in cold air', or 'I had a slight cough'.