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?

Thanks for the update @NecklessMumster . Does it continue the ‘walking alone’ theme?

View from out of tent flap to a beach, 'the moment when the light's new, the sand's cold and the ocean belongs only to you' with one pair of boots in view..so yes, that's the implication.
The only time I ever pitched a tent on sand it collapsed overnight 😊

lol Neckless! Thank you, I can picture the curation of this scene so clearly. The roving pop up tent strikes again accompanied by a bludgeon of words on the theme of stoic Alone-ness lest we forget 🥱

But presumably no clue as to whether this photograph of her stoic and set-jawed solo travels was actually taken this decade?

Interesting comments amongst the family/blinkered sycophant ones: how is Moth, laughing emoji, insanity, brass neck, very posed picture, that tent shouldn't be there...try Wales.

Yes, and one from someone who said quite openly that they'd loved all the books and felt as though they'd been betrayed by a friend when the revelations emerged, and if only RW had just labelled them 'fiction'. Also one from someone who said he/she 'didn't care' if the books were 'complete fiction' because 'It's about the message' (about nature and inspiration to walk).

A few people telling critical commenters to read RW's statement which 'makes perfect sense'. And that they too have 'been the victim of a smear campaign' and 'it is so easy to spin anything'.

If it weren't so depressing, it would be a fascinating study of suspension of disbelief and credulity.

Someone remind me whether OWH, or whatever the next thrilling instalment might be called, is supposedly due out in early 2027 or early 2028 now?

The fact of the continuance of the 'brand' on Instagram with regular Mothless photos, does suggest that Brand Raynor has not been packed up like a teeny, teeny rucksack, and that there is more to come. I suppose time will tell whether PRH thinks it has legs. And what the 'absence of Moth' story will look like.

Perhaps 'the Moth problem' will be dealt with by ignoring it? Maybe he will just never be mentioned again, but we will know he is there, like the elephant in the room or rather the moth in the fake tent?

“A lot of people were enjoying [the film], regardless, and it is special in its own right. I hope people are able to experience it as its own entity, separate from what may or may not be true or whatever controversy there is.”

Only if I split up my soul and place it in different spaces, Gillian Anderson. I had sympathy for the film makers and actors - it is still not their fault, or even the publishers. But, doesn't money talk?

The Salt Path scandal may have scared off US film distrib...

It's inteesting, because Googling OWH it pops up still saying it released in October 2025, and I had to hunt around quite hard to find that it's supposedly released January 2028.

But AI seems to believe that it's out already.

It’s so ridiculous it’s farcical. The reality is like the plot of a Marx Brothers film 🍿 with ‘Moth’ being kept hidden while she trots out the dialogue she still wants everyone to believe. It’s like she’s trying to rewrite and cover up history again as though Chloe’s expose never happened, her rebuttal never happened and the timeline can be moved around like a child’s wooden railway track to remove the diversion and fit us neatly back onto the run towards On Winter Hill. We are expected to believe that she walked alone because she had to come to terms with the truth about Moth (which is ironically a lie) that he wasn’t cured by the walking, even though her books said the contrary but he was absolutely fine when promoting the film. We need to suspend belief and really separate these two fraudsters from their fictional alter egos. We’ve actually got to play along with this deluded woman’s narrative that Sally and Tim don’t exist, they’ve gone back into a box. Just thinking about this nonsense makes my head spin! 😵‍💫

Just had an idea for another book in the same vein as Where’s Wally?
Yes, you guessed it. Where’s Moth?!

Yes, his non-appearance causes more questions than it answers. He was so spry and lively (and keen for his moment of fame) when the film came out; Chloe's investigation goes public and BAM, he becomes Schrodinger's Moth. Unseen, unmentioned, unphotographed and yet any enquiries seem to be brushed off with 'he's fine'.

If he's fine - where is he?
If he's ill - where is he? I'd have thought at least regular hospital visits would be incurred and nobody has reported seeing him so much as in a hospital car park.

So his absence looks more suspicious than illness...

What I wondered lately, in a purely hypothetical situation, is what the backlash (or lack thereof) would have been had it been discovered that TSP etc had been written by AI. Would that have been viewed as more egregious? Would fans still support because "the story is still inspirational"?

I don't see much difference tbh because both hypothetical AI and RW written narratives would ultimately be grounded in deception.

Horrible to say it, but increasingly people don't care if something has been written by AI. They pretend that it's all right, because the 'author' had to feed the prompts into AI in the first place, so it's still 'their story'.

And Sal would probably say that she HAD to use AI because she had some dreadful, accountancy-related injury that meant she was now unable to write herself but wanted her inspirational story out there for the public to read.

Presumably Gillian Anderson would say: I hope people are able to experience it as its own entity

Which would mean it doesn't matter, and, related to this, does it matter that the film has real people for the actors? If you take JI and GA's publicity comments to their logical conclusion - no. It would still be: special in its own right (see my post from yesterday).

Interesting that Harper Collins pulled the imminent publication of Stalked - following many of us saying it was like an AI thriller in the style of Raynor Winn.

ETA There was no doubt that Stalked was a terrifying true story. There were court cases and a murder/suicide.

Just checked and Stalked is now available to pre-order from 30 Oct and for sale a year ahead of OWH! I wonder what has happened to it, or what the discussions have been?

People read and don't mind AI written books? Never knew. The book publishing world is weird. Even media outlets have retracted articles that have been found to be AI generated.

Do you think PRH or others would be unperturbed if an author of theirs was rumbled for producing an AI generated memoir?

I think in the hypothetical scenario it would at least add an extra hurdle for the superfan to get over. But maybe they wouldn't even care if RW was a chatbot given many don't mind about what is real or not as long as they are entertained/inspired.

Indeed! 😃 I do love the Schrodinger's Moth theory 😅
We should start putting up posters everywhere as though he is a lost cat.
Those questions are the exact same ones that people were desperately asking or searching for online once they’d read her books. It was expected that since she’d been so damned ‘honest’ in her books that she would be keen to share his progress, decline and activity with the people who had devoted themselves to them both. The Instagram contributor sums that feeling up very well when saying she was thought of as a friend. I realise the dangers of someone having thoughts like that, but this case was different because the author wasn’t an author. She was just an ordinary, everyday woman who had a story to tell which ends with a miracle. People weren’t aware that they would have to wait for the next instalment of a series of books. It wasn’t fiction after all 🤔 …. Was it?
The way in which she spoke on the page to the reader is vastly different to how she communicated at any of her live events in person. The ‘Moth is fine’ narrative which was acted out at any such event is in complete contrast to her books’ emotional wailing. Moth was suddenly being spoken about as though he was an ordinary middle aged man, not somebody who had defied the laws of physics. Nobody said anything to convey their surprise at that sudden U-turn. Why would you even want to keep a miracle private? If that’s what is was, of course. Miracle aside, why would you not continue to update the people who gave you their time and money so that you could become a millionaire by sharing his progress. Umm.. wasn’t he being hailed as an aspirational figure for others who were living with CBD or Parkinson’s? Nothing. Tumbleweed. Nobody is owed anything as she spits out in her rebuttal. She is however, restricted to brief posts such as the ocean belonging just to her, putting her face to the wind etc and Moth stays hidden from public events and only appears at private ones. Who can possibly still want to associate with these people is beyond me.

Just head on over to BookTok and have a look at the long list of books 'written' by content creators and influencers. It's now much cheaper to have AI allegedly 'co-write' the book rather than a ghostwriter when the publishers want to cash in on the huge sales they will get from influencers with followings in their millions...

(To be fair this usually only works once per influencer, when readers discover that the adorable lifestyle vlogger that they follow can only turn out trite and cliched rubbish, but some of them absolutely gobble it up. It's the who, not the what, that they love).

Mr Beast/James Patterson is springing heftily to mind here.

But I think with whatever we might accuse Sal of, we can't get her with the AI accusations. Even AI can't torture a metaphor like she can.

Wow, some wonderful insights here to think about, thank you @Vroomfondleswaistcoat and @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree

But I think with whatever we might accuse Sal of, we can't get her with the AI accusations. Even AI can't torture a metaphor like she can.
Brilliant @Vroomfondleswaistcoat ! That does conjure up some amusing imagery!

It was the following that prompted many of us to smell a rat in Stalked ...

The kitchen smelled faintly of badgers and despair

....if you know what I mean?

I’ve never read Stalked.

What happened is that there was a thread started because posters were surprised that The Guardian would feature such an 'off' extract from a due to be published novel. Then @Victoriawould24 popped up on this thread to inform us - and some of us did get drawn in.

It is a horrific story - and true - but the style of writing was like a combination of AI and Sal.
‘He hadn’t been trying to scare us. He’d been trying to kill us’: how stalker neighbours turned our dream home into a nightmare | Stalking | The Guardian

Didn’t its release get postponed in the end after lots of AI and other accusations etc? I do remember us speculating on here that the prose read as if someone had asked AI to ‘rewrite in the style of Raynor Winn’…?