Latest news with #MothWinn
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Climate
- Daily Mail
Were they EVER really homeless? Concerning new questions about the Salt Path couple and the best-selling memoir that's made £3million
Not even the most ferocious Atlantic sou'westerly could have prepared Raynor and Moth Winn for the storm that blew into their lives this week. Raynor's award-winning memoir The Salt Path, an 'unflinchingly honest' account of how she and her 'terminally ill' husband lost their home to creditors before setting off on a 630-mile trek along the South West Coast Path, has been one of the most successful literary phenomenon of recent times.
Telegraph
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘Raynor Winn must have been living in terror': The fallout from The Salt Path scandal
Many questions have been asked about The Salt Path, Raynor Winn's 'unflinchingly honest' best-selling memoir, in the past week. Why exactly was the home of Winn and her husband, Moth, in North Wales repossessed? Did she really embezzle £64,000 from her former employer, Martin Hemmings? Were they ever actually homeless, or did they secretly own property in France? How did they walk the arduous 630 miles of the South West Coast Path – and launch into other mammoth journeys in subsequent years – after Moth was diagnosed with an apparently terminal brain condition? Did they even do the walk? What explains the fact that he has lived with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) for 18 years, when the typical life expectancy is much lower than that? Why did Sally and Tim Walker adopt the names of Raynor and Moth Winn? And how was she able to release her story through one of the biggest publishers in the country – getting rich in the process? All of these questions have been raised since The Observer's bombshell exposé last weekend, which cast doubt on the veracity of one of the biggest literary success stories in recent years. Almost a week on – and despite Winn releasing a lengthy statement, as well as some of her husband's medical letters, intended to rebut many of the investigation's claims – the picture is now murkier than ever. The Salt Path quickly became a phenomenon, and a staple of book clubs across the country, when it was published by Penguin's Michael Joseph imprint in 2018. It was seen as the quintessential underdog story, with a plucky couple defying seemingly insurmountable odds through the power of love and sheer tenacity. It has sold more than two million copies, was shortlisted for a glut of top honours and won the Royal Society of Literature's Christopher Bland Prize in 2019, which awards £10,000 to a debut author aged 50 or above. A film adaptation was released in May, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs as Raynor and Moth Winn. The author has since released two more best-selling non-fiction books with Michael Joseph, 2021's The Wild Silence and Landlines the following year. Crucially, The Salt Path has always been billed as a work of non-fiction. What is written in its pages is supposed to be the truth. Part of the reason that it has been so popular is readers' belief that the couple were the 'good guys' and that the healing power of nature, as described by Winn, is real. The sense of betrayal felt by many who bought and loved The Salt Path is reflected in the feelings of locals in the Welsh town of Pwllheli, where the Winns lived under the Walker name until they lost their home in 2011. At the mention of the book, staff at the market town's Spa supermarket flinch, their faces clouding over. A shop attendant admits that the Observer front page caused a stir on Sunday morning. 'There was a lady who wanted blood in here the other day,' she recalls. 'She was ranting and raving about the story for a while.' Winn initially responded to the allegations with a short statement, but it did little to stem the torrent of questions facing her and it became obvious that she would have to be more forthcoming. On Wednesday night, Winn published a 2,300-word essay on her website in which she described the investigation as being 'grotesquely unfair, highly misleading and seeks to systematically pick apart my life'. She addressed many of the points raised by The Observer, such as the claim that she embezzled money from Hemmings, that the couple only lost their home after taking out a loan to pay Hemmings back and that her husband's CBD is not as serious as she made it out to be. 'I worked for Martin Hemmings in the years before the economic crash of 2008. For me, it was a pressured time. It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business,' Winn wrote. 'Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.' She went on: 'Mr Hemmings made an allegation against me to the police, accusing me of taking money from the company. I was questioned, I was not charged, nor did I face criminal sanctions. I reached a settlement with Martin Hemmings because I did not have the evidence required to support what happened. The terms of the settlement were willingly agreed by both parties; Mr Hemmings was as keen to reach a private resolution as I was.' Ros Hemmings, the widow of Martin, tells The Telegraph that the episode had left her and her husband 'feeling rotten' and that she 'wanted to throw coffee over the television' at the mere mention of The Salt Path. 'I'm sick of hearing about them, really. They've made their millions: go and enjoy it, they might as well. They've paid me back, so I have no axe to grind.' As to the state of her husband's health, Winn said it was an 'utterly vile, unfair, and false suggestion' to say he did not suffer from CBD. 'Among The Observer's many accusations, the most heartbreaking is the suggestion that Moth has made up his illness,' she wrote. Winn also claims that the property the couple own in France is 'an uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch' that they have not visited since 2007, and attempted to explain away their use of pseudonyms. 'Winn is my maiden name and, like most women who have married, I've used both my maiden name, Winn, and married name, Walker,' she wrote online. 'In the early years after Moth and I met, I told him I disliked my name, Sally Ann, it made me think of ringlets and gingham dresses, and how I wished I'd been given the family name of Raynor. From then on, he called me Ray. It is the name many people who are close to me have known me by, and the name I love and chose as my pen name. Moth is just an abbreviation of his name – Timothy.' Much as she may wish it to, Winn's statement is unlikely to be the last word on this scandal. There are still questions over the precise order of events that led to the couple losing their home, while the doctors' letters to her husband that she uploaded appear to raise other questions. One says that he is 'affected very mildly' by CBD, while another says that he has an 'atypical form' of the condition. How can it be that, seven years after a best-selling memoir has been published and turned into a film featuring Hollywood stars, there are only arguments about what is true now? It may surprise the reading public to know how little fact-checking of memoirs happens, even at the largest publishing houses in the country. Most publishers satisfy themselves with what is known as a 'warranty clause' in standard author contracts, in which writers legally undertake that what they have written is not untrue, that it is not the product of plagiarism and that they have the right to publish the work. Going through a story like Winn's line-by-line – or tracking down former acquaintances, as The Observer did – to confirm the truth is not affordable for any publisher. 'If you ask any publisher who's been around for a while, it's really just not feasible,' says Ravi Mirchandani, the head of Simon & Schuster's Summit Books. 'The approach of publishers on both sides of the Atlantic is to trust their authors. Obviously, we question things when we're editing, but we're questioning within the context of our, frankly, general knowledge. If somebody says, 'My house was repossessed because…', you just believe them. Maybe it should be otherwise, but it's never been the way things are done in book publishing.' The boss of another rival reckons that there are some unscrupulous authors who will abuse the trust of publishers, and that 'there's no real mechanism to really check… There are some con artists, it is going to happen once in a while'. This publisher did, however, express amazement that such a high-profile book had prompted these kinds of allegations. A former Penguin executive says that editors and publishers are so stretched that they cannot do proper due diligence on inbound non-fiction books. 'There's a genuine problem in corporate publishing, where the editorial culture across the board has been so diminished versus something like The New York Times or The Telegraph, or whatever, where there are editorial standards and checks,' he tells me. 'You've basically got editors who are now sales people, comms people, they're doing everything… Fact checking is rarely used, and when it is it's more on serious non-fiction projects, not memoirs.' Once a book like The Salt Path is published, and then exceeds all imagined sales projections, it means that any sequels are also perhaps not scrutinised as much as they ought to be. 'It's such a hits-based business,' the former Penguin insider says. 'Most books don't work, so when something does work, the last thing anyone wants to do is stand in its way.' Winn's sequels follow a familiar pattern: her husband's health declines, they embrace the supposed healing powers of the great outdoors and everybody is uplifted when things start to improve. This did not appear to ring alarm bells at Penguin. The publisher only went public on Tuesday, a full three days after the scandal broke.'Penguin (Michael Joseph) published The Salt Path in 2018 and, like many readers, we were moved and inspired by Raynor's story and its message of hope,' it said in a statement to The Bookseller industry magazine. 'Penguin undertook all the necessary pre-publication due diligence, including a contract with an author warranty about factual accuracy, and a legal read, as is standard with most works of non-fiction. Prior to the Observer inquiry, we had not received any concerns about the book's content.' In hindsight, it's easy to see why people might seek to pick holes in such a neat story. 'I thought The Salt Path was a book about a guy who was going to die in the not-too-distant future and he's been around for such a long time that they've published books two and three,' says the rival publisher. 'Maybe by the time book three came around, and what seems to be very convenient timing about [Moth's] illness getting worse and then getting better again, maybe there should have been more questions. 'But by that point, you're not really incentivised to. 'Either we could publish a new book and be guaranteed to sell tens if not hundreds of copies – or we can try and really get to the bottom of this.' Even if you did have suspicions, it would be pretty hard to follow…' The Salt Path was a surprise monster hit by a debut author writing about adversity in a part of the country that is not deemed fashionable by much of the metropolitan literary class. As well as Winn, it should have been a career-maker for its publisher, Fenella Bates, but a year ago she made the unusual move to head up the non-fiction team at Puffin, Penguin's children's imprint. Bates did not respond to a request for comment. Multiple sources reckon that Winn would have been paid an advance of about £10,000 for The Salt Path – a modest sum, but not an unhelpful one if, as The Observer reported, she owed £100,000 to a distant relative of her husband in a loan secured against the value of their home that she had taken out to return the money that she had allegedly embezzled. 'Most books completely fail and disappear without a trace and Raynor Winn probably thought she could make whatever the advance of the book was, a reasonable amount of money, and move on,' says a leading literary agent. 'It's only when the book achieves a certain level of prominence, from which she has therefore made a load of money, that the veracity of it may be questioned. 'She would have never expected it was going to be a million-copy seller or a movie with famous people in it.' If the Observer allegations are true, he supposes, 'she must have been living in terror of exposure'. As well as the truth of the claims raised this week, there are also questions about the Winns' original 630-mile walk from Minehead, Somerset, to Poole, Dorset. Quintin Lake, the author of The Perimeter: A Photographic Journey around the Coast of Britain, spent five years walking the coastline and spent a lot of time on the South West Coast Path. His book, which was published in May, has been longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for nature writing. Lake says that he found much of The Salt Path implausible, from Winn's descriptions of locals treating her and her husband badly for being homeless to the ineptitude of their camping setups. 'A couple of times, people mistook me for being homeless because you have a little tent by the coast and you're by yourself in crappy weather where there's no tourists. But I found that there wasn't any prejudice and that people were quite kind and neutral. I found the British, universally, were pretty understanding in that,' Lake says. 'From the practicalities of camping and backpacking it seemed like [the Winns] were so hapless about how they undertook it that I found it hard to understand why you wouldn't improve. Obviously they were middle-aged people that were suddenly chucked into needing to camp, and that's not easy for anyone,' he adds. 'But if you're making it a lifestyle, you tend to learn how to work around it, how to camp in the lee of the bays, how to camp out of sight. My eyebrows would raise when I read it because, yes, it's tricky for a bit, but then you sort of figure it out… Especially if you're travelling for months on end. If you don't, you're totally screwed.' Lake says that the story told in The Salt Path seemed 'off' to him and he 'felt quite vindicated' after reading the exposé into the Winns' background. 'Their particular story relies on the truth of it, because it is a redemptive memoir,' he says. 'So if there's no redemption, there's no story. I just felt really shocked and surprised.' The locals back in Wales are experiencing similar emotions. A retired man in his Sixties, who does not want to be named, feels 'let down and disappointed' in general by reports about the couple, though he admits that '[Sally] must have been a clever person'. He and his wife only discovered that the Walkers had 'just disappeared' overnight in the early 2010s through word of mouth. When it comes to the Hemmings, the couple who allegedly found themselves short of over £64,000, the town is universally loyal in its devotion to the pair. 'We would always protect the Hemmings', the local couple say. The owner of a local garage describes Walker's employer Martin Hemmings, who died of cancer years before the story broke, as a 'pillar of the community'. The news that the Walkers allegedly embezzled money from Hemmings has shocked her. 'Martin was a lovely chap,' agrees another local standing by the seafront. And by the local Wetherspoons, other members of the town who have heard the story can scarcely believe it. 'I think it's horrendous what they did [if true],' says one local who ran a pharmacy for many years in a nearby town. Another admits that he read that the couple had stolen from the garage, and suggests that they should be made to pay back the people they owe. 'If they did steal, I hope they made some recompense to the people they owe money to,' he says over a pint. For him, the story is about more than the couple; it is about the truth. 'The whole story really makes you wonder what the line between truth and fiction is,' he reflects. So, what happens next? Multiple sources say that Penguin has been thrown into 'crisis mode' and its bosses will be racing to establish the definitive truth about one of their most successful authors. The consensus in the publishing industry seems to be that the book can be salvaged if the only issue in question is the reality of the Winns' finances and Raynor's apparent embezzlement. If Moth's illness is found to have been invented or exaggerated, however, it will likely be dropped. Summit's Mirchandani feels sympathy with his fellow publishers. 'Most of us would just feel, 'There but for the grace of God go I' and, 'Thank God it's happening to somebody else', rather than oneself.' The consequences could be serious for the Winns. The couple have been dropped as ambassadors of PSPA, a charity that helps people with CBD, while Raynor Winn's tour appearances with the Gigspanner Big Band have been cancelled. PSPA says that 'too many questions currently remain unanswered' about the Winns' story. A spokesman for Number 9 Films and Shadowplay Features, which produced the big-screen adaptation, says that 'the film is a faithful adaptation of the book that we optioned' and that the concerns raised 'relate to the book and are a matter for the author'. Anderson and Isaacs, who played the Winns in the film, have not addressed the claims and their representatives have not responded to requests to comment. A fortnight after The Salt Path film was released, Penguin Michael Joseph triumphantly announced that it had bought a fourth non-fiction book by Raynor Winn. On Winter Hill is said to tell the story of her solo assault on the Coast to Coast Walk across northern England in harsh weather. Predictably, it is about her seeking refuge in nature from her husband's apparently ailing health. '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,' the publicity bumf reads. '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.' On Winter Hill is supposed to be published on October 23. Whether it actually hits bookshelves will likely depend on what truth is established in the coming days and weeks.
Telegraph
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Salt Path scandal has killed the middle-class fantasy of escapism
Authenticity is the enemy of art – and yet our hunger for it has been allowed to cloud almost every corner of creativity. You see it in the proliferation of TV dramas 'based on a true story'; in the expectation for actors to have 'lived experience' of the roles in which they are cast; and in the rise of autofiction (novels constructed from the facts of the author's own life) and memoir. In this age of fake news, and mistrusted politicians, I can understand why people might seek something 'real' in the films they watch and the books that they read. Yet while great art should speak universal truths, it must also be free from a slavish adherence to hard facts. As Mark Twain once wrote: 'Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.' Then, last weekend, came an exposé in The Observer which claimed that several aspects of The Salt Path – Raynor Winn's best-selling 2018 account of her and her husband Moth's 630-mile trek along the South West Coast Path – were, in fact, fabricated. The story made headlines around the world. Winn has responded to the allegations, on behalf of herself and Moth, stating: 'The Observer article is highly misleading. We are taking legal advice and won't be making any further comment at this time. The Salt Path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives. This is the true story of our journey.' Yesterday, she published a statement on her own website, addressing The Observer's claims more comprehensively and including scans of her husband's medical records. I am sure there are a few readers of The Salt Path who will be unperturbed by the media storm. They bought it to enjoy its account of our coastal communities, the vivid descriptions of romantic and rugged landscapes. To read the book, it could be argued, is to commune with England's soil and its soul. But to do so, is to ignore a bigger problem: The Salt Path is sold on certain truths – that Moth was diagnosed with a terminal brain condition and that the couple were left homeless after a bad business deal, for example – which are now being called into question. It's hard to believe The Salt Path would have achieved the same success (selling two million copies, winning awards and being made into a popular film) had the protagonists been plucked from Winn's imagination. The book is also, to use a modern cliché, a tale of triumph over adversity, which is now the order of the day for us mawkish Brits. 'If we hadn't done this there'd always have been things we wouldn't have known,' Winn writes, 'a part of ourselves we wouldn't have found, resilience we didn't know we had.' This isn't quite psychobabble, but there is an element of solipsism which is linked to the burgeoning cult of the individual. What Terence Rattigan once called the 'English disease' – by which he meant our reputation for emotional restraint – suddenly feels an awfully long way away. And here's the thing: the more emotionally truthful we purport to be, the more inauthentic we actually sound, often because we resort to clichés when talking about our feelings. I am in a good place right now; I am living my best life; destitution is my superpower. Yet while The Salt Path's success is built on modern sensibilities, it is also peddling a middle-class fantasy which feels quite retro. In turning their backs on the rat race, Raynor and Moth do not seem so different from Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal rearing hens in The Good Life (and, indeed, the Winns's previous existence in Wales sounds like a model of self-sufficiency). What's more, while the Winns's quest is generically spiritual, proper pilgrimages have provided a cultural talking point for centuries. In literature, we tend to think of two medieval works in particular – Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and The Vision of Piers Plowman by William Langland, which both combine the idea of an actual physical journey with an internal religious experience. Indeed, in some ways, you can trace a link between the social interaction of Chaucer's pilgrims and the exchanges between the Winns and the people they encounter on their trek. Yet while both authors highlight the importance of community, in The Salt Path that is ultimately supplanted by the need for self-discovery. If you want to explore the idea of the pilgrimage in more recent literature, there are far better examples than The Salt Path. I would recommend Graham Swift's 1996 Booker Prize-winner Last Orders which owes a debt to Chaucer but recalibrates the story as a tale of fractured male friendships in which three war veterans travel from London to Margate to scatter the ashes of Jack Dodds, the first of the gang to die. This isn't a sentimental 'journey' through picturesque locations; the stop-off points include the unlovely environs of New Cross and Dartford, and its power lies in the stubborn emotional inarticulacy of its ageing protagonists. Cinema offers equally rich examples: of course the road movie is often a kind of pilgrimage, even one with as tragic an end as Thelma and Louise, in which two women find their freedom on the open road. My personal favourite, The Straight Story, considers the 240-mile pilgrimage of an old man, Alvin Straight, through Wisconsin and Iowa, as he attempts reconciliation with his ailing brother. Like The Salt Path, the film (directed by David Lynch in 1999) is based on a true story, but it is also unyielding to any sort of sentimentality and all the more powerful for it. We don't yet know about the future of The Salt Path – what the scandal will mean for Raynor Winn, her publisher, or her future book sales. But if the controversy serves finally to spoil the middle-class appetite for 'real' stories, and leaves readers hungry instead for something of greater substance than this sort of mid-brow lite-lit that does nothing to push literature forward, we will all be the better for it. As far as I'm concerned, authenticity can take a hike.
Daily Mail
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
The Salt Path author Raynor Winn ADMITS 'deep regret' over mistakes relating to embezzlement allegations - but says she is 'devastated' by accusations her husband Moth's illness is fabricated after ba
The Salt Path author Raynor Winn has admitted she has 'deep regret' over mistakes made that led to allegations she embezzled £64,000 from a former employer. In a bombshell statement, the best-selling writer claimed she was working during a 'pressured time' when errors were being made across the business. Winn, however, denied allegations the financial dispute with ex-boss Martin Hemmings had any relation to the story told in The Salt Path. She claimed the 'bad investment' with a lifetime friend that prompted the couple to lose their home related to an entirely separate legal case. It follows days of backlash against Winn's 2018 memoir - which has been accused of not being as 'unflinchingly honest' as initially billed. Nevertheless Winn has maintained the account given The Salt Path is accurate and described the allegations against her as 'grotesquely unfair' and 'misleading'. The author, who has sold more than two million copies of her book, also said today she had been left 'devastated' by accusations her husband's illness was fabricated. Winn said: 'The dispute with Martin Hemmings, referred to in the Observer by his wife, is not the court case in The Salt Path. 'Nor did it result in us losing our home. Mr Hemmings is not Cooper. Mrs Hemmings is not in the book, nor is she a relative of someone who is. Following an investigation into their backgrounds, The Observer said that The Salt Path's protagonists, Raynor Winn (right) and her husband, Moth Winn (left), could have misled fans The Winns with Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, the stars of the recent film adaptation. It has been claimed that the couple may have made millions from the book and movie 'I worked for Martin Hemmings in the years before the economic crash of 2008. For me it was a pressured time. 'It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business. Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.' To combat the backlash against Moth's illness, Raynor shared images of three clinic letters, which she claims proves he has been receiving treatment for years. 'With Moth's permission, and on the advice of his neurologist, I am releasing excerpts from three clinic letters, showing he is treated for CBD/S and has been for many years,' the author wrote on her Instagram account. 'This is deeply personal information that no-one should ever be forced to share, but we feel we have no choice in the face of this unbelievably hurtful false narrative,' she added. Winn has been accused of omitting key elements of her story in her account of losing her home before embarking on a trek of the South West Coast Path. In the book, Winn said she and her husband Moth lost a fortune - and their home in Wales - due to a bad investment in a friend's business. But an investigation carried out by The Observer uncovered allegations she had in fact embezzled £64,000 from a former employer and was allegedly arrested. A loan was then allegedly taken out to avoid prosecution and when this was not paid their home was sold, it has been claimed. Moth Winn has been living with an illness for 18 years with no apparent visible symptoms that medical experts claim would require round-the-clock care within 12 years. Raynor Winn at home in Cornwall. She has become a huge success since her book's release, including two more books Ros Hemmings said she had been left upset by details in Raynor Winn's book and the subsequent film adaptation The Winns at a gala screening of The Salt Path film in Newquay, Cornwall earlier this year It has also emerged that the couple's real names are Sally and Tim Walker and they apparently owned a property near Bordeaux in France all along. Last night, Richard Osman said the couple could face financial repercussions if they have lied. He said 'a bomb would have gone off' at the publisher after the Observer's investigation claimed that husband's illness and events that led to the couple losing their home were untrue or exaggerated. Penguin Random House is the publisher of Mr Osman's Thursday Murder Club series, which is being made into a movie series by director Steven Spielberg. Speaking on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast with co-host Marina Hyde, he said the publisher could take legal action because Raynor and Moth Winn will have signed contracts confirming their memoirs were truthful. He said: 'People are going to be very, very hurt. I suggest there'll be some legal issues if these things do turn out to be not true. 'I think that probably you try and claw back some of the money that you've passed over. I don't know this particular contract. The contract would normally be that they have guaranteed that everything, in this piece is truthful'. Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in the film adaptation of The Salt Path, which was released in May this year Marina Hyde said that Penguin Random House could end up giving the money to build a 'new neurology wing' and both predicted that the creditors could be called in again for the Winns. Richard Osman suggested that the couple may have got around £30,000 up front for The Salt Path before any profits from sales of more than two million copies worldwide. But the film released this year starring A-listers Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs would have been worth three to four million pound, he said. Richard added: 'One assumes, by the way, that the cheques got sent to Tim and Sally Walker, but that's another thing'. Penguin Random House said today it had taken all 'the necessary due diligence' before releasing The Salt Path. In a statement issued to BBC News, the publisher said: 'Penguin (Michael Joseph) published the Salt Path in 2018 and, like many readers, we were moved and inspired by Raynor's story and its message of hope. 'Penguin undertook all the necessary pre-publication due diligence, including a contract with an author warranty about factual accuracy, and a legal read, as is standard with most works of non-fiction.' It came as a healthcare charity dropped the author of The Salt Path after claims were made about her husband's illness and an allegation that she stole £64,000 from a former employer. PSPA said it was 'shocked and disappointed' about the allegations that were reported against Raynor and Moth Winn, which had 'taken everyone by surprise'. It was also announced yesterday that Raynor had pulled out of the upcoming Saltlines tour that would have seen her perform readings alongside the Gigspanner Big Band. Following an investigation into their backgrounds, The Observer said that The Salt Path's protagonists, Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth, previously went by their less flamboyant legal names, Sally and Tim Walker. And rather than being forced out of their home in rural Wales when an investment in a childhood friend's business went awry, as the book suggested, it is alleged that the property was repossessed after Winn stole tens of thousands of pounds from a former employer and was arrested. When the couple failed to repay a loan taken out with a relative to repay the stolen money - agreed on terms that the police would not be further involved - they lost their home, it is claimed. A spokeswoman for the Winns on Sunday night told the Mail that the allegations made in the Sunday newspaper were 'highly misleading'. Their statement added: 'The Salt Path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives. This is the true story of our journey.' When asked to specify which allegations were misleading or factually inaccurate, the spokesman declined to comment further but said that the couple were taking legal advice. Questions have also been raised about Moth's debilitating illness, corticobasal degeneration [CBD], a rare neurological condition in the same family as Parkinson's disease, which is central to the book. The life expectancy for sufferers after diagnosis is around six to eight years, according to the NHS - however Moth has been living with the condition for 18 years with no apparent visible symptoms. As part of The Observer's investigation, a number of neurologists specialising in CBD were contacted, with one telling the newspaper that his history with the illness 'does not pass the sniff test'. It is suggested that anyone suffering from CBD for longer than 12 years would need round-the-clock care. Released in 2018, The Salt Path details the Winns' decision to embark on the South West Coast Path when they lose their home after investing a 'substantial sum' into a friend's business which ultimately failed. In the book, Winn writes: 'We lost. Lost the case. Lost the house.' The memoir then describes their subsequent 630-mile walk to salvation, wild camping en route and living on around £40 per week, and is described as a 'life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world.' It prompted two sequels and the film adaptation, which was released in May, starring The X Files' Anderson and Isaacs, who recently starred in HBO's The White Lotus. The Winns posed for photographs alongside the actors on the red carpet in London at the film's premiere.
Daily Mail
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Scandal-hit The Salt Path author and her husband 'fell out with millionaire benefactor after moving into his farmhouse' - as claims abound that they misled readers of their hit memoir
The Salt Path scandal couple Raynor and Moth Winn were taken in by a millionaire benefactor who let them live in his farmhouse after he was moved by her powerful book - only to fall out after they got to know each other better, locals say. Best-selling writer Raynor and her supposedly terminally ill husband have been engulfed in scandal after it emerged a number of key details in her memoir were apparently misreported. Among these was the suggestion that the couple's original walk on the Cornish path that was so popular with readers was prompted when they inadvertently became homeless. But The Observer this week claimed they lost their home as an indirect consequence of Raynor misappropriating tens of thousands of pounds from an employer. She was said to have embezzled £64,000 from a former employer which led to her being arrested - before borrowing money from a relative to avoid prosecution, only losing her Welsh farmhouse home when this was not paid back. Winn yesterday admitted she has 'deep regret' over mistakes she made that led to the embezzlement allegations, but denied that the financial dispute had any relation to the story told in The Salt Path. In a bombshell statement, Winn claimed the 'bad investment' with a lifetime friend that prompted the couple to lose their home related to an entirely separate legal case. She described the accusations against her as 'grotesquely unfair' and said she had been left devastated by claims her husband's illness was fabricated. The couple were also alleged to have been disingenuous about being homeless as they owned a property in France where they had previously regularly stayed. Now MailOnline has learned that among their fans on the back of the huge success of her memoir was multi-millionaire investment banker turned cider maker, Bill Cole. Mr Cole is understood to have been so moved by their story that, even though he had never met them, he got in touch and he invited them to live in an historic farmhouse that he owns in the countryside near Lostwithiel in Cornwall. Mr Cole, a former partner with Frankton Capital who now describes himself as 'farmer, pirate and impact investor', is understood to have approached the couple after being moved reading the first volume of her hit book series. The couple were living at his property and said they were helping with the cider production when they hosted TV chef and fellow famous Cornwall resident, Rick Stein, and showed him 'how they make cider in the traditional way' for a BBC programme first broadcast in March 2023. Mr Cole, who was at the farmhouse property this week, declined to discuss the couple - real names Sally and Tim Walker - saying: 'Please leave, I'm the farmer here, I've got stuff to do.' But a source told MailOnline that they understood the relationship between the Winns and Mr Cole had deteriorated after they moved in. 'Bill was initially very taken with Raynor and it seemed like a perfect set up but then there was some trouble between them and we understand it all ended badly with them falling out,' the insider said. In an interview with Country Living magazine published last month, Raynor Winn is believed to have discussed Mr Cole's generosity publicly. She said: 'When a stranger contacted me on Twitter with an incredible gesture, I wasn't sure how to respond. 'He owned a disused farm, nestled in the Cornish hills, and asked if Moth and I would like to live there. 'We agonised for months over the decision. It was yet another risk, to give up our home and to trust a stranger, but we decided to do it. She continued; 'When we arrived, the land felt abused and polluted, but we've been hard at work removing plastic sheeting, nourishing the soil and bringing wildlife back to the hedgerows. 'It's become a big rewilding project – and it's worked. A year ago, there were no birds here. Now, there are woodpeckers, yellowhammers and blackcaps. 'It's amazing how quickly nature bounces back if you let it. Like humans really… 'I like to think we're rewilding [her gravely ill husband] Moth as well as the land. By putting him back into his natural state – moving out in the fields all day – his health has improved almost miraculously, just as it did when we were walking the Coast Path. 'As the landscape has become healthier, so has he. Nothing will cure his disease, but we've found a way to keep it at bay.' The publication of this article last month gave the impression the couple's involvement on the cider farm is ongoing. However, locals have seemingly questioned this and claimed the Winns have not been seen around the area for some time. It's unclear how long the lag was between the interview and its publication. When MailOnline visited this week, the pretty farmhouse did not appear to be inhabited. The windows were thick with dust, from the front door it was clear barely any furniture was left in the house and just a few apparently abandoned items of clothing and kitchen appliances were scattered on the floor. Neighbours in the nearby hamlet of St Veep - who knew the couple by their professional pseudonyms Raynor and Moth Winn rather than their real names - claimed they had been seen regularly in the area for some time but have not been around for some time. One near neighbour said: 'As far as I know they've been gone for a while now. 'The farm is owned by a guy from London called Bill and they were tenants. But there was some kind of falling out.
