By Harry Mottram: I had just read Chloe Hadjimatheou’s article in The Observer online about the author behind the 2018 memoir, nature, and travel book The Salt Path – Raynor Winn – (Sally Walker) – and gasped with astonishment. As much as I enjoyed the book I had thought like many readers that the first bit about losing their home didn’t add up – but skipped onto the story of the walk around the South West Coastal Path since I knew many of the places they visited on their hiking odyssey. Now journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou has investigated that pre-publication and pre-walk around the South West period that didn’t ring true and has found it filled with lies, falsehoods and debts blowing a hole in Raynor Winn’s credibility as a storyteller.
Both Winn and Hadjimatheou have something in common – they are excellent writers. The Salt Path is a page turner with each chapter revealing either another coastal town or windswept headland on the walk or another crisis with Winn’s husband Moth (Tim Walker) struggling with his corticobasal degeneration, – a type of terminal brain condition like Parkinson’s which sees a slow deterioration in physical and mental function. While Hadjimatheou’s investigation is also a page turner as it ruthlessly takes apart Winn’s account in her book over how she and her husband came to be homeless and decided the only option was to wild camp on a journey around the coast beginning in Somerset.
There seems little doubt they did walk the coastal path – although I’ve read some critics saying some parts of the journey she describes as being inaccurate – but with 600 miles of bays, cliffs and resorts – some parts were probably glossed over. I took issue on my home town of Seaton which she described as a throwback to the the 1950s – for me it is the Nice and Monty Carlo of the East Devon coast – but that’s me- and not as a glorified old people’s home next to a Tesco’s as my wife describes it.
She also questions how ill Tim Walker or Moth really is as his illness is normally fatal within 10 years but it appears two more books later he is well and alive. It could be argued that the redemptive action of a long walk is a literary device – he begins each book on death’s door but is healed by the last chapter. That is an argument to be had between medics and the Walkers – and fellow sufferers of corticobasal degeneration who may feel the condition is misrepresented.
The most damaging part of The Observer’s expose is not about the walk but about the section that deals with Winn becoming homeless. Chloe Hadjimatheou writes that Sally Walker (Winn’s real name) was accused of stealing tens of thousands of pounds from her estate agent employer in Wales. After being discovered she offered to repay the money in exchange for the matter to be kept out of the courts. However once the magnitude of the theft was discovered she was arrested but again persuaded the Hemmings who owned the estate agency to accept a repayment scheme to recover £100,000. She borrowed the cash to cover the money from a friend whose business went bust and the debt was passed onto a third party who sort the sale of the Walker’s home – resulting eventually in them losing their house in Wales. Except Chloe Hadjimatheou found the Walkers owned a home in France – so they weren’t homeless as described. On top of that Chloe Hadjimatheou found the Walkers owed a string of creditors in Wales and France all suggesting there was more to their back story than meets the eye.
It’s a cracking good read from Chloe Hadjimatheou in The Observer – a newspaper recently the subject of much gossip due to its sale last year to Tortoise Media in the UK sparking a strike by journalists at the paper. How her expose will affect Winn’s career is unknown since no doubt lawyers are now involved separating truth from fiction and what is elaboration in The Salt Path – and what could be contested as libel. Although with the film out and Winn’s books all selling well as a result – it could be argued that all publicity is good publicity – and perhaps Winn can write about being exposed for another book in the future. That’s publishing for you.
A film of The Salt Path with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_Path_(film)
A link to The Observer’s article: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-real-salt-path-how-the-couple-behind-a-bestseller-left-a-trail-of-debt-and-deceit
The BBC ran this follow up story https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2z0707mlgo
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