Before The Observer published its investigation into The Salt Path last Sunday, we sent Sally Walker, who publishes under the name Raynor Winn, a detailed list of questions and asked her to respond. She chose not to speak to us. Instead, through her lawyers, she offered a short statement, saying that The Salt Path was “the true story of the physical and spiritual journey” that her she and her husband, Moth, had undertaken.
On Wednesday the author published a 2,300-word essay outlining her detailed rebuttal of the investigation. In it, she called our article “grotesquely unfair [and] highly misleading”. This is our response, all of which was put again to Winn before publication.
An offer to talk
In her essay, Winn says The Observer was offered the opportunity, through her lawyers, to discuss the allegations against her before we published our story and that we “chose not to take it”. This is incorrect. We first contacted Winn in March, at the start of our investigation. We offered six times to meet and engage with her, and agreed to a proposal by her lawyer for an “off-the-record” conversation.
The embezzlement
Responding to our central allegation, Winn accepts she made “mistakes” while working for Martin Hemming, the owner of a business who accused her in 2008 of embezzling tens of thousands of pounds. “Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret,” she writes. “I’m truly sorry.” She accepts she was arrested but never charged. She also says the terms of a settlement agreed between her and Martin Hemming were “willingly agreed by both parties” and that the agreement was made on a “non-admissions basis”.
Moth’s health
Winn published three medical letters on her website that relate to her husband Tim Walker’s neurological condition. The letters show that Walker, referred to as Moth in The Salt Path and later books, had received treatment at various points since 2015 for corticobasal syndrome (CBS).
CBS is a name given to describe various neurological conditions most commonly caused by corticobasal degeneration (CBD). CBS can, however, be caused by other neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s. In the doctors’ letters, Moth’s condition is mainly referred to as CBS, but one doctor refers to it as CBD.
In our investigation last week, we made clear that we had seen nothing to contradict Walker’s claim to have been diagnosed with CBS/CBD. The letters confirm that he was being treated for this condition.
The letters published by Winn also state that Moth’s condition was “atypical” and that he was affected “very mildly”. In 2019, one consultant wrote that he thought that Moth might not in fact have CBS, because his condition was not degenerating as fast as might be expected.
This is consistent with what we were told by nine neurologists and other CBD researchers: that Moth’s experience with CBS, as recounted in Winn’s books, did not match what they had seen in other CBD sufferers.
The neurologists told us that people with CBD typically die within six to eight years of diagnosis. In her husband’s case, Winn claims he has been living with the condition for 18 years and he seems to have no visibly acute symptoms.
The experts also told us that the effects of CBD cannot be reversed through walking or other exercise.
In her statement, Winn says: “I have never sought to offer medical advice in my books or suggest that walking might be some sort of miracle cure for CBS.” Winn reiterated this in a second statement to The Observer.
In fact, the couple have repeatedly suggested, both in Winn’s books and in interviews, that walking helped reverse the symptoms of Moth’s CBD and held it at bay.
In her most recent book, Landlines, Winn writes: “After 200 miles of walking over endless headlands, carrying everything we needed to survive on our backs, Moth’s health began to improve in ways that should have been impossible. His gait became almost normal, his thoughts cleared, his short-term memory sharpened and movements that had been almost impossible before became easy.”
Speaking on the BBC in 2022, almost a decade after he says he was first diagnosed, Walker said: “I’m still going strong, thanks to walking the coast path.”
On several occasions, Winn and Moth have both stated that Moth’s condition seemed to be progressing more slowly than would normally be expected from someone with CBD. However, they have not previously disclosed that doctors regarded Moth’s condition as “atypical” or “unique”.
To some CBD sufferers we spoke to, this is relevant information.
John Todd from Surrey was diagnosed with CBD in 2023. He read The Salt Path and was inspired by it. “Moth’s story went against everything I had been told. I believed it because having no hope is a very difficult place to be in,” he told The Observer. He says he had believed that Moth’s diagnosis to be similar to his own. But reading the medical records that Raynor Winn published online it became clear to John that Moth’s condition is unlike the traditional CBD he suffers with, and he thinks that Winn should have made this clearer in her books.
“Discovering that someone has abused my trust is horrible.” Todd says the hope he had has now been extinguished. “I can and will deal with it, but my wife may not.”
In one of Winn’s medical letters, dated 2025, one doctor praised the couple for raising awareness of CBD. “I was very pleased to hear from [the couple] that whenever they discuss [CBD] they emphasise the benefit of activities, without indicating that the clinical outcome will be as favourable as has been the case for Mr Walker himself,” he wrote.
Their home
While not rebutting the revelations set out in The Observer investigation, that she was arrested for theft and came to an arrangement with Martin Hemming which that included paying back the missing money, Winn continues to maintain that the man she refers to as “Cooper” was responsible for cheating the couple out of their home.
In The Salt Path, Winn recounts how Cooper persuades the couple to invest in his business and then unfairly alleges they are responsible for his debts, claiming their house in the process.
In her essay last week, however, Winn states that Cooper lent the couple the money to cover the settlement with Hemming, securing the loan against her house. This account was not mentioned in The Salt Path. Winn maintains that this money was already owed to them by Cooper and that he later reneged on a promise to pay them back, instead passing the debt on to men he owed money to.
However, a letter from the couple’s solicitors dating from 2010 appears to contradict this version. Written three years before they were evicted from their home, the letter reassures Cooper’s creditors that the couple were willing to sell their home in Wales to satisfy the debt. We asked Winn why she appeared willing to sell her home to satisfy a debt that she did not believe was due. She did not respond to our question.
Winn also claimed in her statement that in a desperate attempt to save their home, the couple “briefly tried running a book-based house raffle like others had done, but quickly realised it was a mistake as it clearly wasn’t going to work. We cancelled it and refunded the few participants.”
Winn has not clarified how giving away their home in a free prize draw would have helped them manage their debts. Nor has she addressed the issue that they promised entrants that they could win a house “offered free of mortgage or any other legal or registered charge”, when more than £300,000 was owed to the bank and private lenders.
Their debts
On her website, Winn has said: “I do not owe, as claimed in The Observer, hundreds of thousands of pounds to those who evicted us from our home. … they have made no attempt to contact us, despite my keeping all communication channels open so that they could.”
One of the men who inherited the Walkers’ debt from Cooper believes the couple still owe him the original loan plus interest, together totalling more than £400,000. The man, who has asked to remain anonymous, said in response to Winn’s statement: “Changing your name and disappearing into the wilds is not keeping all communication channels open.”
The property in France
In her statement, Winn disputes our reporting of the property in France she owned while claiming in The Salt Path to be homeless. “What we own in France is an uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch, on the boundary of a family member’s property… It is not the property shown in the video accompanying the Observer article.”
The Observer accepts that the image in the photographs is not of the correct property. We showed an image of the pigeon-loft owned by another member of Walker’s family. The property owned by Walker and Winn is obscured by trees 15 metres away.
Photograph by Karen Robinson for The Observer