Her steely account of homelessness and hope in the face of adversity captivated more than two million readers worldwide and was adapted into a film released this year starring A-listers Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
But it has now been claimed that Raynor Winn’s account of losing her home before embarking on a mammoth trek of the South West Coast Path in her best-selling 2018 memoir, The Salt Path, may not be as ‘unflinchingly honest’ as initially billed – after allegations published today said she omitted key elements of her story.
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.
However following interviews with eight people with knowledge of the situation, it is now claimed that the Winns actually lost their 17th century farmhouse in rural North Wales when Winn stole around £64,000 from the late Martin Hemmings, her former boss at his family-run estate agency, where she worked as a bookkeeper in the early 2000s.
Martin has since died but his wife Ros told The Observer: ‘Her claims that it was all just a business deal that went wrong really upset me.
‘When really she had embezzled the money from my husband. It made me feel sick.’
After initially suspecting she had stolen around £9,000, investigations revealed she had allegedly stolen much more and the police were reportedly called in and Winn was arrested.
The Winns are then said to have visited a distant relative of ‘Moth’ in London who agreed he would lend them the money to repay the stolen funds – as long as the Hemmings agreed not to pursue a criminal case.
‘I just hoped I would never hear from her again,’ Mrs Hemmings said. ‘Until somebody waved that book at me [The Salt Path] and said: “Guess who?”‘
The loaned money is then said to have accrued substantial interest until it eventually exceeded £150,000, it is said.
When the relative’s business then failed, there was a court case and the Winns’ home was repossessed to repay the relative’s business associates.
A further allegation likely to harm the couple’s account of ‘homelessness’ are based on documents which show that, at the time they lost their property in Wales, Sally and Tim Walker owned a house in the south-west of France, which they had purchased in 2007.
Mrs Hemmings told The Observer she was glad her husband didn’t live long enough to see the publication of the book and release of the film.
‘It would have made him so angry,’ she said.
The Winns did not respond to a further request for comment.
