On the path | The Walkers Ep2

Summary

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The Walkers: The Real Salt Path | Episode 2: On the Path

Podcast: The Walkers: The Real Salt Path | Tortoise Investigates
Host/Reporter: Chloe Hadjimatheou (The Observer)
Air Date: January 13, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode delves deeper into the truth behind Raynor Winn’s acclaimed memoir The Salt Path, which tells the story of Raynor and her husband “Moth” healing through walking the Southwest Coastal Path after facing homelessness and Moth’s terminal diagnosis. Following speculation and inconsistencies, reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou investigates how much of their incredible journey and transformation is authentic, exposing discrepancies, embellishments, and possible fabrications in the memoir.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Legendary Walk and Its Challenges

• Southwest Coastal Path Complexity & Hardship (02:41–03:22):
  The path is over 630 miles with more than 35,000 meters of ascent and descent—equated to climbing Mount Everest four times.
  • Warren Evans (aka "Grant"): “If it's lashing with rain, blowing a gale, it's quite stressful and takes you longer than you think it's going to take.”
• Raynor and Moth completed the path in two large segments over two summers, surviving on minimal food, which heightened the miraculous aspect of Moth’s health improvements.

Miracle Recovery & The Central Narrative

• Redemptive Transformation (04:52–06:43):
  The memoir’s heart is Moth’s apparent recovery from a degenerative disease while trekking, as described by Raynor.
  • Raynor Winn: "It's like a sort of strengthening in your body that is hard to describe, but I noticed it happen in Moth over those weeks." (06:20)
• Skepticism Sparked:
  The host notes:
  “But you can’t walk yourself to wellness if you haven’t done the walk. Given the fact that Rainer’s already been caught out lying about the reasons why they had to take the walk in the first place...is it possible she might have lied about the very premise of the book, the walk itself?” (07:14)

Unraveling the Memoir: Research & Online Sleuthing

• Internet Communities Dig Deep (08:20–10:05): Mumsnet and Reddit thrive on theories and timeline inconsistencies for “The Salt Path,” with thousands of posts scrutinizing details.
• Jonathan Dutton, Online Sleuth (10:40–13:46):
  • Former detective turned obsessed fact-checker, assembling Instagram posts and open-source research to corroborate or challenge the memoir’s timeline.
  • Jonathan Dutton: “That sounds rather like there are some skeletons in the cupboard, like me.” (12:42)
  • He traced photos, geolocated Instagram posts, and compared clothing, rucksack styles, and seasons to determine actual dates.

Fact-Checking Encounters in the Book

The “Grant” Encounter: Warren Evans’ Story (17:15–22:53)

• Warren Evans Identification:
  Warren recognized himself as "Grant," a character who hosts Raynor and Moth, offers kindness, but is, in the memoir, caricatured and described unflatteringly.
  • Warren Evans: “My name was Grant, so it’s changed. Not Warren anymore. Warren Evans. Nope, Grant. ... I sound like a right idiot.” (19:22)
  • Raynor embellishes the story: claims Moth was mistaken for poet Simon Armitage, the women with Warren gave Moth a massage, and Warren as a self-made businessman who’d really been gifted everything.
  • Warren disputes all such claims—no massages, no confusion with celebrities—and finds these depictions diminishing and unfair.
  • Warren Evans: “You’d think that she might at least, having gone through this terrible situation...have some of the humility to now be more reflective and remember the kindness. I don’t mind. I don’t need her praise or thanks, but her reflection on it. She still has a very them and us attitude, it seems...” (21:34)
• On Memoir vs. Truth (23:05):
  • Chloe Hadjimatheou: “Memoir never promises to be the world as it really is. What we’re buying into is the world as seen through the author’s very particular lens. ... But lots of the story about Grant is simply made up.”

The Mullion Cove Café Scene: Total Invention (24:14–26:54)

• Waitress “Bonnie” Exposes Fabrication:
  Bonnie, a longtime waitress, debunks the entire scene: no paninis on the menu, never a male owner, never a staffer walking out, no letterbox, café is carpeted (not to be swept), and the family was distressed by the fictionalized account.
  • Bonnie: “It took me seconds to work out that no one would have spoken to anybody like that in the Mullen Cove Cafe... There wasn’t a male owner. There’s certainly no male that would have come in and spoken to staff like that. They’re a wonderful, wonderful family.” (26:09)

The Australian Couple: Timeline Problems (30:40–35:07)

• Joe and David Parsons’ Real Encounter:
  • The Australian couple, referenced as minor characters in the memoir’s 2013 timeline, actually met “Sally and Tim” (Raynor and Moth’s pseudonyms) in 2015.
  • Blog posts and correspondence confirm the meeting happened well after the timeline given in the book.
• Raynor’s Explanation to Parsons:
  • She admits to doing the walk “again” in 2015 but said such details would have “complicated” the book.

The Vanishing Second Half: Disproportionate Detail (36:45–37:00)

• Jonathan’s Analysis:
  • The first part of the walk is described in rich detail, while much of the second half is skimmed over—suggesting the walk may not have gone as described.

Timeline and Contradictions

• Social Media Clues (35:07):
  • Raynor’s son’s Facebook posts show the family in Bristol and surfing with Moth right at junctures described in the book as being occupied by walking or facing devastating diagnoses.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It sounds like me right from the get go. They've had a hard walk... I always help people.”
  —Warren Evans (aka Grant), describing his real encounter vs. memoir account (17:59)

• “My PA was not a masseuse at any point in her life... The child minder would cut her hands off before touching another man's feet.”
  —Warren Evans, rejecting the book’s version of events (20:06)

• “Memoir never promises to be the world as it really is. What we're buying into is the world as seen through the author's lens... But lots of the story about Grant is simply made up.”
  —Chloe Hadjimatheou (23:05)

• “It took me seconds to work out that no one would have spoken to anybody like that in the Mullion Cove Cafe... They're a wonderful, wonderful family.”
  —Bonnie, Mullion Cove waitress, debunking the café scene (26:09)

• “All these things feel very bitty little anecdotes. But cumulatively, they seem to add up to something bigger. The story of the walk is full of holes.”
  —Chloe Hadjimatheou (37:00)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Setting the Context: 02:41–04:52
• The “Miracle” Recovery & Memoir’s Heart: 04:52–07:03
• Online Investigation & Timeline Research: 08:20–13:59
• Warren Evans/“Grant” Interview: 17:15–22:53
• Memoir vs. Memory (Discussion of Reliability): 23:05–24:10
• Mullion Cove Café Debunking (Bonnie): 24:10–26:54
• Australian Couple & Blog Timeline: 30:40–35:07
• Social Media Contradictions: 35:07–36:45
• Summary of Discrepancies: 36:45–37:49
• Memoir’s Offer of Hope vs. Accountability: 37:49–End

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Episode Tone & Language

• The reporting style is methodical, skeptical, but fair—with the storyteller’s voice anchored in curiosity rather than gotcha journalism.
• Interviewees’ voices are distinct: Warren Evans is warm but direct; Bonnie is practical and matter-of-fact; Jonathan Dutton is earnest and slightly obsessive.
• Raynor Winn’s own readings and statements are poetic but intentionally ambiguous regarding precise truth.

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Conclusion

Episode 2 powerfully exposes the blurred lines between memoir and fiction, showing how Raynor Winn’s account is peppered with embellishments, composite characters, shifted timelines, and at times outright invention. Chloe and her sources systematically dissect different episodes of The Salt Path, revealing a narrative shaped more by literary needs and emotional truth than strict factuality. The episode raises important questions about trust, the responsibility of authors, and the nature of memoir itself—setting up further exploration into what ultimately is “real” in Raynor and Moth’s story.

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End of Summary

Transcript

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[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

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[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

If you're going from St. Ives to Land's End and Penzance. There's a lot of narrow paths, scratchy ghost bushes, lots of ascents and descents, and they can be quite hard work.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

When rain and wind set off to walk the south west coastal path, she chose to bring one book with her. Paddy Dillon's little Brown guidebook. It's got a waterproof cover and an Ordnance Survey map, and it's the perfect travel companion for a couple wanting to navigate a mammoth walk along the cliffs of England.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

If it's lashing with rain, blowing a gale, it's quite stressful and takes you longer than you think it's going to take.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

The south west coastal path has ascents and descents totaling more than 35,000 meters. Paddy, one of Britain's most prolific outdoor writers, knows it better than most. Apparently, it's the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest four times.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

Well, when I was younger and fitter, it took me 28 days and we are now on day 49 for me.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

When I got in touch with Paddy, he just happened to be editing and updating the same book that Raina, Win and Moth followed when they left their life behind and hit the hills. Like Rainer Wynn, I wanted to start with an easy bit. So I caught up with him on the very last day of the walk from Swanage to South Haven point in Dorset.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

This one is really quite easy, especially the very last part to the end.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

There's definitely something about the path that attracts people who want to conquer the odds. Paddy tells me that when he was in his late teens, he did a whole section of the walk, surviving on one loaf of bread and a jar of strawberry jam. Rainer, Win and Moth manage to walk the entire coastal path on barely anything more than super noodles, crackers and the occasional bag of chips.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

You can go for some days on a restricted calorie intake, if you like. And then it gets dangerous. You're actually destroying proteins to survive, and that's when you are literally doing yourself major damage.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

The thing that makes this even more astounding is that not only did Rainer and moth walk the 630 mile path in two long chunks across successive summers, quite an incredible feat given that most people will spend years walking little bits of it at a time, but they did it while Moth was extremely sick. He has corticobasal degeneration, a terminal neurological disease. And this is really the magic of the saltpoth, the redemptive arc of the book, because the walk fixes him. At the start of the book, Moth's struggling to put his coat on and he Needs help lifting his rucksack onto his back. But then, just over halfway through the book, Rainer tells us something happens.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

After we'd walked for quite a few weeks, maybe a couple of hundred miles, she started to notice his footprints in the dust were just a little more even. And then it all sort of culminated in one night on a beach.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

They've pitched their tent too close to the tideline, and in the middle of the night, they wake up to find the seas come in. In all the chaos, Moth grabs the tent and carries it up the beach over his head. It's a deeply moving moment in the film of the Salt Path when they both realize the walk has had a profound effect on his health. Leave the tent. I'm not leaving it. It's where look at you.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

I think there's a huge, powerful shift that happens in your body, actually, when you live in that way for a period of time. How can I describe it? It's like a sort of like strengthening in your body that is hard to describe, but I noticed it happen in Moth over those weeks.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

The Salt Path isn't just a story of a walk against the odds. It's the story of a walk overcoming the odds. Walking that path allowed Moth to reverse a degenerative condition. Rainer and Moth tell us that it literally helped him cheat death.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

Moth, you've got this terminal illness. Is it?

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[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

Yes, it is. But I'm still going strong thanks to walking the coast path.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

But you can't walk yourself to wellness if you haven't done the walk. Given the fact that Rainer's already been caught out lying about the reasons why they had to take the walk in the first place, the way they lost their home, is it possible she might have lied about the very premise of the whole book, the walk itself? And if she did lie, then what does that mean for Moth's health condition? There might be a way to find out. Because along that walk, Rainer and Moth made dozens of connections with people they met along the way. Rainer tells us in a disclaimer at the front of the book that the names of real people have been changed to protect their privacy. But I wondered whether there might be a way for me to trace them. Fellow homeless people, hikers, locals, all sorts. And if I found them weird, would they be able to vouch for Rainer and Moth's version of events? Would they be able to tell me whether or not they ever did the whole walk? As I set out to trace this couple steps from the book to hunt for the characters written into its pages, I found myself pulled along a new timeline, one that writes a very different story to Raina Wins. I'm chloe hegemotho and from tortoise investigates and the observer. This is the walkers episode 2 on the path. It's hard to explain how obsessed people have become with trying to find out whether aspects of the Salt path are true or not since my revelations about the story last summer. Reddit and other online platforms are full of this stuff, but the biggest community is on mumsnet. There's a huge forum there I worked out. There's almost a thousand posts per thread and there are dozens of threads I posted a while back. An inconsistency with the book chronology and real chronology, particularly around the fact that it can be deduced and I'm still a bit confused by what happened between the 15th of September 2013 selfie at Land's End and the start of Tim Walker's HND course in September 2015. And it seems low protein diets can.

[Bonnie (Mullion Cove Cafe Waitress)]

Also decrease pro inflammatory cytokine.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Nearly 20,000 separate posts written by members of the public in their attempts to work out the truth behind the saltpath. Over the last few months I found myself sifting through hundreds of messages while trying to pursue my own leads, trying to piece together the puzzle of how much of the Salt path is true. Some of the people posting on mumsnet were also sending me emails. One of them was a man called Jonathan Dutton. He was contacting me almost every day, sending me messages like Bizarre story involving.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

Turkeys being shot at Christmas on pheasant shoots on the Clavellia State. I contacted somebody on the Clavellia State to ask about the likelihood of this having occurred. They thought it was highly unlikely.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

And also things like timeline which suggests.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

That some of the walk might have been completed well after October 2014 on page 254.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

If I'm honest, I was pretty wary of him at first. Why was he sending me all this stuff and what did he want from me?

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

That's a good question. And it's a question my wife often asks me. She's been tearing her hair out over the last few months. At the amount of time I've dedicated to trying to analyze the truth in the Salt Path.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Jonathan is so dedicated to his mission of unpicking the book that he flew from France, where he lives, to London to meet me in person at the observer offices. So I was actually saying that I imagined your house to be like one of these serial killer sort of layers where you've got all these pictures up on the wall with the red string attached to them all.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

Unfortunately, I share the office with my.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Wife, so she might not have found that out.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

She has prohibited that entirely.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

It turns out that Jonathan is a hiker and also a real life sleuth. The 21st century Hercule Poirot.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

I really enjoy solving puzzles. My father was a great crossword puzzle expert. He used to get to the national finals every day. He used to complete the Times crossword in five minutes. So I've kind of followed in that family tradition. Without wanting to sound pompous.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Jonathan's retired now, but he used to be a kind of detective for a living, first investigating companies in Asia to check whether they had overvalued themselves and then tracing people who'd been left money in a will, but who had lost touch with their families. So when he read my article in the observer, it reawakened the Sherlock Holmes in him.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

I thought to myself, hmm, that sounds rather like there are some skeletons in the cupboard, like me.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Jonathan realized that the Salt path served as a kind of witness statement, a catalogue of the events Raina Wynne claims really happened to her and Moth. And like me, he wondered whether the lies they've told about their origin story might extend to the very backbone of her book, the walk itself. According to the Saltpath, Rayner and Moth set off along the coast in the summer of 2013. They take a break for a few months over winter, staying with a friend called Polly. And then they finish the walk around September of the following year.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

This is a map of the southwest coast path and attached to it are photographs from Ray Norwin's Instagram feed, which we have located at various points of the southwest coast path, based on the account in the book.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

And so the photographs, you geolocated them or were they labeled on Rainer Wynne's.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

So they were labeled on her Instagram feed. And also I was able to do some research and ascertain where they were.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Jonathan's been trying to piece together as much evidence as he can gather to verify whether the walk happened as Rainer says. Using photos Rainer has posted online. He's been focusing on the kind of open source intelligence that analysts use to track real time attacks in Gaza and Ukraine.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

The apples are shown on the tree. That suggests that this was taken as claimed in the book sometime. So the reason why I think that they walked at least some of the path in 2016 is, is that if you look at the clothing that Moth and we have attempted to put a date on each of these photographs, one of the reasons why I think this photo dates much later from possibly September 2016. Is that the rucksack? Raynor's rucksack. The bottom of it is yellow.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

But most of what Jonathan was finding was speculative. I needed to speak to the real people Raina Wynn says she and Moth met along the way. Some had begun reaching out to me directly, others I'd have to track down. I was finding lots of small leads that showed discrepancies in the story, like the actors from an open air theatre Rainer says they attended at the Minack. I spoke to some of the cast who said details in her description couldn't be true. She described an actor missing his lines because he was on his mobile phone. There's no reception near the stage. They said Rainer and Moth get a lift in a van full of actors still in costume. No way. I was told they always leave their costumes at the theatre. And they absolutely wouldn't have given Moth and Rainer a lift in a production van. Totally illegal. Just wouldn't happen, they said. Then there's the pub in Westwood Ho where Rainer and Moth join in with a pub quiz. Turns out the only pub in Westwood Ho fitting that description has never hosted a pub quiz. I spoke to a campsite worker with blonde dreadlocks who caught the couple staying overnight without paying. Rainer says he accused them of space theft and she called him a shell of laid back hippie cool, but underneath a frustrated box ticker. When I find this guy, he tells me he's called Tadge. Tadge, it turns out, lives in a teepee off grid and he makes his living these days by teaching people to forage for food in the woods. Space theft isn't in his vocabulary and he definitely doesn't come across as a box ticker to me. There are so many of these instances where there's a grain of truth with a mound of fiction surrounding it. Then one day, an email appears in my inbox. Hi, Chloe, it says. I'm writing on behalf of Warren Evans, the founder of Warren Evans Beds and Mattresses, based in London. It's regarding the duck poor scene in the Salt Path. Hello. Oh my God. So nice to find you here. I have a Warren Evans bed at home. Never in a million years could I have imagined that this bed maker was a character in the Salt Path. Say hi, Grant. Or hi, Warren.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

Yeah, Grant, I think, you know, I forgot my sandals.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Warren thinks he is the character Grant in Rainer Wynne's account of her coastal walk back in 2013 when he was at the peak of his Business success, he rented a house, a picturesque shabby chic style cottage off the south west coastal path in Cornwall. They spent the summer there, his wife and personal assistant, but also the nanny who was helping look after his autistic. So. Taking a walk along Duckpore beach one day, he comes across a couple of bedraggled looking walkers. And when Warren reads the Saltpath book years later, it brings that summer all back to him.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

It sounds like me right from the get go. They've had a hard walk on it. It's a steep walk, everyone walks up and down it. They go, well, hey, I bet you'd fancy an ice cream, you know, bet.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

You'D like an ice cream. The gravelly voice drifted over us like a wave of tormenting flies.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

This is Raina Wynne reading her own words from the audio version of the Salt Path.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

I'm renting a farmhouse about 20 minutes away. Come camp in the orchard. We sat in the back of Grant's sleek 4x4 as he drove inland through a shade of high hedges.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

I always help people when I see him. Well, it's not even just helping them, it's just to invite someone back for food when they are hungry or have a shower if you've got a shower. And I don't have that fear that humans are gonna somehow I don't have an issue of vagrants, just for starters.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

You know, Warren's originally from the us, raised in a Quaker family and charity comes very naturally to him. So when he came across a couple of exhausted looking walkers on a beach, it wouldn't have felt strange for him to invite them back to his place.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

They had lasagna and she had a shower. And he probably did too. I would have thought then they would have sat around by the table. They stayed in the orchard and then had bacon sandwiches in the morning and off they went.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

But the book had embellished this story quite a bit.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

My name was Grant, so it's changed. Not Warren anymore. Warren Evans. Nope, Grant. I turned up with these white socks with sandals and I got sunburnt bald head. And it made me laugh. I said I sound like a right idiot.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

What he thought was less funny was Rainer's description of the three women who were with him. His wife, his PA and the nanny. So the description in the book, at least I have to say it's sort of almost pornographic. Three extremely sexy women who sort of surround moth and flutter around him and take him off into another room and begin massaging.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

Blonde hair swished around Moff as she slid her hands over his shoulders and started to massage his back.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

He never had a massage. My PA was not a masseuse at any point in her life. And certainly our autistic son's child minder was not going to go and massage somebody else's feet. No way. She cut her hands off before touching another man's feet.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

In the book, Rainer says the reason they get given this special treatment, offers of food, showers and massages, is because they've mistaken Moth for the poet Simon Armitage. They want to take photos and be associated with a celebrity. Did you know who Simon Armitage was?

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

No, but no, I don't know who he is. We do love reading, but not poetry at all. It's never been my thing. So no, I was insulted by that.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Insulted because it diminished Warren's generosity and it made him out to be self seeking. But worse than that, Rainer says Grant claims to be a self made businessman when really he was handed everything on a silver platter. He's lied to himself about his origin story. She tells us.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

I've lost my house. I've been homeless. I've lived in squats when I was young. I've lived in these railway arches for eight years with my son when I was a single dad then six years. And I know what it's like to have nothing. I started with £600 in a basement in Clark and, well, when I was 17.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Warren doesn't spend a lot of time dwelling on all this. He doesn't feel the need to tell everyone he meets. He's only telling me to set the record straight.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

You'd think that she might at least, having gone through this terrible situation she went through, have some of the humility to now be more reflective and remember the kindness. I don't mind. I don't need her praise or thanks, but her reflection on it. She still has a very them and us attitude, it seems, and a very kind of righteousness.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Warren points out an aspect of the book I'd never noticed before. Rainer presents the love that she and Moth share as something that elevates them. And she uses it to look down on others who have more material wealth than them as being somehow spiritually poorer.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

She really loves her husband and she could rather die than be without him. But other people love their husbands and wives too, and it doesn't have to be so excluding. She doesn't have to dislike the wealthy. She doesn't have to dislike my wife and the childminder and that just because they are pretty women she might be More forgiving and kinder to other people.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Rainer's unflattering in her descriptions of so many of the people she meets along the way, even the homeless people she and Moth should have felt an affinity with. At one point, she speculates that one beggar must be a public schoolboy, a Newtonian.

[Warren Evans (aka Grant)]

So I say I think they're very unlucky. They're very, very, very unlucky to have such an unkind way of looking at others.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Memoir never promises to be the world as it really is. What we're buying into is the world as seen through the author's very particular lens on events and people. In that respect, Rainer has the right to paint the picture of people as she sees them, whether it's kind or generous, it's her view. But lots of the story about Grant is simply made up. The massages being mistaken for Simon Armitage. None of that is real. And it does feel like she crosses the line from memoir into fiction here in terms of the walk, though, Warren says he did meet Rainer and Moth in the summer of 2013. So it seems they were on the coastal path when they claimed to have been. Did they do the whole walk as described? Well, that's where things get tricky, because not long after my investigation was published, I got a call. Do you mind just if you start again? Because I.

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[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

It's on the Lizard and it's called.

[Bonnie (Mullion Cove Cafe Waitress)]

It's Mullein Cove. And it's the Mullen Cove. Everyone knows it as Mullen Cove Cafe.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Okay.

[Bonnie (Mullion Cove Cafe Waitress)]

It's been in the same family for almost 80 years.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Yeah.

[Bonnie (Mullion Cove Cafe Waitress)]

Joanna, who runs it at the moment, her grandmother opened it. They're an amazing family. So Rainer went there? Well, she's not Rainer, is she?

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

One rainy day, about halfway through the Salt Path narrative, Rainer and Moth stumble into this busy establishment on Mullion Cove Beach.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

A man in his 20s, weighted tables, cleared tables, politely dealt with grumpy customers, cooked cakes, swept the floor, helped old ladies to their seats.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

The weather's miserable and a downpour has drenched the them. Serena says they shelter in the cafe and sit there, people watching.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

The owner came in. What the do you think you're doing? There's two tables out there, uncleared.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

What do I pay you for?

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

You're fucking lazy.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

The kind waiter can see that Rainer and Moth are starving, so he hands them a panini each, telling them not to worry about paying. And then he tells them he's decided he's quite. He finishes cleaning, closes the place up, and posts the key through the letterbox before walking away triumphantly. Or so Rainer Wynne tells us.

[Bonnie (Mullion Cove Cafe Waitress)]

Except there's no letterbox to put the key back through. There's no floors to be swept because it's carpeted and always has been. A member of staff would never have been left on their own to lock up by themselves. In the family have never had a member of staff walk out. Paninis were never on the menu, so.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Almost none of the details Rainer describes are true. Bonnie's worked as a waitress at the cafe for years. She says she almost didn't take the job because friends of hers who'd read the Salt Path warned her it must be a terrible place.

[Bonnie (Mullion Cove Cafe Waitress)]

It took me seconds to work out that no one would have spoken to anybody like that in the Mullen Cove Cafe. There wasn't a male owner. There's certainly no male that would have come in and spoken to staff like that. They're a wonderful, wonderful family.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

At some point after she started working there, Bonnie realized that customers were probably staying away because of Rainer's description. So she tried to contact the author to set the record straight, tried to.

[Bonnie (Mullion Cove Cafe Waitress)]

Make contact via Rainer's agents through their website to explain the situation. All I wanted from that was an apology for the family. I did not get a reply from her agents or from Rainer.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

The Mullion Cove cafe scene. None of it's true. Did Rainer and Moth ever even stop?

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[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

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[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

This was not the Cornwall we knew. Lush, warm, sheltering, welcoming. We couldn't afford to stop at the Fat Apples Cafe, but the name got the better of us and Ona says, you're walking. Where you heading? Two Australians sat down at our table, followed by two mounds of all day breakfast, one each. I tried not to breathe too deeply, the smell was so good.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Rainer doesn't tell us much about this Australian couple, except that they can afford big breakfasts that Raina and Moth eye jealously and that they aren't the same hardened hikers. The Australian lady tells them we've camped.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

And done hotels to here. Getting colder though. So B and B all the way for us now. Falmouth next. Drop the tent in the charity shop, then I'm going to the hairdressers. Got to get my roots done.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

At this point in the salt path, it's the end of September 2013, except it's not Raina. Winn's not been honest about when this all took place and and we know that because the Australian couple are real. They're called Joe and David Parsons and they really did walk the south west coastal path. And they remember meeting a lovely couple, Sally and Tim, as they called themselves. The Parsons posted about them on a blog they kept about their walk and the post describing that meeting is dated 2015, two years after the Saltpath says they met. Aug. 8, work Sunday to drizzly rain. Managed to pack and walk to the Fat Apples Cafe in Porthallo for a magnificent breakfast. Here we met Sally and Tim who were walking the path in the opposite direction. What a lovely couple who had a very sad story to tell, but we think we inspired each other. The sad story the Parsons heard was that Moth was unwell and they had shared their own story story too, because David Parsons had suffered an injury which kept him off work and eventually cost the couple their dream home in Australia. Since then they've lived in a van. Then back in 2015, a close friend of theirs found out he was dying of cancer and they'd taken the radical decision to fly to the UK and walk the coastal path in his honour. They did the whole thing in one go, hardly ever staying in hotels, and they certainly hadn't given their tent away. Then one day in 2018, the Parsons picked up a magazine to see Sally and Tim looking back at them. So they reached out with an email. When we saw the picture of you both in the article, we kept looking at each other saying, that's Sally and Tim, but it can't be as you would have told us. You were homeless and you said you were walking the other way and why did you give yourself fake names or did you reinvent yourselves while on the path? Would love to know, Rainer replied. She told them that she and Moth had decided to redo the walk in 2015 and that they felt the book would have been complicated by such details. The two couples had had so much in common, the loss of a home and how illness had driven them to the coastal path. But The Salt Path somehow misses all of that out. All that's left is this sense of a shallow lady pretending at hiking who actually can't wait to get back to civilization. But if Rainer and Moth met Warren in 2013, then they were at very least doing the first stretch of the walk that summer. Then if they met the Parsons two years later in the summer of 2015, they couldn't have done the whole walk in 18 months as they claimed. The gap between the two is just too big. Meanwhile, Jonathan Dutton had been digging and looking for other bits of evidence. He'd been poring through Rainer's connections on social media, and he noticed something I had too that Rainer's son was a prolific Facebooker. His timeline provides some useful, dated posts, like one from September 2013, when he talks about giving his parents a lift to Bristol, right smack bang during the time when they were apparently walking on the coastal path. How could they be in two places at once?

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

The sun suddenly deleted a number of incriminating Facebook posts in the days that followed the investigation, including two comments which led one to believe that the narrative in the Salt Path was perhaps not entirely accurate.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

And there's Another post from July 2013 that's right at the time when his parents were being told they were having their house repossessed. And crucially, right when his dad, Moth, was apparently being told by his doctor that he was dying. 23rd of July. Just been teaching my dad how to surf. Today's been a good day, going surfing with his dad, Moth, right after we're told he received his terminal diagnosis. And there's something else too. So much of the detail from the first half of the walk in 2013, all those people I spoke to, the Parsons, the Mullion Cove Cafe, Warren, so many more, they're all from the first part of the walk. There's far less from the second half of the walk, which they claim they did the following Summer in 2014. Jonathan had been sifting through how many words and how detailed Rayner's descriptions were of one half of the walk compared to the other half. And he found that huge of the second half of the walk were just skimmed over. Almost two thirds of the book focuses on just the first third of the walk.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

What is strange is that the stretch from Minehead to Land's End is described pretty accurately. On the other hand, the stretch from Land's End to Poole isn't described very accurately at all. So it's roughly 350 miles from pool back to Land's End.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

All these things feel very bitty little anecdotes. But cumulatively, taken all together, they seem to add up to something bigger. The story of the walk is full of holes. Perhaps they walked parts of it. Maybe they never did the whole thing at all. The walk, which is the very beating heart of the Salt Path, is not the unflinchingly honest account its publishers promised. And if they didn't walk the whole thing in the way they claimed, then how is it possible that the walk cured Moth?

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

I'm still going strong. Thanks for to walking the coast path. I was able to tie my boots after, you know, a few weeks.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

Your footsteps in the sand were just in a straight line.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

This, ultimately, is the offer of the Salt Path. Hope and redemption against all odds, but also the belief that if you fight hard enough and if you cling to true love and to nature, that it is possible to reverse the irreversible. The problem with writing a successful book is that suddenly everyone knows who you are. And when you keep writing successful books that make increasingly startling claims about miraculous recoveries from death, well, then you can be sure that people are going to be watching you, neighbors wondering, why is the moth in Rainer Wynn's books so different from the moth they're seeing in the flesh? Coming up in Episode three.

[Raina Wynne (author of The Salt Path)]

He was saying how he felt about them and.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

He was getting a little bit suspicious about them. It was like meeting a rock star. He had so much presence. He's a handsome man. He's got piercing eyes, chalk of white hair, and he's warm and friendly and talkative and a great raconteur.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

I sat opposite Moth and he broke the news. Bill. The doctors have told me not to plan beyond Christmas.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

The more I read, the more confused I was. I just couldn't understand it. Lots of things that didn't add up. Raina Win responded to the Observer's investigation with the following statement. 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. On her website, Raina goes on to say the Salt Path is about what happened to Moth and me after we lost our home and and found ourselves homeless on the headlands of the Southwest. It's not about every event or moment in our lives, but rather about a capsule of time when our lives moved from a place of complete despair to a place of hope. The journey held within those pages is one of salt and weather, of pain and possibility, and I can't allow any more doubt to be cast on the validity of those memories or the joy they have given so many. Thanks for listening to the the Real Salt Path. It was reported by me, Chloe Hajimathe, with additional reporting by James Urquhart. The series producer was Matt Russell. Music supervision and sound design was by Carla Patella. Series artwork by Lola Williams. The editor was Jasper Corbett.

[Momentous Brand Representative]

January is when we recommit to the habits that support our health and well being and naturally we start looking at what can support those goals, including supplements. The supplement industry is a low trust category and it's lightly regulated. Products are easy to make and companies don't even have to list everything on their label. That's exactly why I choose Momentus. They've become the high trust brand in a low trust category. They weren't satisfied with the industry standard, so they built the Momentus standard. Their commitment to doing things the right way, not the easy way. What truly sets Momentus apart is their testing and transparency. Every product is independently certified by NSF for sport, meaning it's tested for contaminants, heavy metals, banned substances, and verified for label accuracy. So you always know exactly what you're putting in your body. And if a product doesn't meet their standard, it never hits the shelves. In a space where trust is rare, Momentous is redefining what trust looks like. And I've genuinely felt the difference using their protein and creatine every day. Right now, Momentous is offering our listeners up to 35% off your first order with promo code purchase podcast head to livemomentous.com and use promo code podcast for up to 35% off your first Order. That's livemomentous.com promo code podcast better help.

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[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Foreign. Thank you for listening to the Walkers. We hope you're enjoying the podcast so far. You can listen to all seven episodes today by subscribing to the Observer. By subscribing, not only do you get all our podcasts before anyone else, you also get access to our premium Food and Puzzles newsletter, exclusive offers from our partner mubi, free tickets to our events, and much, much more. Subscribe [e-mail] subscribe or via the link in the show notes. The Observer.

[Boost Mobile Representative]

Knock knock.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Oh, who's there?

[Boost Mobile Representative]

A Boost Mobile expert here to deliver and set up your all new iPhone 17 Pro designed to be the most powerful iPhone ever. You call that a knock knock joke? This isn't a joke. Boost Mobile really sends experts to deliver and set up your phone at home or work.

[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

Okay, it's just that when people say.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Knock knock, there's usually a joke to go with it.

[Boost Mobile Representative]

Like I said, this isn't a joke.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

So the knock knock was just you knocking?

[Boost Mobile Representative]

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[Jonathan Dutton (Investigator / Sleuth)]

Not with that attitude.

[Boost Mobile Representative]

Introducing store to door switch and get a new device with expert setup and delivery. Delivery available for select devices [e-mail] Big news. Boost Mobile is now sending experts nationwide to deliver and set up customers new phones at home or work. Wait, we're going on tour? Not a tour. We're delivering and setting up customers phones so it's easier to upgrade.

[Narrator / Investigative Reporter (Chloe Hajimathe)]

Let's get in the tour bus and hit the road.

[Boost Mobile Representative]

No, not a tour bus. It's a regular car we use to deliver and set up customers phones at home or work. Are you a groupie on this tour? We deliver and set up phones. It's not a tour. Oh you're definitely a groupie. Introducing store to door switch and get a new device with expert setup and delivery wherever you're at. Delivery available for select devices [e-mail].