The French Quarter | The Walkers Ep5

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Walkers: The real Salt Path | Tortoise Investigates
Episode: The French Quarter | The Walkers Ep5
Host: Chloe Hajimathe
Date: February 3, 2026

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Overview

This episode of The Walkers: The Real Salt Path digs deeper into the controversy surrounding Raynor Winn’s celebrated memoir The Salt Path. Host Chloe Hajimathe investigates fresh claims from family members alleging significant fraud and deception by "Raynor Winn" (formerly Sally Walker) and her husband "Moth" (Tim Walker), suggesting the public narrative may differ sharply from their experiences. With new testimony from a niece (“Cecile”) and tantalizing evidence in the form of personal letters, Chloe paints a portrait of familial rifts, betrayal, and the challenges of exposing hidden truths.

Tone: Investigative, empathetic, personal, and at times incredulous.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Fallout After the Investigation (01:35–03:48)

• Immediate Response: After the original Observer investigation on The Salt Path was published, Raynor Winn publicly condemned it as “grotesquely unfair, highly misleading, and seeks to systematically pick apart my life” (02:01).
• Disputed Communications: Raynor claimed she’d offered to discuss matters privately, but Chloe directly refutes this: “She’s never accepted almost a dozen invitations from me.” (02:16)
• Missing Voices: Chloe emphasizes the narrative has been mostly about “what’s not true, what didn’t happen” due to the Walkers’ continued silence.

2. Family Blows the Whistle – Cecile’s Testimony (03:48–07:49)

• Cecile’s Introduction: Chloe is put in contact with Cecile, the Walkers’ niece, after Cecile’s brother posted publicly questioning Raynor’s credibility.
  • Cecile is emotional and relieved:

    “Thank you...for exposing to Ms. Sally.” (03:50)

  • Cecile challenges Raynor (Sally) Winn’s carefully curated public image:

    “She protects this image, but she is a completely different person.” (04:14)

• Family Backstory: Cecile recalls an idyllic family past, with Tim as the charming “fun uncle” and Sally the nurturing but quieter presence (06:19). Penny Mice, their home in Wales, was a beloved extended-family hub.

3. Unanswered Questions About Wealth (08:01–09:30)

• Cecile had doubts about the Walkers’ (Sally and Tim’s) financial means:

  “Even as a child, I remember thinking...how do they have this money?” (08:52)

• Tim’s job as a gardener and Sally’s part-time bookkeeping didn’t fit with their lifestyle (Land Rover, branded clothes for their children).

4. The French House & Sudden Ruin (09:30–13:01)

• In 2007, Tim and Sally excitedly bought a house adjacent to Cecile’s family’s French holiday home.
• Chloe visits the now-derelict house to see for herself (11:33).
• After their 2007 summer in France, financial trouble hit: Sally was arrested for stealing over £60,000 from her employer.

5. Allegations of Family Theft (13:01–16:50)

• Family Discovery: Cecile describes hearing from the UK via a phone booth in France about Sally’s arrest and alleged disappearance.
• Shock:

  “She just seemed like such a nice woman...I don’t think any of us saw it come in at all.” (13:47)

• The Walkers’ own parents were affected—having returned from France to find their bank account depleted.
  • Cecile’s grandmother confronted Sally, who apparently evaded the confrontation by pretending to be “not in her right mind” and locking herself in a cupboard (15:39).

6. Enduring Consequences & Divided Family (16:50–21:10)

• Cecile recounts how the theft upended her grandparents’ final years:

  “My granddad...spent the rest of his years in a...little place. It didn’t have a garden...that was because it did dramatically change their lifestyle.” (17:06)

• The topic remained unspoken within the broader family, leading to permanent estrangement from Cecile’s side—Tim and Sally never returned to the French village.

7. The Memoir’s Publication – and Further Outrage (22:10–23:36)

• Years later, Cecile is stunned to discover Sally’s public reinvention as Raynor Winn, celebrated memoirist.

  “She’s lying. It’s not the truth, it’s a memoir. She’s saying that she’s a victim. Well, that was very far from the truth—because she was actually the criminal.” (22:55)

• Cecile is driven to write her own (fictionalized) account to set the record straight:

  “How can this woman now stand up there and write a memoir in which she is a victim?” (22:55) “It really fed from the anger that I’d had for all these years.” (24:51)

8. A Break in the Case: Evidence Emerges (25:23–27:13)

• Chloe initially feels the story is unreportable—too much hearsay, too little proof.
• A breakthrough comes: Chloe locates “Polly,” actually another niece of Sally’s, who possesses letters written by Sally.

  “In one of these letters, she confesses to stealing money from her employer. And then she says, I also took £25,000 from Tim’s parents.” (27:03–27:10)

• Cecile is floored by this revelation:

  “Wow. I can’t believe it.” (27:10)

9. Cliffhanger for Next Episode (27:48–28:07)

• The episode ends on Cecile weighing whether to go public with what she knows, and Chloe setting up a deeper dive into the documentary evidence for the next episode.

  “Is it worth actually coming out and saying, look, this is the truth?” (27:56)

10. Raynor Winn’s Rebuttal (28:22–30:46)

• Official statement from Raynor Winn on her website, denying all theft from the family.
  • Emphasizes physical/spiritual journey asserted as "the true story of our journey."
  • Denies theft:

    “I did not steal from family, as others can confirm, nor have I confessed to doing so, and I did not write the letter suggesting I did.”

  • Reaffirms their house in France was a ruin, never habitable or lived in.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Raynor Winn:

  “Unfair, highly misleading, and seeks to systematically pick apart my life.” (02:01, via statement read by Cecile)

• Chloe Hajimathe:

  “She’s never accepted almost a dozen invitations from me.” (02:16)

• Cecile on family rifts:

  “...to the world she protects this image, but she is a completely different person.” (04:14) “...it was the anger...what she’d done to everybody...all of this emotion just flooded out of me, I think, because I was so determined that I wanted to expose her.” (24:51)

• On discovering the theft:

  “She’d gone missing...she’s been arrested, you know, she’s gone on the run.” (13:25) “My grandmother told me that Sally had transferred the money.” (15:04) “She locked herself in a cupboard, pretending to be mad. Anything to avoid answering the direct questions.” (15:39)

• Cecile’s dismay at the memoir:

  “How can this woman now stand up there and write a memoir in which she is a victim?” (22:55)

• On new evidence:

  “One of these letters, she confesses to stealing money from her employer. And then she says, I also took 25,000 from Tim’s parents.” (27:03)

• Raynor Winn’s statement:

  “I did not steal from family, as others can confirm, nor have I confessed to doing so, and I did not write the letter suggesting I did.” (approx 29:45)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:35 — Fallout from Chloe’s investigation and Raynor’s public response
• 03:48 — Cecile’s emotional first contact and challenge to Raynor's public image
• 06:19 — Positive recollections of Walker family life pre-crisis
• 08:01 — Early suspicions about the Walkers’ wealth
• 09:44–12:33 — The French property, Chloe’s site visit, and its abandonment
• 13:01–16:50 — Theft from employer and grandparents, discovery, emotional impact
• 17:50 — Consequences for Cecile’s grandparents’ final years
• 22:10 — Cecile discovers Sally is now “Raynor Winn,” bestselling author
• 25:23 — Chloe’s difficulties in verifying allegations and the discovery of crucial letters
• 27:03 — Direct evidence of Sally’s confessions
• 28:22 — Raynor Winn’s statement denying all allegations

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Memorable Moments

• Cecile's tearful gratitude to Chloe for “exposing Ms. Sally” (03:50)
• Chloe’s astonishment at the transformative power—and harm—of storytelling:

  “All of this has been caused by a book and...the solution to it all was another book.” (24:40)

• The stunning reveal of the confession letter, marking a pivotal shift in the investigation (27:03)
• The building tension: will Cecile and others decide to go public?

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Conclusion

This episode is a sobering portrait of the long shadows cast by buried family scandals. It blends first-person testimony, investigative reporting, and the pain of unresolved family trauma—with the growing possibility, thanks to new evidence, that the accepted version of “The Salt Path” is built on omissions and outright lies. As Chloe uncovers more, the question isn’t just whose story is true—but what the consequences of telling it might be.

Next episode: More on the letters, “Polly,” and the mounting fallout.

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Transcript

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[Chloe Hajimathe]

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[Cecile (Family Member)]

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[Chloe Hajimathe]

The observer. In the week after my original investigation into the salt path was published, two things caught my immediate attention. One was something I'd been half expecting. Raina Wynne published a lengthy statement on her website contesting my article. She wrote how the investigation was grotesquely.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Unfair, highly misleading, and seeks to systematically pick apart my life.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

And how she can't allow any more.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Doubt to be cast on the validity of those memories or the joy they have given so many.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

In particular, there was this line that she'd offered to discuss the allegations privately with me, to correct the record, but that I'd refused her invitation. That wasn't true. I've wanted to hear from Rainer from day one, but despite almost a dozen invitations from me, she's never accepted. I say all this because the thing that has consistently been missing in this story is who Moth and Raina Wynn are. The story I've been able to piece together is, to a large extent the story of what's not true, what didn't happen, rather than what really did. And I was starting to come to terms with the fact that if they wouldn't talk to me, I was unlikely to ever get closer to really understanding them. Except that then the second, more remarkable thing happened days after my article came out. There was a post on the professional networking site LinkedIn. It was from someone who said that Raina Wynne and Moth, or Sally and Tim Walker, were his uncle and aunt and he was calling them liars. I messaged him privately and he immediately called me back. In that call, this jumble of anger and hurt came tumbling out. When I tried to make sense of it all, he suggested I speak to his sister. She knows the whole story, he told me, so I dialled her number.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Hello?

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Hi, it's Chloe.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

I just want to say, first of all, thank you. Sorry. Quite emotional, so thank you for exposing to Ms. Sally.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

I hadn't expected her to be so emotional.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Sorry. I'll put myself together.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Don't be sorry. Don't be sorry. It's okay. I didn't realize this is so. This is so raw for you and so difficult.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

It's been a very emotional subject for a long time and to the world she protects this image, but she is a completely different person.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

She told me that for years she'd been infuriated because she could see these public figures, Rainer and Moth, receiving accolades, adoration and sympathy, when in reality, she said the real couple behind the public facade was. Were very different people.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

I. I've been waiting for this story to come out, hoping it would come out for years, because I thought, I have no proof.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

I'm Chloe Hajimathe and from Tortoise Investigates and the observer, this is the Walkers. The Real Salt Path Episode 5 the French Quarter.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

I'm all right. Well, feeling a bit nervous, actually.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Cecile's a single mum with two young kids and she lives in France. Her parents, Moth's brother and his wife, moved there when she was 19.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

It's about an hour and a half from Bordeaux, I suppose, and it's in the middle of countryside, lovely little hamlets. I mean, not the most picturesque of hamlets, I'll be honest.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Cecile's quite open about all that's happened over the years. She's not hiding from public view, but at the same time, she doesn't want members of her family who don't want to take part in this podcast to be hounded by the media. So she's chosen not to use her real name. Over the next two episodes, you're going to hear from people, including close family members who've known Tim and Sally for decades. I need to emphasise this is their side of the story. We don't have a detailed version of how Sally and Tim understood everything that happened because they've declined to engage with us. When I Started chatting to Cecile. The first thing she did is take me back to a time before the Salt Path, before the names Rainer, Wynn and Moth had made it into the public sphere, to a time when they were just her Aunt Sally and Uncle Tim.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Tim, he's got that character that, I mean, when you're a kid, at least. He was very good at creating enthusiasm, creating energy, and he loved to be the fun uncle. He was like, oh, Tim's here. We're gonna have a great day, you know. Sally tended to be a bit more quiet. She wasn't like a central player, I suppose. She made sure everyone, you know, was taken care of. And everyone always had. You know, there's always nice food and everyone's got. There's always a cup of tea, you know, and cake and things.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Tim Walker's the oldest of four, all of whom have their own kids. So there are a lot of Walkers.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Very loving. It's a very large, loving family. That's really good fun. It was three generations of a large family, so when there's lots of people around, there's lots of characters.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

The whole family would often congregate in Wales at Sally and Tim's house. Penny Mice. It was a kind of gathering place. The wider family would often camp in the field next to the house.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

I can still see a lot of it in my mind's eye now, even though I've not been for a long, long time. It was whitewashed on the outside with a large garden around it, like an old stone property, you know, the old beams, little, little doorways. It had character. Very warm, well decorated. It kind of felt like it was cut off from the world a little bit. It was like a little secluded, little secret place, which kind of added to the magic of it.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Cecile has these incredibly warm memories from that time. You can tell it meant a lot to her, belonging to this close extended family.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Yeah, it felt special. It felt special.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

A lot of what she tells me actually resonates with what others have said, too. Former neighbors and friends of Tim and Sally Walker. They've told me about how likable the couple were and how devoted they were to each other. But Cecile also remembers that even as a kid, she was aware that Aunt Sally and Uncle Tim would spoil her cousins.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

My cousin's similar age to me, you know, so you both go through that same period where you want to start buying your own clothes and wearing makeup. But then when you go to your cousin's house, suddenly she's got these nice branded clothes, and she wasn't afraid to show them off to us. You know, when we saw their cars, for example, he had a Land Rover which was really. To me it looked very expensive. As a child, it probably was. I remember asking as a child, what do they do for a living? Because how do they have this money? I remember even as a child thinking.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

That was strange because Cecile knew that Tim was a gardener and Sally worked part time as a bookkeeper. But she never got a straight answer. In 2003, a few years before Cecile and her family moved from the Midlands to France, they bought a beautiful little stone pigeon tower in a tiny village near Bergerac in the southwest of France. They'd go on holiday there and a few Years later, around 2007, an opportunity came up for Tim to buy the neighbouring building which had once adjoined their pigeon tower.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Tim leapt at the idea. I think Tim and Sally were equally on board with it. I think they both liked the idea of it. And so quite quickly they said, yeah, yeah, we'll do it. So they did. Yeah, they bought it.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

This would have been when Sally Walker was working at Martin Hemings Estate agents Ros Hemmings. And one of her co workers remembered how back then she'd come into the office one day and told them she'd bought a chateau in France. And So that year 2007, Tim and Sally spent the summer out there with their kids. This picturesque location, full of wildflowers and vineyards, nestled along a river 90 minutes drive from Bordeaux. It's very pretty. It kind of looks. It looks like your classic picturesque little rural French village. Stone houses, little wooden shuttered windows. Last summer I flew over there to see Tim and Sally's house. Oh, I see. It's behind these trees here. God, it's like overgrown and hidden behind the overgrowth. Now Village Dudro is less a village, more a row of a dozen or so houses. Even so, it took a while for me and my producer to find the building. God, you can hardly even. That must be. Is this the entrance, do you think? Maybe I'm gonna pop in here. Do you reckon you can brave it through? Yeah. Okay, let's go. Really not much of a place left. There's scarcely a roof. I'm kind of scared to go in in case something falls on me. I wonder what would this have been, do you reckon? Don't know. Like a mantelpiece?

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Well, it's got the fire, it's got.

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[Chloe Hajimathe]

Actually, we do a team. A few doors away. A lady in a housecoat surrounded by geese and dogs leans over the fence to chat to us. She tells us she remembers Sally and Tim and also Tim's brother, who had the pigeon tower next door. The brother she's seen around, she says, But Sally and Tim haven't been here for years. Back when they bought the house, it was definitely habitable. So what happened? Why would you leave a lovely little place like that to fall into rack and ruin? It was after their summer holiday here, when the Walkers got back to Wales, that things started to unravel. Martin Hemings began uncovering all the money missing from his business. And in the autumn of 2008, Sally was arrested for the theft of more than £60,000.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

We'd received a message saying, something's happened and we need to talk to you.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

The message was from a relative of Cecile's in the uk. Foreign calls were pretty expensive in those days, so they had to go down to the village to a phone box to receive the call there. Cecile, who was a teenager back then, remembers a whole load of them cramming into this phone booth to hear what the relative from the UK had to say.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

That was at the point when she'd gone missing. So it was very, you know, in the thick of it, really. And then that phone call, we were told, she's been arrested, you know, she's gone on the run. But she hadn't been found yet, so it was before she turned up in London.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

She recalls standing there with her jaw hanging open. Surely not. Not Aunt Sally.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

She just seemed like such a nice woman, you know, just a country girl who liked to walk and the most inoffensive, harmless woman. I don't think any of us saw it come in at all.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Their relative in the UK was trying to fill them in on as much.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

As he knew, and he said, she's gone. We don't know where she's gone. Could it be that she's hurt herself and Tim was concerned? Yeah, it's quite a thing to put your family through.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

But that wasn't the end of it. Cecile's relative was still on the phone from the uk. He had more to tell them. It was about Cecile's grandparents, Tim's mom and dad.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

They come and spend, you know, three months with us or so. So when they went back to the UK and they went to the bank and realized all this money had gone, yeah, that was the first they knew of it themselves.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Her grandfather and grandmother were in their 70s. They'd sold their house in Staffordshire, hoping to buy something in Wales, near Tim and Sally. Meanwhile, they were renting. But that summer, when they'd returned from a few months in France, they'd popped into their local building society. And when they saw their bank statements, they got a huge shock. Their bank account was practically empty.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

My grandmother told me that Sally had transferred the money.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

They were sure Sally Walker had stolen the money from their account.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

I think we were all as shocked as each other. I don't think any of us saw it come in. I mean, I know we were saying how, yes, they had money, which seemed to be more than they earned, but, you know, like, she just seemed like such a nice woman, you know, none of us could have expected it.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

I don't think Cecile's grandmother told her. Sally had apparently helped them make online bookings in the past.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

I do remember my nana saying that she wanted to confront her face to face. And when she got there, Sally. Sally knew from the look on my grandmother's face that she. She'd found out and basically ran away. And when she did confront her, she would literally make out that she was incapable of answering questions, that she wasn't in her right mind. She would literally pretend to be. But I remember my nana saying that she. She locked herself in a cupboard, pretending to be mad. Anything to avoid answering the direct questions.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Tim Walker's mother died back in 2018 and his father died last April, so it's not possible for me to ask them about this directly. But Cecile says it never even crossed their minds to go to the authorities about the theft.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

You know, my grandparents really did love Tim and Sally immensely. They really loved her. They entrusted her with bank details, with helping them book things. I don't think they. I don't think they had any idea that she could have. She could be capable of something like that.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

The thing that stings the most, Cecile tells me, is when she thinks about the quite profound effect the thefts had on her grandmother and grandfather. They weren't able to own their own property again, and so they ended up renting a place in Wales.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

He'd had a lovely house and a lovely garden back in the Midlands, and I think he'd gone to Wales hoping that one day he'd find a lovely property with a lovely garden and spend the rest of his days there. In reality, he spent his final years since the money was taken and he was forced to. He spent the rest of his years in a. Just a little place. It didn't have a garden. My. My granddad didn't like it. I did go there. It wasn't particular place was quite a dark small far from the dream property to be honest, you know, and that's the best they could afford. It was sad. That was because it did dramatically change their lifestyle. It that that the end of their lives. It shouldn't have been like that.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Cecile says the apparent theft was widely talked about. I've spoken to three other people in her family who've all given me a very similar picture. Tim's parents did tell people that Sally had taken their money, but as far as I can tell, it wasn't something anyone else in the family ever discussed with the couple directly, Cecile says. Because of that unspoken friction, Sally and Tim never set foot back in the village where their house was in France. And so the ivy slowly crept through the stonework and eventually the roof collapsed.

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[Chloe Hajimathe]

Some members of Tim's family have drawn a line under the whole thing and moved on. From what I understand, they still have good relations with Sally and Tim and they feel the past is the past.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Trouble is, when things happen like this and it kind of splits a family, it makes relationships a bit more difficult. Whereas personally, me, no matter if she's famous now or whatever, it's got nothing to do with it. The point is that she did some really horrible things.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Those special family get togethers Cecile remembers so fondly, they're over. Interestingly, when I asked Cecile and others in her family that I've spoken to about Tim's terminal illness, they tell me they were told about it, but that they didn't take it seriously. Tim was considered a fantasist by some. Put it this way, we never worried, they told me. The years ticked over and before Cecile knew it, a decade had slipped past.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

And in that time I just heard drips and drabs of information feeding through from grandparents, whatever. But nothing didn't really give them much consideration, to be honest. I got on with my own life.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Then one day, Cecile's visiting her aunt Tim's sister here in England.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

My aunt said, what do you think of Sally's book? I said, I don't really know what you're talking about. And she said, the soul path. Raina Win. Honestly, I had no idea. No, I did. She said, look her up on the Internet. Look up Raina Winnie. I typed it in, Raina Win. And I saw Sally's face and I thought, what's going on? I was completely and utterly confused.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

There'd been so little contact between the families that Sally Walker's transformation into Raina Wynn had completely passed Cecil by. So she gets a copy of the book and she starts reading basically from the off.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

She's lying. It's not the truth, it's a memoir. But it's. She's saying that she's a victim. Well, that was very far from the truth because she was actually the criminal. She was the con artist. She was the one who'd taken people's money. How can a woman who has done such terrible things and lied and committed fraud and theft and just been a coward since then and not dared to face us or ever said, you know, not acknowledged anything except run and hide, how can this woman now stand up there and write a memoir in which she is a victim?

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Now she knew who she was. Cecile was seeing her Aunt Sally appearing everywhere as Raina Wynne. She watched over the years as she grew in popularity and Cecile felt like she was going crazy. It looked like people had really been taken in, but what could she do about it? Raina Wynne was a superstar and Cecile didn't have any evidence. Tim's parents were dead. There were no bank statements or anything like that.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

I decided I had to do something. I just couldn't sit any longer and think, what can I do? I just had to take action. And obviously writing a book is a very long winded way of going about it.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Her answer for combating a true story that's made up was to write a made up story with truth in it, like a trail of breadcrumbs.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Maybe because it does take a long time, but it was the way that I thought I could tell the world what she'd done. Because when someone's got so famous, you don't think anyone's gonna believe you.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

I find it amazing that all of this has been caused by a book and that you thought the solution to it all was another book.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Yeah, well, I had so much emotion to pour into it. It really fed from the anger that I'd had for all these years. The anger. You know, I think about my grandmother in the last years of her life and, and how sad it was and what she'd done to everybody and this. And all of this emotion just flooded out of me, I think, because I was so determined that I wanted to expose her. In a way, it was quite therapeutic.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

When I started chatting to Cecile last summer, she was still writing her novel, but at the same time she told me she knew it would almost certainly never get published. Still, she hoped that the rest of her story would somehow get out. But really quite quickly, I realised that I was going to add to her frustration because without any hard evidence, it was going to be really difficult for me to publish her claims. Even though at that point I'd also spoken to two more of Cecile's Relatives. The allegations were just too big for me to rely on the word of a few members of one family. I discussed it with my editors at the observer, and we agreed this was a story that would have to stay in the family. But then something pretty extraordinary happened. I managed to get in touch with someone new who changed everything. And so I called Cecile on the impossible, which seems to be evidence about the theft from your grandparents.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

It's quite, quite surprising. I never, ever thought that would ever happen. Yeah.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Let me tell you what I've got, because in the salt pot, there's somebody who Sally calls Polly. We searched and searched and we found her.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Okay.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

And I met her on Friday last week. And she has three letters written by Sally Walker to her mother.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

All right, okay.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

And one of these letters, she confesses to stealing money from her employer.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Oh, okay.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

And then she says, I also took 25,000 from Tim's parents.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Wow. I can't believe it.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Cecile had met Sally Walker's family in Wales when she was a child. There are photos of them together, although she was too young to remember any of it. But the woman I was telling Cecile about was about to blow open a whole new window on the story. She told me she was a character in the Salt Path, someone Raina Wynn had called Polly. But in reality, she was Sally Walker's niece. She'd shown me those letters I'd told Cecile about, and now I just needed her to agree to go public with them.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

She could make life very difficult. These are the thoughts that go through.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Your head in the middle of the night. Is it worth actually coming out and.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Saying, look, this is the truth. I know what happened. Or should I just carry on burying.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

My head under the stone and be.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

The person they believe I am?

[Chloe Hajimathe]

Coming up in episode six.

[Cecile (Family Member)]

Never in a million years did she think that her daughter had had was dreadful, absolutely dreadful what she'd done.

[Chloe Hajimathe]

How else do I prove that how she's depicted herself is fiction? And how she's depicted everybody and everything that's happened with her being perceived as a victim is quite the opposite. 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, as with most people's lives, there will always be someone willing to criticize you. You. That's part of life. However, it is a great source of sadness. That Tortoise Media's observer is now seeking to drive a wedge between our family members. The family have always been able to share their concerns privately, and they still can. I did not steal from family, as others can confirm, nor have I confessed to doing so, and I did not write the letter suggesting I did. What we own in France is an uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch on the boundary of a family member's property. Bought in 2007 by remortgaging our home to prevent a developer buying has missing walls, a collapsed roof, no running water, drainage or electricity. We have never lived there. That would be impossible, and we haven't been there since 2007. The insinuation that we were not homeless, the central premise of the book, is utterly unfair. Thanks for listening to the Walkers the Real Salt Path. It was reported by me, Chloe Hajimathe, with additional reporting by James Urquhart. The series producer was Matt Russell, additional production by Amalia Saltland, field producing by Leonie Thomas. Music supervision was by Carla Patella and the sound design was by Rowan Bishop. The editor was Jasper Corbett.

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[Chloe Hajimathe]

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.

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