A hunch, a hint and six months of shoe-leather reporting

As anew seven-part podcast series begins, Chloe Hadjimatheou reveals the twists and turns in her long journey to uncover the true story of The Salt Path and its author, Raynor Winn

- Chloe Hadjimatheou

In 2020 Raynor Winn was living on Haye cider farm in St Veep, Cornwall.

I slam an Observer reporter, people often get in touch with ideas for stories I could be investigating - but the one I received last March was different. This person said they knew Raynor Winn, the author of The Salt Path, and believed there was dishonesty woven into this bestselling memoir that was marketed as “unflinchingly honest”.

The person who contacted me said that Moth, Winn’s husband and the subject of her books, didn’t seem to be as sick as the memoir claimed.

The Salt Path tells the story of how a fundamentally decent couple is assailed by misfortune. First, someone they think of as a friend cons them out of their home, and then Moth is told that he has the terminal neurological disease corticobasal degeneration (CBD).

The now-homeless couple then make the extraordinary decision to walk 630 miles along England’s South West Coast path, surviving on a pittance and sleeping ina tent. The strenuous walk and immersion in nature have a healing effect, helping to reverse Moth’s CBD symptoms.

After The Salt Path’s success, the couple had become ambassadors for this rare and untreatable condition - and literally walking advertisements fora kind of nature cure. But the neurologists I spoke to said details of Moth’s case didn’t seem to add up.

Researching something as private as someone's health is deeply uncomfortable. My editor was concerned that, since Raynor and Moth had declined an interview and failed to engage with me, I was unlikely to be able to say definitively whether Moth had the condition.