Five book covers all about long walks in NZ nature; with scene of nature in twilight behind them.
Five alternatives to The Salt Path by Raynor Winn.

BooksJuly 8, 2025

Heard about The Salt Path by Raynor Winn? Here’s what to read instead

Five book covers all about long walks in NZ nature; with scene of nature in twilight behind them.
Five alternatives to The Salt Path by Raynor Winn.

A journalist has uncovered some unsavoury truths about the ‘multimillion-copy bestselling’ author of The Salt Path. Here are five alternatives in the long walk genre, all by local writers.

On Sunday July 6 The Observer published an investigation into author Raynor Winn, whose book The Salt Path is one of the UK’s bestselling nature memoirs in recent years and has been adapted into a film starring Gillian Anderson.

Chloe Hadjimatheou’s story revealed that there’s quite the gap between the truth as presented on the pages of Winn’s memoir, and the actual truth. The Salt Path tells the story of a couple in their 50s – Moth and Raynor – who embark on a 630-mile coastal walk after Moth is diagnosed with Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD) and they lose their home in Wales because of a bad investment. The memoir, and the subsequent books that Winn has published (On Winter Hill, The Wild Silence and Landlines) have all done phenomenally well – the movie-tie-in edition released this year boasts that The Salt Path is by the “multimillion-copy bestselling author”.

The latest cover of The Salt Path advertising the millions of copies sold, and the movie adaptation.

Hadjimatheou’s research has revealed that Raynor Winn’s real name is Sally Walker and that she and her husband (Tim Walker aka Moth) had to leave their 17th Century Welsh farmhouse to go on the run after Walker’s employer discovered she had embezzled an alleged 64,000 pounds. The article goes on to reveal that the Walkers then borrowed 100,000 pounds from a distant relative of Tim’s to pay back Sally’s employer if he agreed to a non-disclosure agreement and to not pursue any criminal case against her. The employer agreed and that part of the story ends there. However the loan from the distant relative spurred its own series of troubles resulting in 150,000 pounds outstanding and secured against the Walkers’ house.

Even further, Hadjimatheou discovered that the Walkers owned a property in France (The Salt Path claims they had nowhere else to go); and that they set up a publishing business that published one novel that promised purchasers an entry into a free prize draw to win the Walkers’ Welsh home, “the same property that a judge had ordered to be repossessed if they didn’t sell it,” writes Hadjimatheou. The Walkers’ home was eventually repossessed in 2013 and bought by Maxine Farrimond in 2016 who told Hadjimatheou “she was shocked to receive a stream of letters addressed to Sally and Tim Walker: unpaid bills, credit cards and a speeding fine as well as letters from debt collection agencies.”

Perhaps the most distressing element of the investigation is the doubt that Hadjimatheou’s research throws over the veracity of Tim Walker’s CBD diagnosis. While Hadjimatheou is careful to state that “there is nothing I have seen to contradict his diagnosis or Sally Walker’s account of it,” she outlines the responses of nine neurologists and researchers specialising in CBD who collectively expressed surprise at Walker’s lack of acute symptoms and “apparently ability to reverse them”.

If you are now ready to divest yourself of Raynor Winn’s books, here are five alternative books about walking, nature and memoir – all by Aotearoa authors.

Northbound by Naomi Arnold

Naomi Arnold’s riveting and moving account of walking Te Araroa from the bottom on up. The Spinoff’s Liv Sisson said: “There’s no rose-tinted retrospect here, and this lends the book a nice feeling of immediacy. You feel very in the moment with Arnold as she walks – it reads less like a memoir and more just like a great story. And it is a roller coaster. There are awe inspiring moments – a rainbow, delicate hoar frost, native bird song, Magellanic clouds and many stunning vistas. But there’s also a lot of cold and a lot of mud. There are primal screams, injuries and a lot of swearing. Snow has begun to fall before we even reach page 100.”

This book would also make a great movie, just saying.

Towards Compostela: Walking the Camino de Santiago by Catharina van Bohemen

A beautiful memoir of walking and questing with illustrations by Gregory O’Brien. Bohemen gets underneath the art of the long walk by noticing everything and reflecting on every bend in the road, every comedic encounter, every moment that feels like more than just a fleeting time with those you meet along the way.

Adventures with Emilie by Victoria Bruce

Te Araroa but with a child! Josie Shapiro wrote a tremendous article about the walking memoir on The Spinoff including this about Bruce’s work: “Bruce and her daughter find many interruptions to their trip. Covid lockdowns, weather events. Emilie almost sliding to her death. There’s plenty of heart-stopping drama on a hike that goes on this long, plenty of descriptions of hungry bellies and exhaustion and frustration at putting wet socks on dry feet. Like [Cheryl] Strayed, Bruce uses the trail to map a path into the depths of her own soul, hoping that hard work, sweat, and a few tears might help guide her through.”

Uprising: Walking the Southern Alps by Nic Low

Low’s book is essential for anyone interested in getting beneath colonial ideas of tramping and trails in Aotearoa. In this book Low follows Ngāi Tahu pathways to illuminate stories and names suppressed by the English overlays. Over on the Alpine Club, Ross Cullen says about Uprising: “There are also chunky chapters on a solo walk up the Godley valley and avalanche ride near Sealy Pass, trips over Rurumātaiku (Whitcombe Pass), Tarahaka (Arthur’s Pass), Nōti Hurunui (Harper Pass), Nōti Hinetamatea (Copland Pass) a slog up the highway to Tioripātea (Haast Pass) a successful ascent to near the summit of Aoraki, boat and foot travel carting pounamu from Fiordland to Southland (Te Rua-o-te moko Ki Murihiku), interesting insights into the lives and behaviour of Leonard Harper, his son Arthur and plenty of other Europeans lured into mountain journeys chasing fame, fortune or other reward. But what I found most thought-provoking are Low’s frequent observations on current names and interpretation that ignore earlier events and placenames. He walks around Lake Coleridge noting a sign explaining how lightning struck a Macrocarpa tree on Saturday 22 January 2000, but fails to find any record of Raureka’s journey or any trace of a 14th century moa hunters campsite.”

Solo: Backcountry adventuring in Aotearoa New Zealand by Hazel Phillips

Hazel Phillips is a brilliant storyteller and her three years of exploring the mountains (and somehow holding down a full time job at the same time) make for one heck of a memoir. Here’s a chunk of the blurb: “As she ranged from Arthur’s Pass and the Kaimanawa Forest Park to the Ruahine Range and Fiordland, she had her share of danger and loneliness, but she also grew in confidence and backcountry knowledge. Her story of this solo life is an absorbing blend of adventure and humour, combined with her research into tales from the past of ambition and death in the mountains. She also casts a feminist eye over the challenges women climbers and explorers faced.”

Keep going!
Tarot cards and a photo of author Stacy Gregg with her cat.
Tarot worked for Stacy Gregg and her latest book.

BooksJuly 5, 2025

‘I’m aware I sound nuts’: How tarot helped Stacy Gregg land her biggest book deal yet

Tarot cards and a photo of author Stacy Gregg with her cat.
Tarot worked for Stacy Gregg and her latest book.

When author Stacy Gregg turned to tarot cards to decide the fate of her new book the result was a six-figure deal with Simon & Schuster. But if the cards have delivered for your once, can they be relied upon again?

When I tell you that my latest book deal was predicated entirely on a tarot card reading, I’m aware I sound nuts. And yeah, fully cognisant that it’s not exactly best practice to rely on mysticism for your most important financial and career decisions. I get it because I too am a sceptic about all things spiritual. Apart from once putting Jedi on my census forms I have never been interested in belonging to a religion or believing in a god – and I roll my eyes if anyone so much as tries to pick up the paper and read me my star sign.

And yet, for me there has always been something deeply compelling about tarot. 

When I was a kid, fortune tellers were always on TV shows, as ubiquitous as quicksand and sasquatch. There they were clattering their bangles and gazing into crystal balls on every show from The Love Boat to Hogan’s Heroes (J’adore Lebeau in a gypsy turban!). Then out would come the tarot deck and they’d turn the cards and gasp in mock shock before solemnly interpreting their confounding symbolism to the dupe opposite them. 

Tarot held a nostalgic, kitsch fascination for me – but until last year I had never really had the urge to have my cards read.

And then my house flooded. Not just a little bit, not a leak in the carport. I mean proper natural disaster. And so, after loading all my worldly possessions into eight jumbo skips I found myself shacked up in some rented dumpster fire of a house, endlessly filling out insurance paperwork and meanwhile the TV series I was meant to be writing hadn’t yet been green-lit so I had no paid employment to speak of. Plus, after nearly two decades of being bound to a big UK publishing house I now found myself cut loose with no contract and no agent since Nancy, my rock since forever, had just announced her retirement. It is at times like this that a girl thinks to herself “I might get my tarot cards done.”

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Luckily I knew a tarot reader who was in the same state of flux that I was. Sarah Nathan and I are old friends and when she told me she was giving up her lucrative day job to do tarot reading … OK, I might have made that “huh” sound that Jesse Mulligan makes when he’s interviewing someone on RNZ. But I knew Sarah. She was neither a flake nor a slouch – she was taking her career move to tarot seriously. She already had a website – “AbundanceLoveJoy.com” – and she delivered her readings via zoom or as a pre-record and then uploaded them to a unique YouTube channel just for you so that you could watch your cards unfold in privacy at your leisure.

Also, yeah, yeah, obviously I’m fully aware of the ways that mystics, like tarot readers, can use techniques to trick their marks into thinking they have powers – things like “cold reading” in which the tarot card reader pumps you for information you aren’t even aware you’re giving them to create the illusion of psychic ability. Absolutely Sarah had the advantage of knowing loads about me – it would be easy to extrapolate and make stuff up. But she was legit in her beliefs. And I wasn’t asking if there was a tall, dark and handsome stranger in my future.

I only had one question for Sarah and her cards: What the hell should I do about my manuscript?

A photo of a smiling woman with a cat on her lap with the cover of her book, The Last Journey next to her.
Stacy Gregg, her cat, and her latest novel. (Photo: Supplied)

Despite my newfound, full-time, unwanted job handling insurance claims for my flooded house, I had somehow managed to write a book that year. It was a cat dystopia. When people asked me to explain the plot I would say: “It’s like a cross between Watership Down and Logan’s Run – but with cats.” 

Since I had no agent and no publisher, the only person who had seen it to date was my friend, author Nicky Pellegrino. Knowing the pickle I was in, Nicky had valiantly offered to read The Last Journey. So I gave her the 60,000 word text and braced myself.

“I think it’s special,” she told me as we walked our dogs on Kakamatua beach. “I think you should take it wide.”

In publishing parlance, taking a book wide means sending it out universally to find the highest bidder. It’s a ballsy move – even when you do have an agent. I didn’t have one so I would be effectively agenting myself.

“I just can’t,” I said. “Publishing in the UK is so agent-dependent. Plus I’m too defeated by life right now.”

She protested but I gave her a hard no on the matter. I mean why rely on the voice of a number one best-selling international author like Nicky? But a tarot reading? Now you’re talking sense!

On the Zoom, Sarah smiled at me. She has the most uplifting smile, a halo of chic blonde hair, designer glasses, several decks of tarot lined up in front of her. “I like to pull cards from different decks,” she explained. Some of the decks were classical, elegant with medieval style imagery, others were new-agey, while still others were homemade and used words and pictures normally associated with the building and construction industry like drills and chisels and diggers – all of which would be given a metaphorical twist in Sarah’s interpretation.

Multiple decks and many many cards were drawn but according to Sarah they all said the same thing and it was basically the same thing Nicky had said, only this time I was listening. “This book is a treasure,” Sarah insisted. “The cards are telling you to break the wheel. You need to show it to multiple publishers.”

I finished our call elated. My book was a treasure!

And then a more sane thought: I was a mental. I couldn’t just act out a batshit career move because the cards told me to do it.

“Nah,” I said to my boyfriend, “I’ve decided to be normal. I’m just going to send it to one publisher, the old one I used to be with back in the day. Maybe they’ll take it. I will cross my fingers and hope for the best.” 

Except that night I lay in bed unable to sleep. Nicky thought the book was good. Sarah said that cards were telling me to go for it. Really, at the end of the day what was the very worst that could happen? I get rejected by multiple houses in a long, drawn-out fiasco? That sounded like a typical publishing scenario to me.

And so, the next day, with a cute covering letter, I sent the manuscript out. I didn’t technically take it “wide” – only to the four publishing houses in London that I had meaningful relationships with. Of the four, the one I was most excited about was Simon & Schuster. My old editor was now the head of the children’s publishing division there, and her second-in-command and I had also enjoyed a long and happy working relationship when they had both been at HarperCollins. Since they’d been at Simon & Schuster the company had grown so exponentially they were looking for new offices. They were so hot right now. Having the book with them would be the dream scenario.

When I sent the emails off I truly had no expectation of a swift reply. Publishing is the slowest business in the world. It’s typical for a house to take three months to get back to you, especially on an unsolicited manuscript. I settled in and prepared myself for a long, long wait.

Twelve hours later I had an email back from Rachel and Michelle at Simon & Schuster. “Great pitch! Hold tight! We’re reading…”

I had another email back two days later. They’d read it. They loved it. Could they make a pre-emptive offer to take it off the table before the other houses swooped? Well duh, yup you can.

And so, at two in the morning, on my phone in bed I negotiated a six-figure deal for The Last Journey. It was the biggest advance I had ever got for a book. I did it without an agent and in my jim-jams and whenever I pushed back and asked for more money I felt certain I was right. Because the tarot cards told me this book was a treasure.

Looking back now, without the cards to back me up, things could have gone so differently. It was Sarah’s faith, her cards, that weirdly gave me confidence in my own abilities. I can’t explain it. All I know is that it worked.

A few months later I consulted Sarah again. I had a question I just had to know the answer to. I was nominated for the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults for my novel Nine Girls. The thing was, I had been nominated for the same award eight times before and I had always lost. It is not much fun flying to Wellington eight times to sit in an auditorium and lose in front of everyone. This time, I had to know. What was my fate to be?

Sarah shuffled the deck and asked the cards. “Will Stacy win the book awards?”

The card she drew from the deck depicted a grizzled old woman cowering in rags in the snow, being pelted by rotten fruit and shunned by the crowds. Pretty definitive. Sarah agreed. “It’s another no I’m afraid.” Good to know, I grieved and let it go and flew to Wellington anyway to tautoko the winners.

This story explains why, when they called my name that night to say that Nine Girls had won the Margaret Mahy Award for the Book of the Year I sat slack-jawed and did not get out of my seat for quite some time. Sarah says my own negative energy from all those years of losing influenced the deck on the reading that day. I agree. The cards are all about your energy. And so, last week I booked a reading and asked her about my new book. The one that will come after The Last Journey. Apparently it’s a corker. Now I just need to write it. 

The Last Journey by Stacy Gregg ($21, Simon & Shuster UK) is available to purchase from Unity Books. Gregg is appearing in two events in Wellington at The Children’s Bookshop on 9 & 10 July. Details at verbwellington.nz