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”.

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.”