When they set out on their now infamous Salt Path walk, Raynor Winn and her husband Moth were homeless, had just £115 in cash and a tent bought on eBay to live in.
Fast-forward 12 years, three best-selling books and a hit film starring Gillian Anderson later and the couple’s living conditions have clearly taken a turn for the better.
Because today The Mail on Sunday can reveal how the author and her husband have swapped sleeping under the stars for a stunning Cornish estate complete with farmhouse, swimming pool and its own private beach.
Not only does the 190-acre property provide plenty of space to indulge their love of camping and walking, its remote location has recently also come in handy.
It is here that the couple, whose real names are Sally and Tim Walker, have hunkered down since questions were raised about the veracity of the story that became a literary sensation.
Ms Winn’s memoir detailed how their decision to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path was motivated by the repossession of their home in Wales after a business deal with a ‘friend’ went calamitously wrong, leaving them without a roof over their heads.
It has since been claimed that their financial predicament was in fact linked to Ms Winn’s alleged theft of £64,000 from a former employer. Experts have also questioned her portrayal of her husband’s debilitating neurological condition, corticobasal degeneration (CBD), which also lies at the heart of the book.
The furore saw Penguin announce that it would be delaying the publication of her fourth book, On Winter Hill, which was due out in October.
The author also pulled out of the summer leg of a tour combining music and readings of her prose.
Raynor Winn and her husband Moth have swapped sleeping under the stars for a stunning Cornish estate complete with farmhouse, swimming pool and its own private beach
And the charity PSPA, which supports people with CBD and has worked with the couple, said ‘too many questions remain unanswered’ and it had ‘terminated’ its relationship with the family.
So far, the only word from 62-year-old Ms Winn has been a lengthy statement published on her website in which she called the allegations ‘grossly unfair’ and ‘highly misleading’.
Standing by her book, which since its 2018 publication has sold millions and earned her a multi-million-pound fortune, she wrote: ‘The Salt Path is about what happened to Moth and me, after we lost our home and found ourselves homeless on the headlands of the South West.
‘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.’ And, given where the couple are now living, it is clearly a very good ‘place’ to be.
The imposing house they now call home sits amid undulating farmland and ancient woodland with breathtaking views.
During their coastal walk, Ms Winn and her husband passed by, the author writing of the area’s ‘domesticated rurality’. Built in the mid-19th century, the house is reached via a private drive, has at least five bedrooms and a substantial farmhouse kitchen. The land includes a private beach.
Posts on Ms Winn’s Instagram feed give a flavour of the idyllic lifestyle the couple have been enjoying since moving in more than a year ago. Photographs show woodland dog walks through seasonal bluebells and snowdrops. The writer has also documented how she helped hand-rear two barn owlets, feeding defrosted frozen mice to them, after their mother was found dead in a field.
Posts on Ms Winn’s Instagram feed give a flavour of the idyllic lifestyle the couple have been enjoying since moving in more than a year ago
The imposing house they now call home sits amid undulating farmland and ancient woodland with breathtaking views
In another image she is seen holding a long-eared bat, a species thought to roost in the attic of the property. A grey squirrel is also pictured helping itself to horse chestnuts which Ms Winn had laid out to dry on decking around one corner of the house.
Her husband Moth, 65, also appears – sitting in a chair reading the Old English legend of Beowulf in a sizeable conservatory.
It is understood the couple are renting the house, which is owned by a wealthy, landed property owner. His family has owned the house since the 1970s. A friend of the owner told The Mail on Sunday: ‘He has rented out the house for several years now.
‘It is the most stunning house in the most wonderful, peaceful, private setting.’
The property is thought to be worth in excess of £10 million.
The friend added: ‘There is another property for sale at the moment which is being marketed at £8.5million. It is nowhere near as big or with as much land, so you can guess what this could fetch.
‘But there is absolutely no way he would sell up. It means far too much to him and his family. Why would anyone let it go if they had no financial pressure to do so?’
Another local said: ‘We’ve known for ages it was Raynor and Moth up there. A friend of mine was told by the owner himself. They moved in long before all this fuss over the book and the film.’
And a third added: ‘Not many people know she is up there and I am sure some will be unhappy about it after all that has happened. They have definitely been hiding themselves away. They have been there for more than a year but definitely less than two.
‘Sally has been away a lot and Moth spends a great deal of time on his own, although their daughter is about quite a bit as well.’
It is not known what, if anything, the couple are paying in terms of rent but such a home could expect to command thousands a month on the open market – and marks a dramatic move up the property ladder for the couple.
A film adaptation of The Salt Path, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs was released in the UK in May
The pair met as teenagers growing up in Burton upon Trent, Staffs, before moving to Pwllheli in Gwynedd with their son and daughter in the early 1990s. There they set about renovating a rural property, complete with holiday let.
In 2007 they remortgaged to purchase a ramshackle doer-upper in south-west France, just a few miles from a magnificent chateau belonging to one of Moth’s brothers and next door to a pigeon tower owned by his younger sibling.
Said to be worth between 20,000 and 35,000 euros, the property is still owned by the couple – a fact some have suggested means they were never truly ‘homeless’.
In her statement, Ms Winn claimed that they visited only once and due to its state it was ‘impossible’ to live in.
‘What we own in France is an uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch,’ she wrote.
In 2013, the couple’s own home was repossessed, the circumstances behind which form the crux of the recent controversy. After finishing their walk, which took place over the summers of 2013 and 2014, the couple settled in a flat in a converted Methodist chapel in the Cornish village of Polruan.
According to Ms Winn’s telling of the story, they bumped into the owner of the property by chance after sitting beside her on a bench towards the end of her trek, and she offered them her flat to rent.
The couple then moved to Haye Farm in countryside near Lostwithiel, Cornwall. Yet again, that was apparently all down to good luck and a wealthy City investor who approached them on Twitter having read the book.
Bill Cole, 58, let the couple stay at his £1million Cornish cider farm after being deeply moved by their story of homelessness and Moth’s declining health. But the benefactor claims he was ultimately left feeling ‘gaslit’ and betrayed by the pair.
In an interview with The Observer newspaper, which carried out the original investigation into the couple, he told of his shock when he was informed by Moth in 2021 that he had been ‘told not to plan beyond Christmas’ due to his health.
But when Ms Winn’s third book, Landlines, was published in September 2022, Mr Cole read how in the winter of 2021, a neurologist told Moth his brain was ‘normal’.
‘I was reading it on the train,’ said Mr Cole, ‘and I just went “What the hell?” It just makes no sense whatsoever.’
He said he sent a message to Ms Winn asking why if there was such good news, they had not told him. He said that she replied but did not address the point.
Not long after, they terminated their tenancy at Haye Farm, a year earlier than agreed.
In her statement, Ms Winn addressed allegations that Moth had ‘made up his illness’.
She wrote: ‘This utterly vile, unfair, and false suggestion has emotionally devastated Moth, who has fought so hard against the insidious condition of Corticobasal Syndrome.’
She also published excerpts from two clinic letters relatingto her husband’s treatment, which she claims show ‘he is treated for CBD/S and has been for many years’.
What the future now holds for the author and her husband is unclear. But given that Salt Path remains in the Sunday Times bestseller list despite this recent furore, it seems Ms Winn and her husband will be able to enjoy the pleasures of their country estate home for some time to come.
