Cider at Haye | The Walkers Ep3

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (0:04)
The Observer. Can I have a little tour?

**Maxine Faramond** (0:18)
You can, it's changed since The Walkers have been here. But yeah, it's on the market.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (0:25)
At the very heart of The Salt Path is this quirky, whitewashed stone building surrounded by fields in rural Wales. It's there at the beginning of the story, and its loss echoes throughout the book and its sequels. It was once the forever home of Moth and Raynor Winn, real names Tim and Sally Walker. They lived there for 20 years and raised two children between these walls. Was this their living room?

**Sally Walker** (0:54)
Yes.

**Maxine Faramond** (0:55)
That's changed, you see.

**Sally Walker** (0:56)
So that was built in.

**Maxine Faramond** (0:57)
They had a built-in fire in there. It all bricked... I think it was bricked up or something like that. But they didn't realise there was a big leak coming in from the back, so it was all rusty and things like that. I mean, it was in a right old mess.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (1:11)
Maxine Faramond lives here now, a cheerful woman in her sixties with long white hair. Maxine's a former police officer who bought the house after she retired in 2016 By that time it had been sitting empty for almost four years after it was repossessed. Raynor Winn talks about losing the house in The Salt Path and in almost every interview she's done, often using the exact same phrases, like she's reading from a script.

**Raynor Winn** (1:40)
We were in the house at the last moment. The last moment. When the bailiffs were knocking on the door. The bailiffs were knocking on the door and we were hiding under the stairs actually. We were hiding under the stairs actually. Not pretending. Not probably thinking that some miracle was going to happen. We thought a miracle would happen. Because we just didn't feel ready to leave. I don't think we would ever have been ready to leave.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (2:10)
I like how bright it is, sitting in the bath looking out at the trees. Maxine offers me tea and a grand tour. The place is rickety with low ceilings and sloping stone walls. The original bit of the house where the kitchen is dates back to the 1600s. When they left, The Walkers took almost everything with them. The farmer who lives next door told me they left in the middle of the night. He saw vans driving off carrying them and all their stuff. So, no hiding under the stairs. They were long gone when the bailiffs came knocking. They didn't leave much behind except all the fittings and interior decoration they had furnished the place with. Maxine could tell this was a couple with style. And that wood panelling on the walls?

**Maxine Faramond** (2:57)
Yeah, the wood panelling was done. These are slate tiles. It was all very expensive.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (3:02)
When Maxine took the place over, she knew very little about its previous owners, except that they had been responsible for converting an old barn into a granny flat, and that the man had a profession.

**Maxine Faramond** (3:15)
I found a little placard, but it said Master Plaster on it. Other things are a little bit wonky, you know, like the woodwork and things are not great, but the plastering, you can tell somebody knows what they're doing. When I was decorating, I was up in the corner there, and I saw, you know, what I thought was rough plaster, and then I realised it was a signature.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (3:36)
Will you show me?

**Maxine Faramond** (3:36)
It's in the corner, yeah. Probably need a chair to stand on. It's just in the corner there.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (3:42)
It's quite hard to see. Hang on.

**Maxine Faramond** (3:46)
Watch your head on the screen there. Oh, yeah.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (3:50)
I can see it. It says, Tim Hartsowl, kiss, kiss, kiss, and there's a date. Soon after Maxine moved in, she began hearing rumours about the previous owners around town. The rumours were that the woman had stolen a lot of money from her employer and had somehow got away with it.

**Maxine Faramond** (4:10)
I introduced myself to local people and they said, oh, you know, well, Tim and Sally used to have that property. And then someone said, oh, do you know, she's written a book. I went, oh, yeah.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (4:17)
But even after she'd finished reading The Salt Path, Maxine found this mysterious couple intruding on her piece.

**Maxine Faramond** (4:25)
I was receiving letters from the time that I took the property on.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (4:29)
So you moved in here years after The Walkers had left. But you were still getting letters for them?