The Missing Money | The Walkers Ep1
The Walkers: The real Salt Path | Tortoise Investigates
The Observer
4.6 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a small town in north Wales, an alleged theft at a local estate agents plants the seeds for a global blockbuster.
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Credits:
Reporter - Chloe Hadjimatheou
Additional reporting - James Urquhart
Producer - Matt Russell
Artwork: Observer design with acknowledgements to Angela Harding
Music supervision & sound design - Karla Patella
Executive Producer - Jasper Corbett
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Observer |
| 0:05.6 | You've entered the car park for your destination. |
| 0:24.0 | 2025 was a weird year for me. |
| 0:27.6 | Most of it was spent following one tip-off. |
| 0:31.3 | I get a lot of these tip-offs working in investigations, |
| 0:35.2 | and I can tell you they rarely lead to a story. They hardly ever pan |
| 0:39.4 | out. But this one, the one that came to me last spring, was different. It's taken me from Wales |
| 0:47.8 | to Cornwall to France, and then a few months ago. |
| 1:01.2 | On a sunny October afternoon, I found myself parking up a few hours' drive from London. |
| 1:07.7 | So we've just pulled in to a service station off the motorway in Gloucester. |
| 1:11.3 | It all feels very deep throat and secret squirrel. |
| 1:13.9 | I was there to meet a source. |
| 1:17.2 | They are extremely nervous about talking to me. |
| 1:20.6 | So at the moment, this is all on background and completely off the record. |
| 1:22.9 | And I can't even say who they are. |
| 1:28.3 | All this secrecy for a story about a book. |
| 1:32.5 | The tip-off that started the ball rolling on this whole thing was from a stranger who messaged me on Instagram. |
| 1:36.4 | They told me they had some information about a memoir called The Salt Path. |
| 1:42.9 | Arts stories really aren't my thing. |
| 1:45.9 | I'm more a sort of disinformation, |
| 1:48.2 | Middle East, true crime kind of journalist. |
| 1:51.0 | So I was about to reply that this wasn't one for me. |
... |
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