The Old Ways

A Journey on Foot

Part of Landscapes

Author Robert Macfarlane On Tour
From the acclaimed author of The Wild Places and Underland, an exploration of walking and thinking

In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual.

Told in Macfarlane’s distinctive voice, The Old Ways folds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology and literature. His walks take him from the chalk downs of England to the bird islands of the Scottish northwest, from Palestine to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas. Along the way he crosses paths with walkers of many kinds—wanderers, pilgrims, guides, and artists. Above all this is a book about walking as a journey inward and the subtle ways we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move.  Macfarlane discovers that paths offer not just a means of traversing space, but of feeling, knowing, and thinking.
© Bryan Appleyard
Robert Macfarlane is the bestselling author of an award-winning trilogy of books about landscape and the human heart: Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, and The Old Ways. He is also the author of Landmarks and Holloway. His work has been translated into a dozen languages and is published in more than 20 countries, and his books have been widely adapted for TV, film, and radio by the BBC, among others. Macfarlane has contributed to Harper’s Magazine, Granta, The Observer (London), the Times Literary Supplement (London), and the London Review of Books. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2012, and is currently a Fellow in English of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. View titles by Robert Macfarlane

About

From the acclaimed author of The Wild Places and Underland, an exploration of walking and thinking

In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual.

Told in Macfarlane’s distinctive voice, The Old Ways folds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology and literature. His walks take him from the chalk downs of England to the bird islands of the Scottish northwest, from Palestine to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas. Along the way he crosses paths with walkers of many kinds—wanderers, pilgrims, guides, and artists. Above all this is a book about walking as a journey inward and the subtle ways we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move.  Macfarlane discovers that paths offer not just a means of traversing space, but of feeling, knowing, and thinking.

Author

© Bryan Appleyard
Robert Macfarlane is the bestselling author of an award-winning trilogy of books about landscape and the human heart: Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, and The Old Ways. He is also the author of Landmarks and Holloway. His work has been translated into a dozen languages and is published in more than 20 countries, and his books have been widely adapted for TV, film, and radio by the BBC, among others. Macfarlane has contributed to Harper’s Magazine, Granta, The Observer (London), the Times Literary Supplement (London), and the London Review of Books. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2012, and is currently a Fellow in English of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. View titles by Robert Macfarlane

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