The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Landscapes)

... as with campsites, there are so many roads still left to be taken, and so little time. Robert Macfarlane has written a rich, evocative paean to the pleasures of travel at the optimum speed for savoring the world around us; the sub-title proclaims the method - on foot (though a slow boat does also make its appearances). For me, the book "worked" on many different levels. There is the plain "goad" to get out on the trail, and there are so many that he describes. There was the sheer enjoyment of experiencing Macfarlane's remarkable erudition. To read can be to learn, and in this book there was so much that is new, exciting and unknown to me... another "goad," an intellectual one. And even for a native English speaker... or more properly, as my British "cousins" would remind me, American speaker, an Oxford Dictionary is an appropriate accompaniment so that the reader can look up the meaning of so many of the technical terms of geology, botany, nautical, et al., that Macfarlane uses with confidence. History, literature and philosophy are also woven into the author's musing while walking. He quotes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) : "I can only meditate when I am walking, when I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs." And then there are those essential but unlikely connections humans make among themselves, and are the wiser for it. Macfarlane groups his walks into four major sections, located in England, Scotland, "Abroad" and finishing with England again. He commences with a walk in the snow, near the time of the winter solstice, from his home in Cambridge. The reader is soon introduced to Edward Thomas, who wrote The Icknield Way in 1913. Macfarlane takes part of the Icknield, which extends from Norfolk to Wiltshire, on the south coast. It is an area of chalk, and the path is one of England's oldest roads. He then takes what is billed as "deadliest" path in Britain: the Broomway, which crosses a tidal estuary in East Anglia. The author says that the trail is a "halfway house" between the land and the sea, a fitting introduction to his boat trips in Scotland, mainly near the Outer Hebrides. There are "paths" in the ocean that have been used for millennium, and he encourages the reader to conceptualize looking at a "negative" of the normal map of Europe; it is the edge(s) from northern Scotland all the way to Spain that had more in common with each other than they did with the inhabitants only 30 km inland. The Atlantic "country." He "illuminated" for me the rituals and traditions involved with the hunting of gannets on a "speck" of an island to the north of the Hebrides, Sula Sgeir. Macfarlane's three "abroad" trips are varied, and impressive. Concerning the unlikely connections in life, he knows Raja Shehadeh, author of Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape , a book I read (and reviewed) four years ago. Macfarlane visits Shehadeh, who is an excellent guide to walking those ancient hills, and the trials and tribulations that hikers in many countries do not experience. The second hike is in Spain, a portion of the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, coming from Madrid over the Guadarrama mountains into Segovia. And the third hike is in Western Tibet, near the mountain sacred to the Buddhists, the triangular Minya Konka. Back in England, Macfarlane discusses the life of the painter Ravilious, as well as his walking habits. Then he returns for a deeper look at Edward Thomas: "Thomas sensed early that one of modernity's most distinctive tensions would be between mobility and displacement on the one hand, and dwelling and belonging on the other- with the former becoming ubiquitous and the latter becoming lost (if ever it had been possible) and reconfigured as nostalgia... It is hard to make anything like a truce between these two incompatible desires." I was fascinated by the author's descriptions of a friendship between Thomas and Robert Frost, with the latter visiting him on occasions. Frost sent him a draft of "The Road Not Taken" which may have been inspired by Thomas' actions. At the age of 36, with a family, Thomas enlisted, and was killed in the Battle of Arras in the spring of 1917. I couldn't help think of the line from the movie Doctor Zhivago , uttered at the commencement of World War I, by his half-brother, Yevgraf: "Happy men don't enlist." Macfarlane peppers his work with numerous bon-mots. Consider, as a symbol of hospitality and friendship: "A self-replenishing tumbler of gin." There is also a wonderful bibliography worth exploring. Neither Frost nor Macfarland raised the issue that, if the mortar round doesn't get you, you might live long enough to double back, and take the road that you missed the first time around. For Macfarlane's wonderful account and inspiration, 6-stars.

This is a stunning book. The author walks, talks to people, but most of all sees deeply the natural history and human history of the places he walks. I was captivated by the intensity of his observations, the beauty of his writing, and the astonishing range of his knowledge (and vocabulary!). He sees and writes like a poet and a naturalist. He also makes friends with people who know the terrain and the history; people he meets along the way, but even more, people of knowledge and creativity themselves who are deeply tied to the landscapes he walks. Another reviewer asked for maps. I read this book, in retrospect, in the best way possible. Reading it in the Kindle app on my iPad, I could easily look up the flowers and birds he sees, and the geological and local terms he uses. When he writes a lengthy meditation on the art of a painter of the British Downs, I could Google the artist and see examples of his art. Best of all, by far, I used Google Earth to not only track his path but to see what he saw. When he describes a mountain in Tibet as having three intersecting ridges, I could move around a three dimensional image of the mountain, and also of the valley from which MacFarlane was looking. When he walked across a Scottish Isle, I could track his path around a lake, past a mountain, and across the heath. When he talked about the terraced hillsides outside Ramallah and the Israeli settlements, I could see those, too: the hills circled by ancient terracing, and the subdivision-like streets lined with identical houses and lots under construction. I'm now going to buy the hardcover version, because this is a book to keep and to re-read. But I highly recommend reading it with the Internet, especially Google Earth, at hand.

This is an interesting book about footpaths in England and other places. As someone from England that likes long hikes I really liked it.

I first bought this as an audio book but felt I needed the real thing to return to the many quotes, names and places that Robert Mcfarlane refers to throughout his journeys. A great walking book, accessible to all, wonderful descriptive vocabulary, a delight.

Over the last few years Robert MacFarlane has established himself as one of the great contemporary writers on our natural environment and our species relationship to it. Mountains of the Mind gave us a stunning and scholarly account of the relationship between mountains and mountaineers. The Wild Places was a fascinating take on wild land in the UK; MacFarlane finds wild land not just in, say, the Highlands of Scotland, but in the quiet corners of developed England as well. The Wild Places was a lovely, lovely book. In his latest book -- The Old Ways --MacFarlane has come up trumps again as he turns his attention to the paths and routes that have been used by humans for hundreds, thousands and even millions of years. Like many walkers I have a fascination with the old pathways and I can't help thinking about those who went this way hundreds, thousands or even millions of years before me. MacFarlane clearly has the same fascination for these same routes and this fascinating book not only entertains but teaches quite a lot as well! For MacFarlane the old ways are at the heart of human civilisation provided the channels for trade not only in goods but in terms of art culture, education and learning. But don't worry about all of this, stripped back this is a very good -- and easy -- read. The book starts with a trip along the ancient Icknield Way in footsteps of his hero the writer and poet Edward Thomas. There are then walks across the estuaries of Essex which appear on OS maps to walk into the sea but in reality cross the only productive land of Doggerland before the grew flood that cut England off from the continent. There's a walk from South to North through the Cairngorms and other British Walks. My favourite Section part II which covers Scotland and mostly the Outer Hebrides. Here MacFarlane not only follows ancient paths on land but also some of the critical Old Sea Ways, sailing to St Kilda and taking something go the old Norse route that connected the West with Scandanavia. As with most of the other walks MacFarlane has tracked down fascinating walking companions who have spent their lives not only oiling from this land and sea but immersing themselves in history and culture. Part III is entitled Roaming (abroad) and here MacFarlane looks at some international experiences before the comes back home again for the final section. There's a stroll along some of the pilgrim route to Compestella, a trip amongst the foothills of the Himalaya and more besides The focus here is not on a simple travelogue but on an extended riff on what he sees and feels, so the sub headings for Abroad are Limestone. Roots and Ice. There's also a very moving walk in Palastine with Raja Shehadeh whose own Palastinian Walks is one of the sadest and most angry making books I have read on the outdoors. Throughout his travels MacFarlane is never far from his literary heroes. There's more than a whiff of Bruce Chatwin about the Old Ways and the final section in which macFarlance contemplates the connections of the old ways running all over the globe is very similar to one of the final essays that Chatwin wrote, but I get the impression that it's not always that academically OK to pay tribute to Chatwin these days! The great writer on the Cairngorms Nan Shepherd is here too as a sometime companion of the mind. As you might expect the Wordsworths are here as are Walt Whitman, Goethe, John Berger and Hillaire Belloc to name but a few. The great influence and sprit that moves through the book though is that of Edward Thomas a difficult man by all accounts but a man who had the outdoors and walking at the heart of his psyche. Towards the end of the book we get a potted biography of Thomas which is both fascinating and moving. It's not all perfect. Some of the stores of the more mundane trips are quite fantastic as, to be fair, our ordinary trips often can be. But you can't help wondering whether -- as Bruce Chatwin used to say about his own work -- the fictional process has been at play from time to time. The language is sometimes a bit too flowery or gushy for me but at its best it reminds me of Patrick Leigh Fermor who was not only, perhaps, the greatest Engliosh travel writer of his generation but one of the greatest English stylists of the twentieth century. So, at its best this is wonderful writing. I have to remind myself that this is only the third in this series of books and MacFarlance as distinguished as he is is still developing his own style. What I really admire is his is not the travel of the extreme adventurer or lunatic but the travels of mere mortals like you or me. His writing though will make our mundane explorations. His writing will enrich our own modest achievements and adventures. If you read a better book on the outdoors this year or next I would be stunned. A great read.

very informative and enjoyable read

So well researched and makes the difficult task of finding interesting things to say about walking along a track so well.

Una descrizione di itinerari di outdoor in Inghilterra, con velleità letterarie, a volte un po' pesanti, ma in generale gradevoli. Nel nostro paese l'outdoor non si pratica veramente, e di fatto non appartiene alla nostra cultura. Sarà forse per il terreno montagnoso della penisola, che consente semmai l'escursionismo e l'alpinismo ma non si presta alla scampagnata di più giorni. Colpisce come per Macfarlane sia normale camminare su sentieri e sterrate per un giorno e poi accamparsi dove capita, all'aperto, in attesa di riprendere il giorno dopo: ma in Inghilterra (come in America) l'outdoor è una religione di libertà e nessuno si sognerebbe di mettere divieti di campeggio sul suolo pubblico. Molto interessante anche l'enfasi sull'aspetto meditativo dell'outdoor, percorso interiore al tempo stesso che itinerario di cammino nel paesaggio fisico.