The Old Ways (2012)
'Humans are animals and like all animals we leave tracks as we walk: signs of passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth or moss... We easily forget that we are track-makers, though, because most of our journeys now occur on asphalt and concrete – and these are substances not easily impressed.'
With The Old Ways, Macfarlane rounded off his loose trilogy of “books about landscape and the human heart”. Having explored mountains and the British wilderness in his previous works, The Old Ways documents the years Macfarlane spent travelling tracks, sea paths, drove roads and other ancient routes in Britain and beyond. Underlying the journeys in the book, Macfarlane looks at how people and place are inextricably linked, and how these journeys on foot can inspire the human imagination.