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title: "The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Landscapes)"
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# The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Landscapes)

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The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Landscapes) [Macfarlane, Robert] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Landscapes)

Review: The Road(s) not taken... - ... 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.
Review: Walking, seeing, thinking, writing - 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.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #61,446 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #62 in Travel Writing Reference #63 in Nature Writing & Essays #102 in Travelogues & Travel Essays |
| Book 3 of 4  | Landscapes |
| Customer Reviews | 4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (2,266) |
| Dimensions  | 0.86 x 5.25 x 8 inches |
| Edition  | Reprint |
| ISBN-10  | 0147509793 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0147509796 |
| Item Weight  | 13.6 ounces |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 448 pages |
| Publication date  | September 24, 2013 |
| Publisher  | Penguin Books |

## Images

![The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Landscapes) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/715yd7kEFTL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Road(s) not taken...
*by J***I on September 13, 2013*

... 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.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Walking, seeing, thinking, writing
*by I***R on December 30, 2012*

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.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Interesting book
*by B***Y on January 6, 2026*

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

## Frequently Bought Together

- The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Landscapes)
- The Wild Places (Landscapes)
- Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit

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*Product available on Desertcart Croatia*
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*Last updated: 2026-02-24*