by Robert Macfarlane.
Third book in a magnificent trilogy about landscape.
This book is ‘the third in a loose trilogy about landscape and the human heart’. Its predecessors, Mountains of the Mind and The Wild Places, set unreasonably high standards; The Old Ways lives up to them.
Macfarlane describes a number of journeys he made retracing ancient routes. Despite the book’s subtitle, A Journey on Foot, some of the routes he retraces are by sea. Having said that, in what was perhaps my favourite chapter of the book, he and a friend retrace the route of the ancient and treacherous Broomway across Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary: a journey at sea on foot!
As expected, excellent stuff.
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