Book #41 for 2023: The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane
The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was another completely blind buy for me, and as the blurb states:
"Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all, of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imagination".
Most of the chapters were about hiking routes, although a couple were about seafaring, while another was an imagined story about a soldier's journey during the first world war, up to his untimely death. This felt like quite a dense book at times, but I really enjoyed Robert Macfarlane's descriptions of his own first-hand experiences. These include being awoken by birds while camping outside, and even hearing what are apparently ghosts one evening (he ends up satisfied that he manages to avoid being scared away, unlike a group of motorcyclists in an old account).
The book starts of with anecdotes about routes in Britain (including the long-distance path the Icknield Way), but there is a section all about walking abroad, thus he mentions the Camino del Santiago, and even pilgramages in Tibet.
It feels like a book where I'm unlikely to remember everything I read; there is just so much information, so I expect I will at some point pick it up and read it again.
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