Steven Dilworth, a man with whom he stays on Harris, has a ritualistic, artistic and very personal relationship with the outdoor life of Harris. In particular, he writes of their many modes of attachment to the outdoors, such as the symbolic, spiritual, historical, and personal.

As well as the landscapes and paths that he follows, he describes the people whom he meets and stays with. Macfarlane recounts his journey across the Isle of Lewis and then Harris by foot. By contrast, in other chapters he was walking the paths trod by others in the past with whom he had not had a direct connection, and they felt less 'full'.Ĭhapter seven and eight, entitled Peat and Gneiss (pronounced nice!) respectively, resonated with my fantasy for an isolated island journey. His grandfather's love of the Cairngorms, and Macfarlane's childhood holidays spent up there with his grandfather, brought his own emotional connection to the forefront. This chapter describes his 'ritual walk' in the Cairngorms and beautifully weaves together his grandfather's life, the ritual walk, his grandfather's funeral, and his own emotional journey through it all (as I touch on later, this is a key theme within the book: the parallels between emotional, physical and life journeys.) Macfarlane seems to be more connected to Scotland.

It was here that I began to be drawn into the book. He goes on to walk other paths in England, including the Broomway (across the tidal sands in Essex), before moving onto Scotland. He begins his walking with the ancient, chalk-pathed Icknield Way, which starts in Norfolk and runs through to Buckinghamshire. So, the premise of the book: Macfarlane travels to various places across the globe (although mostly within the UK) to retread paths which have been used from decades to millennia. It took sometime to read as: (1) I am a slow reader(!) (2) it is a book that needs to be thought about and digested, rather than it simply being an exercise in getting to the end and (3) there were times when I was not the mood to read it due to point (2). 've ducked out of doing a full review as it felt too daunting! So, here are some themes which stood out for me, having just finished reading Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways.

The old ways robert