Robert Macfarlane · 2012 · global

Robert Macfarlane's 2012 book of walking. Setting out from his Cambridge home, Macfarlane follows the ancient tracks and sea-roads that thread Britain - the chalk Icknield Way, the deadly tidal Broomway off Essex, the Cairngorm passes, the old boat-lanes of the Hebrides - and then paths further out into the world, from the war-walked hills of Palestine to the sacred mountain circuits of Tibet.

1. 1
   Cambridge

   Macfarlane sets out from his home in Cambridge to walk the old ways - the holloways, drove-roads and paths worn into Britain over millennia by pilgrims, traders and the dead.

2. 2
   The Icknield Way

   He follows the chalk Icknield Way, reputed the oldest road in Britain, tracing the footsteps of the walking-poet Edward Thomas across the downland of southern England.

3. 3
   The Broomway

   Off the Essex coast he risks the Broomway - the 'Doomway' - an ancient path over tidal sands that has drowned scores of walkers caught by the racing tide and the fog.

4. 4
   The Cairngorms

   North in Scotland he crosses the Cairngorm massif on foot, south to north, on a ritual walk to the funeral of his grandfather, a mountaineer who taught him the hills.

5. 5
   The Hebrides

   From the Isle of Lewis he takes to the sea-roads of the ancient Celts, sailing the old water-paths out through the Hebrides toward the lonely gannet-rock of Sula Sgeir.

6. 6
   Ramallah

   Further out into the world, he walks the hills around Ramallah in Palestine with the writer Raja Shehadeh, for whom a simple stroll has become a small, repeated act of defiance under occupation.

7. 7
   Minya Konka

   And at the far edge of the book he joins the pilgrim kora, the sacred walking-circuit around the great Tibetan mountain of Minya Konka - the oldest of the old ways, a path walked as prayer.