The Old Ways By Robert MacFarlane

Reading this book was a little triumph over the capitalist machine, Amazon sent me an email recommending it, and so I got it out of the local library…

Robert MacFarlane begins with some general reflections on walking, and cites numerous philosophers who have mused that “real” thinking can only be done while walking – “I can only meditate when I am walking” said Rousseau, while Nietzsche is quoted “Only those thoughts which come from walking have any value.”

This draws on a strong sense that the pace of walking is in tune with the natural rhythm of life and thought.  From my experience of walking Northern Leg (Student Cross) over the last few years I can certainly testify to the special relationship there is between some really deep thought and walking the road. 

He then goes on to recount for a number of walks which he has made.  The first is down the Icknield Way from Cambridge passing through my old home of Baldock, which gets a mention (just!). 

One of the most powerful walks is out on the mud flats off the edge of Essex, it seems to be a transgressive act to walk out where the sea should be and yet there is a draw towards this landscape [sic].  He quotes William Fox who found “cognitive dissonance in isotropic spaces” and once again I’m thinking of Northern Leg – those days we spend crossing the Fens are all important to the experience.  There is a blankness that allows the mind, away from the distractions of our hyperactive 21^st Century lifestyle, to settle on what is important. 

This year I missed the days on the Fens, and found that on those days while I was back at work there was a nagging sense of claustrophobia.  I hope that my colleagues didn’t notice the wild look in my eyes, wistful to be away and out there - even as the wind bit and the snow came down.  Having walked Northern without the Fens I now realise that is not the exquisite beauty of Castle Acre that is my favourite place, it is a mile out from the Daffodil Barn, when lunch is just around the next bend in the road (aka 3 miles away!).

There are other powerful chapters, for example when he walks in Palestine, when the land is contested and the “open road” has become an oxymoron, but towards the end of the book I got a bit lost in the chapters devoted to the poet Edward Thomas.

It is a rich book, and there was one of those blissful ironies that as I read it the radio was reporting a study that Brits walk for an average of only 9.5 minutes a day – no wonder we are so often an unthinking society…