Robert Macfarlane follows the old ways - those paths, hollow ways, tracks, field and water routes that have connected human settlements since antiquity and still serve as invisible signposts guiding our movements. His journey takes the UK's foremost nature writer from the English chalk cliffs to the remote bird islands of Scotland, from the cultural landscapes of Spain to the pilgrimage routes of Palestine and all the way to the Himalayas. It allows him to tread in footsteps that are five thousand years old and to drift out into the night Atlantic in a small sailboat. He listens to the stories that these ancient paths still tell and to the voices of those he encounters on his walks: other hikers, strollers, and seekers of meaning, even Tibetan monks. He soon realizes that these old paths are more than just ways to traverse a space.