The Hidden Ways: Scotland's Forgotten Roads

Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month for May 2018

Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards

Anyone who wants to understand something of the elemental nature of our history should try to walk through it, should listen for the natural sounds our ancestor’s heard, smell the hedgerow honeysuckle… and feel the earth that was once grained into their hands.

In The Hidden Ways, Alistair Moffat traverses the lost paths of Scotland. Down Roman roads tramped by armies, warpaths and pilgrim routes, drove roads and rail roads, turnpikes and sea roads, he traces the arteries through which our nation's lifeblood has flowed in a bid to understand how our history has left its mark upon our landscape.

Combining the lyricism of Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways with a passionate engagement with his country’s history, Alistair Moffat takes readers on a journey to the heart of Scotland’s living past.

Moffat's travels along the hidden ways reveal not only the searing beauty and magic of the Scottish landscape, but open up a different sort of history, a new way of understanding our past by walking in the footsteps of our ancestors.

In retracing the forgotten paths, he charts a powerful, surprising and moving history of Scotland through the unremembered lives of those who have moved through it.