"The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot", the third in the "loose trilogy of books about landscape and the human heart" begun by "Mountains of the Mind" and "The Wild Places", was published in June 2012. It was acclaimed as a "tour de force" by William Dalrymple in "The Observer". The book describes the years Macfarlane spent following "old ways" (pilgrimage paths, sea-roads, prehistoric trackways, ancient rights of way) in south-east England, north-west Scotland, Spain, Sichuan and Palestine. Its guiding spirit is the early-twentieth-century writer and poet, Edward Thomas, and its chief subject is the reciprocal shaping of people and place. "The Old Ways" was in the bestseller lists for six months.