Overview

The Hidden Ways takes us out on Scotland’s older routes, the ones that shaped travel before modern roads made everything smooth and fast. We walk with Alistair Moffat as he traces Roman roads, pilgrim paths, drove roads, turnpikes, old rail lines, and sea roads. Each route becomes a way into history. We meet soldiers, drovers, traders, and travellers through what they left behind in place names, stones, and the shape of the ground. The book is part walking journey and part alternative history, built from the simple question of how people moved, and what that movement did to Scotland.

Writing & Voice

We found the voice warm, alert, and packed with story. Moffat writes like a historian who likes mud on his boots. He moves from a bend in a track to a tale of work, belief, and conflict without making it feel like a lecture. The best stretches have the rhythm of a good walk, steady forward motion with pauses to look closer.

Content & Perspective

We stay close to the lived experience of travel, the tired legs, the weather, the wrong turns, and the surprise of finding a line in the landscape that still holds. We also get a strong sense of who used these ways and why, not just the famous, but the ordinary people whose lives depended on routes to markets, churches, and safety. We liked how the book keeps asking what gets remembered, and what gets paved over.

Themes

The book is about movement and power, and about how landscapes store pressure from the past. We see how roads pull communities together and how they split them, too. We also feel a steady argument for paying attention, for reading Scotland as something made by many hands and many feet, not only by grand events.

What Worked

• Route by route structure that keeps the history grounded in place.
• Rich storytelling that brings hidden lives back into view.
• A walker’s eye for detail in weather, distance, and terrain.

Minor Quibbles

• Some digressions run long when we wanted to stay on the path.
• A few sections assume local knowledge that not every reader will have.

Final Thoughts

We came away wanting to slow down and look harder, because the book makes every quiet track feel like a record of lives.

Rating: ★★★★★ / 5