For me, there is a lot to love in this tiny book. It sits somewhere between poetry, fable and travel, which makes it a nightmare to shelve if you're a book seller, but an absolute delight if you're a reader. Macfarlane attempts to recreate a walk he took in 2005 through the Hollow Ways of South Dorset with his friend, the nature writer, Roger Deakin. Now, six years after Deakin's death he returns with writer, Dan Richards and artist, Stanley Donwood in an attempt to honour his friend and find some of the haunting magic that lingers in these hollowed out paths, worn deep into the landscape by human feet, century after century. Sections are drawn, sections are poetry, sections are prose, all is odd and dark and strange in the best way.

This was written in memorial to the great nature writer Roger Deakin, sadly taken from us all at the peak of his writing powers. Macfarlane, Richards and Doonwood revisit the Dorset village of Chideock and search again for the holloway that Macfarlane and Deakin visited in 2005. They find it, and so begins the discovery of the landscape that these ancient trackways inhabit. Sadly it is a very short book, but it contains some very fine very writing and some exquisite art by Richard of these hollow ays. Its intensity is matched by its brevity and you are left wanting more.

A very short read and probably best suited to those with a fey disposition. Not the "roadmap" of Dorset byways that I had expected.