Walking was for Raja Shahada a kind of civil disobedience and I was fascinated by the politics of walking as well as by its aesthetics. The immediacy of that experience was to him a different way of defeating the occupation, it was a way in fact of avoiding politics which had infiltrated his life so totally, totally. That spoke very powerfully to me though we found it very hard to avoid politics for any length of time. He also became over all the years my walking increasingly interested in pilgrimage as a practice and as a metaphor because it is on pilgrimage that we most explicitly allow places to know us. And then he ended up in Spain like many English walkers before himself where he found his
For several years and more than a thousand miles, celebrated travel writer Robert Macfarlane has been following the vast network of old paths and routes that criss-cross Britain and its waters, looking at their connections to countries and continents beyond.
In this event, recorded at the Tabernacle in London On the 12th of June 2012, Macfarlane tells us his enthralling accounts of the ghosts and voices that haunt old tracks, of songlines and their singers, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of rights of way and rites of passage.
This event was produced by Executive Producer Hannah Kaye with editing by Executive Producer Rowan Slaney.
To hear the full length episode of this event and to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, head to intelligence Squared.com/membership or subscribe on Apple Podcasts
—
We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next, who we should have on and what our future debates should be.
Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to podcasts@intelligencesquared.com or Tweet us @intelligence2.
And if you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared..
Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices