Winner of the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild Award for Excellence: Outdoor Book 2019

Chris Townsend embarks on a 700-mile walk along the spine of Scotland, the line of high ground where fallen rain runs either west to the Atlantic or east to the North Sea. Walking before the Independence Referendum of 2014, and writing after the EU Referendum of 2016, he reflects on: nature and history, conservation and rewilding, land use and literature, and change in a time of limitless potential for both better and worse.

'700 miles of rough, untracked wildness where the waters flow west on one side and east on the other. In walking along the spine of Scotland he has discovered the country's heart.'

Cameron McNeish, author of There's Always the Hills

'Not simply a long-distance walker but a fine writer who can evoke both the physical and mental journeys such undertakings entail.'

Richard Else, author of Wainwright Revealed