A little history lesson... In these villages they herded enormous flocks (1000's) of sheep on the high, dry land. Each day they would come from all stables and 'web out' onto the heathland, hence these paths. At night they stay in stables, and the muck, mixed with turves of heathland, was thrown onto the fields as fertilizer. The ground was all sandy and barren in these areas, that's why. That's also why these cultivated fields are often meters higher than the rest of the land (still very visible).
And by the sheep's grazing the heathland stayed heathland, as heather can stand dry land, and the grass and young trees are eaten away by all the sheep.
Until the invention of artificial fertilizer more than a century ago this (actually manmade) landscape stayed intact. After that, all the herds disappeared, and now we have to manage the few remaining heathlands with flocks of sheep again, or they'd turn into forest eventually.
