I love desire paths

I just walked across a desire path. I do almost every day, in fact, unless it's been raining heavily. A desire path is a path that has been worn into existence because people have chosen that route rather than the made paths. Typically they are shortcuts. My desire path goes diagonally across the small park opposite my house. It is much more direct than the circular path that was put down by the council when they converted a bunch of houses and gardens into the park.

This is not the desire path in my park, but one in Greenwich Park
When I moved here, ten years ago now, the path led out of the park through a ragged hole in the brick wall across from my house. Either the wall had been gradually worn away by people climbing over it, or someone's desire for a direct route was so strong that they used a sledgehammer. This is how it remains for some years. Then a short but dramatic episode changed the wall and the status of the desire trail forever.

I was in bed one night and was awakened by a wildly revving engine followed by several loud crashes and then a huge crunching noise. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. A car had smashed into the wall, adjacent to the hole, so there was now a much bigger hole, with a wrecked car in it. On the way, it had wrecked at least one another car. As I watched a couple of people jumped out of the car and legged it across the park. Joyriders.

The wall remained in this sorry state for several weeks, I seem to remember, although the car was taken away pretty fast. And then one day a bricklayer showed up. A weatherbeaten solitary little man, who spent some days fixing the wall. I thought he would simply join up the two broken ends, to reform the original wall. But no, he build two end posts, leaving a comfortable gap framing the end of the desire path. So I think it now has "recognised desire path" status.

I suspect many of our roads went through the process of transition from desire path to a few made bits, to cobbled, to multilane highways with super-smooth Tarmacadam. And that's a great word to finish on.
Tarmacadam.





Here are some pictures of desire paths: http://www.flickr.com/groups/desire_paths/
This is a particularly funny one.













Tarmacadam