Bóthar
England is criss-crossed by routes that were originally laid down by the Romans. When it came time to construct modern roads, it often made sense to use these existing routes rather than trying to designate entirely new ones. So some of the roads in England are like an early kind of desire path.
Desire paths are something of a cliché in the UX world. They’re the perfect metaphor for user-centred design; instead of trying to make people take a pre-defined route, let them take the route that’s easiest for them and then codify that route.
This idea was enshrined into the very design principles of HTML as “pave the cowpaths”:
When a practice is already widespread among authors, consider adopting it rather than forbidding it or inventing something new.
Ireland never had any Roman roads. But it’s always had plenty of cowpaths.
The Irish word for cow is bó.
The Irish word for road is bóthar, which literally means “cowpath”.
The cowpaths were paved in both the landscape and the language.