Choose your own adventure

There are two paths before you, one bleached white and open in the sun, teaming with runners and cyclists and pedestrians, the other weaving narrowly through fecund woodland echoing with the calls of wood pigeon, the occasional growl of a dog. One is busy, but with plenty of open space. The other is quiet, but enclosed and narrow. Which do you choose?

More to the point, when do you choose? Early as the sun is rising? In the mid-morning between breakfast and lunch? In that gap when lunchtime would normally be? In the afternoon – when surely everyone else will be out for their state-sanctioned constitutional? Or early evening, as the sun’s drifting towards the horizon when the evening air shows you its teeth?

Every socially distanced walk or run or cycle is, at its heart, the prisoner’s dilemma. Do you go out in the prime of the day, knowing that it might be busy? Do you go to the best-known spots, or do you try to explore somewhere equally local, but less on the beaten path? And what do you think other people will do? Because if no one goes for the prime spots at the height of the day, well, you’re going to have an uncomfortably busy walk at the fag-end of the day.

A side-effect of the global pandemic is that it will make game theorists of us all.