Autistic Special Interests: Do You Have a Topic That You’re Obsessed With?

I’m obsessed with boundaries. I also quite like abandoned roads.

My dad laughs at me when I get enthusiastic about boundaries.

But as it turns out, one of the traits of autism is having a special interest or obsession. For some people, this could be railway tracks. For others it might be:

• different types of rocks,
• computer processor types,
• or even weird diseases.

For me, it’s boundaries, like county boundaries and international borders. I like knowing where one place ends and another place begins.

Google Maps and Street View can be great for this. Sometimes I have used up a whole evening analyzing the city boundary of Bristol in England. I look at all the locations on all the roads where the boundary is and check to see whether there is a sign marking the boundary. I get a bit annoyed if I find a spot that doesn’t have a sign.

Chepstow in Wales is an interesting one. There is an old bridge over the River Wye which marks the border between England and Wales. It’s also where the counties of Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire meet.

Here is the English side:

And here is the Welsh side:

Notice there is no “Welcome to Wales” sign. Only a sign saying “Monmouthshire Sir Fynwy” (Sir Fynwy is the Welsh for Monmouthshire). But a closer look at the pub shows that it says “The First and Last Pub in Wales”.

Abandoned roads is another thing that interests me.

One example is the Devil’s Punch Bowl in Surrey, England. The name comes from the shape of the hill, which forms a natural amphitheatre. Until 2011, the A3 main road used to go round the top of the hill, as you can see in this photo from 2007:

In 2011, they dug a tunnel through the bottom of the hill, and the A3 got redirected through there. The old route of the A3 across the hill was then dug up and returned to a grass landscape. Here is a photo of it from 2012:

Or how about this abandoned section of PA 61 in Pennsylvania with graffiti all over it:

But here’s what's great about all this. If I ever get enough money to go travelling, these abandoned roads will give me specific things to go and see.

What’s your autistic special interest?

More from me…

• If Most People Were Autistic, Would Non-autistic Introverts Have the Most Power?
• Why Autistic People Don’t Necessarily Get On Well With Each Other
• The Important Difference Between Introversion and Shyness: Why They Are Not the Same
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