Wordsworth put it well:
I love a public road: few sights there are
That please me more–such object has had power
O’er my imagination since the dawn
Of childhood, when its disappearing line
Seen daily afar off, on one bare steep
Beyond the limits which my feet had trod,
Was like a guide into eternity,
At least to things unknown and without bound.
(From the Prelude, quoted in the marvelous Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit)
There we have it, the vast territory of walking, from the public road with its letterboxes and shops and everybody under the sun, and the “guide to eternity”.
A road has appeared out of the mist and I can just make out the signpost . . . Istanbul . . . and is that Constantinople almost obliterated.