Just driving the car even being engaged over phone calls during the journey may scale the distance and complete the journey but we can not expect creativity and above all there is inherent risk in carrying out the casual act.

FORBES: 10 Reasons Why We Struggle With Creativity

And although they cannot compete with aeroplanes for speed, or with water-borne shipping for volume, they could cover in a few days a distance equivalent to a six-week journey by ship.

ECONOMIST: Pushing the envelope

We were walking on the recently created Abraham Path, Turkey's newest trekking route and the northernmost section of an ambitious vision begun in 2008 to create a long-distance trail through the Middle East based on the journey of the Prophet Abraham.

BBC: Echoes of an ancient land along Turkey's Abraham Path

Phobos-Grunt still has a short window in which to start its journey before a change in the alignment of the planets makes the distance to the Red Planet too big to cross.

BBC: Signal picked up from Russia's stranded Mars probe

Then perhaps some historian will look again at Mr Hague's speech this month, aided by the enchantment lent by distance, and see that here started the Tories' long journey from trauma and defeat to power.

ECONOMIST: William Hague scrambles the omelette

Road-pricing has long been championed by economists, keen to impose more of the external costs of driving on road-users by charging them a fee that reflects not just the distance travelled (which is loosely what gasoline taxes do) but also the time and route of the journey.

ECONOMIST: Road-pricing in California