This opinion and it is an opinion is that in travelling 20 miles and returning along the same route instead of having travelled 40 miles you have travelled 20. If you were to travel there and return and travel there again and return you have still only travelled 20 miles.

This is because the distance is 20 miles.

If you were to use a different route but returned still to the start of the journey, 20 miles is still the distance covered.

You can only travel more than twenty if you keep travelling without returning. To travel 20 miles and one step is a further distance than travelling 20 miles and returning.

Are you familiar with the concept of displacement in kinematics?

It's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of consistent definition. Your distance traveled is 40 miles. Your displacement (as Klaynos has hinted, it the term to be using) is zero. Your maximum distance from the starting point is 20 miles.

 

Discussions in which you apply different definitions of a word to change the meaning suffer from the fallacy of equivocation.

This opinion and it is an opinion is that in travelling 20 miles and returning along the same route instead of having travelled 40 miles you have travelled 20. If you were to travel there and return and travel there again and return you have still only travelled 20 miles.

 

Looks like my odometer is broken then.