Northern Ireland in general, just like 60,000 Orangemen yesterday, has travelled a considerable distance in recent years. And all roads yesterday seemed to be leading to a small group of shops at Ardoyne in north Belfast and some very ugly and violent scenes.
North Belfast nationalists in particular but also Orangemen and their supporters will wake up sometime today feeling aggrieved - the Orangemen annoyed that they weren't allowed to swagger with their band and supporters past the shops; the nationalists furious that the brethren and their supporters got through at all.
Orangemen and the loyalists probably will feel they got the best of proceedings. Certainly the angriest people today will be the nationalists, who contend that both the spirit and letter of the Parades Commission's ruling banning the Orangemen's band and their supporters passing Ardoyne shops was ripped apart.
How last night's trouble plays in the next couple of days is critical to the rest of the summer and the chances of successful political negotiations in September. It should be in the interests of all parties to keep the lid on raging passions.
But that isn't always as easy as it might appear.
Senior Provisional republicans such as Mr Gerry Kelly and Mr Bobby Storey did their best to try to restrain the nationalists who attacked British army and PSNI security lines yesterday evening.
But they had great difficulty. At one stage Mr Kelly was pushed and pummelled by some of the nationalists intent on tearing into the police and army.
But it should be of some solace that there was really only one sectarian flashpoint yesterday, the Ardoyne shops. Compare that with other years: the riots, the killings, the sectarianism, the intimidation that often attended this stretch of the marching season taking in Drumcree, the Whiterock parades and the Twelfth.
People from all sides, including the Orange Order, have been tentatively and pragmatically crossing the sectarian line to try to achieve a calm marching season. The DUP, Ulster Unionists, Orangemen operating under the umbrella of community or political groupings, Sinn Féin, the SDLP, Provos and heavy loyalists have been engaging in intense behind-the-scenes contact. The danger now is that last night's violence could undo all that work.
As was evident at Ardoyne such restraint did not go down well with the nationalist and loyalist "crazies", whose sole purpose in life seems to be to foment violence and hatred. Yet, as was also evident, Provisional marshals generally tried to contain the nationalist hotheads while on the other side marshals and police ensured that the Orangemen, band and supporters did not loiter at the flashpoint.
The Ardoyne skirmishes will lead to post-mortems of course. For instance, it is known that Northern Secretary Mr Paul Murphy was far from pleased with some of the Parades Commission's decisions this year.
Last year the commission allowed the Orangemen, their band and supporters to parade past Ardoyne shops and there was an expectation the same rule would apply this year. However, as at Whiterock two weeks ago when commission decisions prompted Orangemen to engage indirectly with nationalists, the commission seemed to be hoping that restricting the brethren might bring further contact.
Mr Murphy, it is understood, expressed the view that the commission was taking an inordinate risk. A commission source said it "did not look at the wider political agenda", but Mr Murphy appears to believe it should consider the broader political prospect because a peaceful summer is crucial to the chances of the September talks resulting in a return to devolution, and what happened last night didn't assist that project.