retrace one's steps

From Catherington, one may either retrace one’s steps to the Portsmouth Road above Horndean, or else continue on the by-lanes that bring the pedestrian to the highway below that wayside hamlet.

These points lie quite near to each other on the edge of the stream which here frets in its channel, hemmed closely by the rocks, but in order to reach any one of them it is always necessary to retrace one's steps to the village of Tji-jabang, on the plateau of the mountain, and thence scramble down and up again the precipitous rocky wall in height from 1000 to 1600 feet!

Great care and discrimination have to be exercised in selecting ledges that do not terminate upon such faces, as there is little hand grip, and turning to retrace one's steps is most unpleasantly difficult and dangerous.

And indeed there is something torturing in this sense of imprisonment within this long labyrinth, and in the knowledge that in order to escape from it alive there is no help for it, but to retrace one's steps along that vague succession of little turnings, strangling and obstructing.

One is led on and on with a zany Cartesian logic, but one can never retrace one's steps and relate the story coherently.