According to Frédéric Gros, there are three kinds of freedom that walking bestows upon the walker:

1. Suspensive freedom: This freedom is experienced even in a short stroll but is accentuated by a longer excursion. It is the freedom from monotony and the illusions about what is essential, which leads to the appreciation of simple joys.

2. Transgressive freedom: This freedom is more aggressive—more rebellious. It is a freedom born from not settling on a brief escape from monotony as is afforded by the former freedom. It signifies a complete break, possibly longer excursions. The main difference here is that walking could break your sense of identity produces the following experiences:

   …surfeits of fatigue that make the mind wander, abundances of beauty that turn the soul over, excesses of drunkenness on the peaks, the high passes (where the body explodes).

3. Renunciatory freedom: The most uncommon kind of freedom that walking produces. It involves an intense experience of presence. It coincides with the Pilgrim stage in the four stages of life in Hindu philosophy.

References

Gros, F. (2014). A Philosophy of Walking. Verso.

there is the suspensive freedom that comes by walking, even a simple short stroll

With a longer excursion of several days, the process of self-liberation is accentuated: you escape the constraints of work, throw off the yoke of routine.

walking manages to free us from our illusions about the essential.

Walking only permits a temporary ‘disconnection’ from our daily lives: escape from the web for a few days, a brief out-of-system experience wandering untrodden paths. But one can also decide on a complete break.

after the rediscovery of simple joys and the reconquest of the primitive animal: the freedom of renunciation

During long cross-country wanders, you do glimpse that freedom of pure renunciation.