Two different worlds there.
I used to fly under FAA rules, when we would do two hours on a traffic-reporting flight, all the way around the Washington Beltway before landing back at Manassas unable to log that as X-C because we hadn't landed anywhere fifty miles away.
But here in Germany it used to be 'any flight out of sight of the aerodrome of departure' was a X-C flight. If that's 3 NM, okay.
In fact, some of the (prescribed) German VFR traffic patterns were so large that one was forced to navigate one's way back to the landing strip, since it was, indeed, out of sight. When I questioned the wisdom of getting so far off from the field at low level in a single-engine aircraft I was firmly told that I had to fly the pattern depicted in the AIC. It seemed a bit daft to me but those were the rules.
One day I needed to get three take-offs and landings in to stay current, when the visibility was down to minimums. I just went wazzing around the pattern, staying in sight of the field, with each circuit taking about 1:30. I landed to get such a ticking-off from the powers that be about not flying the presribed pattern, when I just smiled and pleaded ignorance of the various visual wayppoints, plus fear of blundering into a TV mast in the murk. I could just see going IMC in a Robin DR-400 and then trying to find Scharnhorst again. I would leave that to the Germans to try on their home turf. All I knew were the obstacles back 'home' in Nigeria.