Basic question: Rigify - how do you use the Root Bone?

I’ve seen a lot of tutorials on Rigify showing how to create a walkcycle, but how do you use the Root bone (the circle with the arrows) for your animation?
Do you use if to move your character in large ‘chunks’ at a time, animating the rest of the limbs as you go, or do you put it in a specific spot and then ‘animate away from it’? I.e. do you just leave it there?
And how does that work if you want your character climbing a tree or doing summersaults or something like that? I have no idea what you do with that root bone then.

Any info will be greatly appreciated.