My club is in Canada, so FAA rules don't quite apply (I know, the CARs
aren't that much different) We have a large field with many
runways, surrounded by farm land; the nearest town is 10 km away.

We restrict solo students to being within gliding range and they must
remain upwind of the field until they enter the landing circuit.
These restrictions remain in effect until they move beyond the 2-33
and 1-26 and take the Bronze Badge course. We don't allow cross-
country flights until the Bronze is completed, along with the Silver
duration flight, at which point we generally send our budding xc
pilots to a nice municipal airport 62 km away (with airport hopping
along the way).

XC in club ships requires that the pilot be licenced and checked out
for xc flights on type -- rig/de-rig, trailering, etc. We don't like
having our twin Grobs out on xc because they're such a pain to
retrieve from a field, plus we constantly use them for intro rides and
intermediate training. It will be interesting to see what happens
with our "new" DG500 that's intended for advanced training and xc
training.

Drat! I wanna go flying!!