It is definitely better to try to go longer & further away. You quickly exhaust the local opportunities to fly to interesting places, unless you have a reasonably short/grass-strip capable machine. In a typical 1.5 hour club booking slot, it is difficult to land, pay the landing fee and get back from anywhere that is more than 20 minutes flying time frrom your home base! (A question for the airfields - How about accepting pre-payment for landing fees, and allow booking out over the radio, to minimise the time spent sorting these out on the gound?)
Longer flights allow you to get into a routine of doing freda checks, refining your navigation, leaning the engine, flying at flight levels etc.
I keep local trips for practising stalls, steep turns, bad weather circuits & PFLs when I'm forced to stay local due to unpredicatable weather.
I've found I have to plan to fly much more than I need to. I now plan to fly four times a month, and find I'm only able to fly twice a month due to weather, and changes to my availability and the aircraft's. All plans are for long trips, but if there is an opportunity to fly a short trip, I will take this as it better to keep the continuity going, and avoid any club continutity issues.
tp