Many of us have strong, latent nomadic instincts and love the feeling of seeing something completely new and exciting each day.
With vehicle support to carry the luggage one can often cover up to 30 miles a day and view some very diverse scenery. It heightens the feeling of adventure to be seeing new places at every turn of the trail. In countries like France and Spain a day of riding can put you into quite a different region with new specialties in food and wine. You can also meet a broader range of local people. Often the places where riders stay on a progressive trip are very different from one another. You could be in a castle one night and staying in a rustic inn on another which can add to the charm of the journey.
There are some drawbacks to point to point travel because it means you have to be packing and unpacking every day. Also it makes it hard to get any laundry done if you move every day, but these are not major obstacles. Sometimes two overnights in the same spot from which one can make a day’s ride in another direction to see new places is part of the itinerary. When progressive rides are camping trips and the camp has to be moved things get more complicated. If the camp equipment can be moved by vehicle as is the case in Africa, it is not so difficult, but if it is a pack trip in the American wilderness, moving
poses other problems. Usually it takes at least one pack horse for every two riders and it takes considerable expertise to load a pack horse properly. One of the great charms of pack trips is that you can be independent of civilization and are always in close contact with your horse although the pace is necessarily slow.
