Ran around Sofia, all out of sorts to be participating in expedition (8)

'of sorts to be participating in expedition' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't tell whether this works.

'ran around sofia all' is the wordplay.
'ran' becomes 'gone' ('go' can be a synonym of 'run').
'around' means to look at the middle letters.
'sofia all' becomes 'safari' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The centre of 'gone' is 'on'.
'on'+'safari'='ONSAFARI'

'out' is the link.

Can you help me to learn more?