Gathered parent essentially is stopping friend travelling (8)
I believe the answer is:
inferred
'gathered' is the definition.
('infer' can be a synonym of 'gather')
'parent essentially is stopping friend travelling' is the wordplay.
'parent essentially' becomes 're' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'is stopping' means one lot of letters goes inside another (stopping can mean blocking a gap).
'travelling' is an anagram indicator.
'friend' anagrammed gives 'inferd'.
're' put within 'inferd' is 'INFERRED'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for inferred that I've seen before include "Rein Fred in because he deduced" , "Deduced by reasoning" , "'Concluded, judged from the facts (8)'" , "Conjectured" .)