Wow. Glad I asked! Have spent the weekend watching a few youtube channels and that's just made it a harder choice!
Having researched Philippines aviation, currently it doesnt seem to matter what licence I have, so I'll discount that for now. I would like the flexibility however, but reading up it seems qualifying in the minimum hours is fairly rare, which may make the full PPL a bit prohibitive for me at this stage. Therefore it sounds like a NPPL(M) would let me qualify comfortably within budget, and then be able to fly around the UK quite happily to start with. I would assume if I then went for a full PPL I should be able to relatively comfortably qualify in the minimum hours, or is that a poor assumption to make?
I also assume that the NPPL(M) would be limited only to UK microlight flight and wouldn't allow flying in Ireland, or elsewhere in the EU, and if I wanted to do that I'd need the LAPL? If I do a PPL, what additional cost is there then to switch to 3axis microlights? Or can I just jump straight in (with a check flight?)