Ah, another 463 pilot. we are a rare bunch, as not many were made. I had BGA1305. Moving from an Olympia 2b it was quite a step forward in performance as you observed. Lovely plane to fly, easy to rig, and put in the trailer. I fitted an artificial horizon and went cloud flying since I often got to cloud base with it and it seemed a shame to waste a good thermal. I got to 8000ft in cloud once at Sutton Bank when up there doing my instructors ticket.
However, I had an experience of not making it back to the field, on my final check for cross-country in the 2b. The custom at our club was to spread a large bed sheet out in the middle of the field and you had to land and stop on it, or very near, to pass the check. I had a winch launch and picked up a small thermal at the top of the launch. Instead of sticking to the task in hand I could not resist doing 'just a few turns' in this unexpected lift. A few turns more and I had lost it. What I had not noticed while circling was that the wind had got up since I left terra firma, and I was now well down wind of the club. No chance of getting back, but there was a very small farmer's field right on the airfield boundary, and I headed back home knowing that I was going in there, come what may. No one had ever tried landing there. I landed nicely stopping just short of the fence, and as I was getting out I saw my fellow club members climbing over the fence, waving and laughing. They lifted the Oly on their shoulders, lifted it over the fence without de-rigging it, and put it back on our airfield. I was mortified at having messed up big time. The CFI asked me to hand over my log book and said he was grounding me for two weeks, but he was signing me off for C/C. He also informed me that he wanted me now to start training as an instructor. Cost me a bomb that night in the 'Tiger Moth' our local pub.
I had lots of fun in that 463. Sold it when I left the club on changing jobs, and it was destroyed in a midair a couple of years later when the Tiger chopped the tail off it. The CFI was flying it and he took to his chute and survived, but the tug pilot was killed. Very sad - he was a BBC cameraman and had made a nice film of our club.