Hi LL,
I fly with BAE Flying Club, but we use Westair facilities at BPL. All seems fairly slick to me in the Westair hangar. They have their own engineers next door...
There are a couple of schools based there so worth a drive round to chat to them all and see which you prefer.
I'm relatively new to the area, having trained elsewhere, but am finding local navigation quite straight forward. Fujiflyer is dead right - loads of good landmarks to help the navigation. Also a swift and competent ATC copes well with everythign from PPLs, microloghts, gliding sites and not forgetting holiday charter flights and Ryanair!
Have fun, wherever you end up,
Bear 555
:-)