Kolibear
Unfortunately, most people don't take the view that flying should be a sport for masochists
The process you describe is great for knowing the local area, which is OK for instructors who rarely get a chance to fly past the nearest crease in the chart, but flying just locally at £100+ per hour gets dead boring very quickly, for most people. A real pilot going to real places needs to be able to plan a flight and fly there, without working out if/where there are railways or whatever along the route.
As for railways, they can be OK until hidden among trees, and unfortunately there are other reasons for straight or gently curving lines of trees. Also above about 1000ft it's hard to make out that it's a railway.
A fresh PPL, wanting to go to interesting places without the constant worry about whether one has missed this or that ground feature, or forgot to restart the stopwatch, etc. should buy a decent GPS.