You have to love the quaint old concept of the flying club don't ya. You pay them say £150 for your annual membership and what exactly do you get? Nought. Well not unless you can put a price on having access to an aircraft that you in turn have to flick them £130/hr for. Yet you can join a rugby club and play rugby, squash membership gets you access to the squash courts etc etc.
Always struck me as strange how in the US a ltd co. can set up as an FTO and let people like ourselves come over and rent their planes for just the wet hourly rate after the obligatory 1 hour check ride. Yet in the UK it has to be made to difficult with a so called not for profit club structure run principally by a committee that changes every year and thinks that they need to leave some sort of legacy that invariably turns to custard for the next encumbants.
I was looking for a share to do some hour building but have decided that it just isn't going to work over here. I don't want to have to join some club just for the sake of having access to a group aircraft somewhere and there is no certainty that I will be able to sell the share when I am done hour building in it plus I have the very real risk that I might have to cough up more cash for unexpected maintenance along the way. My conclusion is to hop on a plane and burn the hours in the US. Sad but it seems true.