I've back seated a few of my course mates doing some CPL profiles, I'm sitting there trying to track crawl all the way round and it is so so much more hard work than heading / time!
You spend all your time trying to work out which little town it is off to your right, and this is where it can all go wrong.
It really is so much easier and less stressful thinking: right I'm going to pass a large town just off to the left in 8 minutes (and have a few features that can identify it). You can then spend that time with your head out of the cockpit, talking on the radio, cruise checks, pax comfort etc. rather than chasing your finger across a map.
Once you have positively identified what your fix is in your event cycle then you do what you can to get back on track as fast as you can. You can use standard closing angle or if its easier just 'fly to' where you want to be. You can then adjust your heading with your track error at the last fix.
There also comes a time where track crawling is necessary however. On my CPL test I had to nav from Bournemouth to Frome, with a diversion to the Northeast for circuits at Blackbushe. Once I had turned at Frome I track crawled briefly along the railway line to keep me away from Keevil, yet still outside the Salisbury danger areas. I then flew direct to the southern tip of devises to pick up my planned heading from there. Examiner only mentioned that my nav was 'well managed'.
One final point - How wrong could it go between fixes? If you choose say, every 6 to 8 minutes to have a ground or radio aid feature then every 8 mins you know that you are on track (or adjusting to get to it). Assuming a generous 120kts for most PPL aircraft then thats only sixteen miles covered, that is a thumb and a half! Hardly much time for it to go wildly wrong, especially as you have spent those 8 minutes accurately flying and making sure that you don't run into anyone else!