I've been to Welshpool many times and while it would be a nice place to learn from, the weather there is maybe 75% of the time sub VFR and certainly "sub ab initio PPL learning".
Mind you, I lost some 90% of my booked PPL lessons down in the south east...
To compare USA with the UK, one would need to be living in a hut next to the UK airfield, and flying every day. Almost nobody actually does this, which is the main reason why a UK PPL normally takes a year or so while a US one takes ~ 6 weeks. Others reasons include better organisation, less aircraft downtime, etc.
A South African PPL is worth no more and no less than an FAA PPL - the difference is that you can get an N-reg plane and get worldwide privileges that way (and maintain it to FAA requirements right here) whereas I have not come across anybody doing that with a SA plane.
It's actually potentially quite interesting to look into operating say an Australian plane in the UK. Risk-wise (the risk of foreign reg having action against them at some future date) it would be the same as FAA. They do have interesting certification options in Australia - probably the 3rd biggest GA scene in the world, after USA and UK.