People seem to be of the opinion that the 300nm has to be as the crow fly's
Why exactly does any pilot want to fly as close to home as he possibly can? You're supposed to ENJOY flying... get off your arse and go discover some new places
I'd done loads of trips which would qualify as a CPL QXC before I got anywhere near 100hrs TT, one of them being LEEDS-L2K-SCILLIES-LEEDS. Just do it as part of your hour building.
As far as the VFR thing goes, all they care about is what's in your logbook. The accepted path is that you won't have any kind of instrument rating at that point, so they expect VFR. Noone checks, and noone cares.