Learning to fly is a great hobby and your aspiration to fly into Europe the dream of many pilots. Flying is an expensive hobby and I'm based at Fairoaks in Surrey where you can get to Le Touquet, Channel Islands, Normandy etc within an hour. From Edinburgh, you'd need to add about 4 hours each way just to get to the south coast at typical light plane cruise speeds. For a return trip at club rates or a group share, you're looking at somewhere between £700~£1,200 just to get to the south coast of England.
I'd say that was fairly prohibitive.
Listen very carefully to what Flight Level said. (s)he speaks a lot of sense.
If you have to sell your car to fund the lessons, you might find a flight to contential Europe from Edinburgh to be rather expensive.
A typical light aircraft will cost you somewhere between £100-£150 to rent per hour. The cheaper ones will only car two people (slowly) and the more expensive will carry 3 + luggage (or 4 and no luggage) a bit faster.
You only pay for the hours that the engine is running, but most clubs/schools will expect you to use a certain number of hours per day. Typically this is 2-4 hours. So for example, if you are being charged a minimum of 3 hours per day, and you fly somewhere for a week (7 days) then you will be charged the higher of a) the number of hours the engine was running for or b) 21 hours (7days*3 hours per day).
Also, unless you have an Instrument Rating (expensive to get and maintain) and a well equipped (read expensive and not easily found for self hires) you will not be able to fly in weather where visibility is not great, or cloud base is low. This means that you are unlikely to make Europe on a predetermined schedule.
I don't mean to put a dammer on things for you, but if you're making a large sacrafice such as selling your car, just to find your flight training, you need to understand what you are getting in return, and not have false hopes.
Flying is a great privlidge, and wonderful fun. You will get to make some lovely trips, but as you want to travel further away they become very expensive, and extremely weather dependent.
A lot of people start out with great ideas such as yours. Unfortunately most people give up flying within 2 years of getting their licence.
Something for you to think about.
dp