The IMC rating can be very useful if you are thinking about an IR later, as long as you treat it sensibly. If you want to use it to fly from A to B there is no reason that you shouldn't, the priveleges of the rating attached to a PPL allow you to, obviously with limitations on landing minima and some controlled airspace. But there is no reason not to plan flights under a lot of the airways structure if you avoid the south east of the UK.
When I was instructing full time, after students had got the rating back, and could thus log IMC flying as P1, we used to do that with them for a few trips, with an instructor acting as safety pilot but not putting anything in the instructors log book (obviously needs instructors who are not hours building themselves). If you can spend a 50 of your hours building for a modular CPL flying cross country flights in IMC, departing IFR and arriving IFR to a procedural ILS or non precision approach to minimas you will be much better prepared for the IR, and if you can find a like minded colleague, although you can only log half of the time, you can spend the other half sitting in the right hand seat practising your radio nav orientation plus you can monitor each other to make sure that you are flying to IR standards and not getting sloppy.
Also, take the time to learn morse code - it isn't required anymore, but flying single pilot IFR with no autopilot is a lot easier if you don't have to look away from your scan to read the dots and dashes printed on the approach chart.