Shall I understand that so that you made use of the French rules allowing you to fly VMC on top (if I am not mistaking) and "hoped" for a hole in the clouds before destination?
It's not a "french rule".
Every PPL can fly VFR without sight of surface, worldwide.
Unless his license says he cannot (and
UK issued ones do). No other European country
AFAIK has such a limitation on its PPLs.
However if the UK PPL gets an IMCR or an IR, this restriction falls away and he can now fly VFR without sight of surface worldwide.
(The IMCR
IFR privileges are a different thing; they are limited to UK only).
Correct about the hole in the cloud
There are various ways to deal with this
My flying will be towards Northern Europe where the weather possibly is more rubbish than in the UK, so that would be quite a gamble for me. I can of course make an ILS approach based on what I will learn on the IMC course and hope that they are not checking....but I am not sure of the (legal) risks I would be running, and seems not to be something you would plan for (emergencies are different, of course)
I would never do that.
To even get away with it practically, you would need the "IR lingo" which admittedly you could pick up by flying with a real IR pilot.
N of the UK (Sweden, Norway etc) is really tricky, VFR or IFR. Much of the time Norway is so covered in fronts you cannot see its outline on the pressure chart
It is the province of either waiting for good weather (for both out and back legs), or having seriously capable (de-iced, etc) hardware.
I keep half an eye on a trip to Trondheim (ENVA), which I can nonstop (900nm or so) from southern UK, and being able to go nonstop dramatically reduces the weather risk, but at least 90% of the time the flight is not flyable on any assesment of risk I am willing to do (icing conditions, cloud tops, etc).
I am not so concerned about having to have an N-reg plane available, there seems to be plenty available for purchase and hire.
Sure, but the hourly rate of the N-reg Cirrus SR22 groups is "interesting"
And for real IFR you don't want some old dog. You need something in which everything works, and the owner has a policy of close to zero defects.
I am more concerned about the EU ni their visdom deciding to ban N-regs to be permanently based in Europe or something, which could leave you with an FAA PPL and IR that are useless and an JAA PPL that has lapsed?
There is no indication of a ban on N-reg
airframes parking here long term. That was tried in 2005 or so and dropped. There would be various work-arounds, as well as a total lack of enforceability within the current aviation framework.
EASA's present tack is to ban
European residents from flying in EU airspace on foreign licenses. The rather badly worded proposal is
here (pages 159-161). IMHO, they won't be able to pull off something this aggressive.
The worst case, if EASA gets everything, gets the backing of the EC for this, and gets EC's backing to stick a finger up to the USA with total disregard for the wider political fallout, appears to be that you will need to do a JAA/EASA IR, but the conversion route from an FAA IR is not onerous - especially if done in some countries other than the UK
It's a perfectly reasonable risk management option. Obviously, you would do it only if EASA's proposal does not melt down. I am keeping half an eye on this too, but have better things to do than the 7 PPL/IR exams.
IMHO, there will either be a total meltdown of all anti N-reg initiatives (and some press consensus seems to support this of late; I hope they are right), or there will be a compromise, with generous transition routes for FAA IR holders. There is simply too much sh*t which will hit the fan otherwise, with jet operators who are politically immensely powerful and were prob99 almost solely responsible for killing the 2005 DfT (and the 2004 French) proposal to kick out N-reg and other foreign airframes.
But if you can't get an N-reg plane of a suitable spec, forget the FAA route.