I dunno... nipping of to the coast on a nice day seems a pretty good reason to have a PPL to me...
but, I also fly gliders. Gliding is easy -there's nothing difcult about and don't beleive anyone who says otherwise. But what you will get from gliding is lots of practice engine failure and lots of dead stick landings
. It will give you a better sence of the atmosphere; for example, what you call turbulance is infact the lifting energy of a thermal. I know lots of power pilots, myself included, who use thermals to climb and get better perfomance out of our aircraft. What gliding will give you is the confidence to dump your a/c in a field if the donkey quits and a lot of good stick and rudder practice.