I'm not surprised that Lasham impressed you. They impress me as well! The cafe and bar are good as well IMHO. You definitely should have mentioned 'bar'!
Just about all serious XC pilots today use a PDA or PNA with a moving map with airspace and turnpoints on, and software which will warn when they are close, which helps quite a bit. It will also have the declared task in and will help with working out which direction to fly in if one is slightly confused, and with getting into the TP zone correctly - either a .5km barrel, or a 90-degree FAI sector. A lot of the pilots also use them for glide range calculations. I use one though the flight computer in the glider not only does the vario sounds, so long as I get the co-ordinates right it gives me a clue as to what direction to fly in, how fast to fly (head wind - fly faster, tail wind - fly slower unless above glide slope), how far it is to the next TP and what the bearing is. However the chart is
always to hand.
Also many of the serious chaps are are very, very familiar with where they are flying and where known 'hot spots' are.
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And as one does more gliding and thermalling the actual business of thermalling takes less and less of one's concious thoughts, so more is left for concentrating on things like how long to stay in the thermal, where the next one might be and so on.
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Also I guess you never got far away from Lasham - traffice density drops fairly quickly as you get out of glide range as you are leaving all the ab initios and nearly all the pre-Bronze and many of the pre-Silver pilots in the local area.
It is all so, so much easier on a good day, where the clouds don't lie (e.g. if it looks good it will be) and there are decent streets - and tasking up & down the streets makes it easier as well, so long as you manage to stay in the 'lift' street and don't blunder into the 'sink' street.
Lasham also has the fun was watching the arrivals and departures to ATC - I doubt there are many places where you are that close to the active runway.
BTW there is one other vital task if you are not finding lift - picking a safe field...
And did you get any introduction to the various methods of 'in-cockpit relief'?
