thing, sorry for the lack of response...been on hols!
Yes, heady feeling indeed. I am now unfortunately in the last few sessions period before the olympics. Because our airstrip is in the restricted zone around london, and the microlights aren't fitted with transponders, its "no lessons for a month". Combine this with the rash of microlight competitions, and it doesn't leave much weekend time to learn, so I am sooo glad i managed to do another cross country.
That said, next lesson is in a couple of sunday's time, and if the weather is still like this, my instructor might find me saying "put that 3-axis away and take me up in a flexwing!"
I just can't wait until I can do the type of day-out trips you mention. Its part the reason I went for a microlight. As one instructor said to me...if you don't care whether it takes 1 or 2 hours to get there, then you are far more likely to be able to afford to go places in a microlight than in a light aircraft.
So, by my calculation, my day out to Headcorn was a total of 2:10 flying, so that is £75 costs, or just over 19 litres of fuel (so about £26 of fuel, and £49 running costs)
Doesn't get much better than that!