You could also consider South Africa, Australia, Canada and so on, and get to fly in some spectacular scenery. South Africa is usually extremely good value and has a huge variety of landscape and conditions, from coastal to hot and high. You can usually get your PPL (but SAA PPL - still legal in UK) all in for around the £3k mark, including flights and accomodation.
Personally I would complete my PPL in Uk if that is where most of your flying will be and then hour build or just have a really good flying holiday in one or the other of the above countries.
This need not mean you couldn't do an intensive course over here, if you look in the classifieds of any popular flying publication you will find several UK clubs/schools that offer this for not much more than the US equivalent. Add to that the lack of PPL students at the moment and you could strike a deal I'm sure.
Whatever you decide have fun.