One pilot-author I read decided it was time to stop after a Tiger Moth flight. He'd started it on the mag with the impulse on it as one should, but only after landing did he discover he'd forgotten to turn on the other mag, and had conducted the entire flight on one mag.
I'm 'between aeroplanes' at the moment and might or might not re-start flying. I did my PPL in 1978 and had a whale of a time in the late 70s, the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. But then the Chipmunk group moved to Liverpool, much further away from where I live. For a few years I put up with the extra travelling and hassle this involved... the final nail in the coffin for that group for me was when the John Lennon Airport got all serious about security and put up electronic gates which only an airside pass (obtainable at great cost) would open. Or you could perhaps persuade flying school staff to sign you in under their pass (legal but a right pain, especially if you need to get back out to your car again, then back in).
When we used to be Barton based one could pitch up at the airfield and sniff the air. If flight looked a possibility, one could wheel out the Chippy and go do a circuit. If it still looked OK from the air, one went flying. If not happy with it, one landed and went for a cuppa in the clubhouse to talk flying tales with other frustrated aviators in there.
At John Lennon one had to book out with a zone exit point so one didn't get airborne unless there was a good chance one would be happy to at least fly as far as that point after take off. One had read the TAFs, checked the wx at home 40 miles away, and driven 40 miles to the airfield. More often than not the wx wasn't good enough (vis or xwind on the single runway being common bars to flight in our strictly VFR aeroplane).
Then, one would often discover the aeroplane hadn't been fuelled, despite being pulled out of the hangar in the morning by flying school staff. Getting fuel was a time consuming excercise which could take longer than the planned flight!
One day, as I yet again tried to find someone to let me out to my car, and yet to face the refuelling hassle, and the wx marginal anyway, I thought 'sod this. It's costing me money and the hassle factor is beginning to outweigh the fun'. Then someone sent me an email offering to buy my share; this a couple of years ago at a time of economic depression when shares in fun aeroplanes were hard to sell and several group members had being trying to sell for months or years. So I sold. had my last P1 flight 2 years ago.
In the end what did it for me was the excess of hassle and the increasing cost of the long drive to Liverpool and back with the uncertainty of flight. The one good thing about operating from John Lennon was ATC - they were excellent at handling small aeroplanes among the commercial traffic.
However, after the free and easy Barton days, it was as if flying for fun had no place in aviation any more and it was being discouraged in every possible way.
Oh, and unlike Barton if one didn't fly there was no clubhouse full of aviators to go to instead as compensation. One simply went home, dejected. And it seems no better at Barton these days. We called in there one bank holiday last year (on the motorbikes which have largely replaced aeroplanes in my life) and there was almost nothing flying whereas 10 years earlier it would have been vibrant with flyers, aeroplanes, aeroplane fettling... Even the cubhouse which would have been full of flyers planning flights with charts on the tables, instructors briefing and de-briefing students was instead silent with a few OAPs slowly munching a roast beef lunch. Not a whiff of aviation anywhere in the air.
Do I miss it? Well, not as much as I thought I would. I had 30+ years of taildragging, stripping, aeros, and pure flying fun in very many aeroplanes from Cubs to Yaks. But if anyone knows of a Cub on a farm strip with share going, not too far from East Cheshire, please let me know!