I'm very much with Sir Francis on this.
The majority of places I want to go to have a road / railway / river / canal / something to it from somewhere else.
So - rather than fly directly to my destination, particularly if it's difficult to see, I'll fly to intercept the line feature one side of it, and turn towards it. That way, finding the destination is far far easier.
(And I use the GPS as well!)
Ann Welch once explained to me how she did this during WW2 - when she was delivering aircraft with little or no nav equipment to camouflaged airfields. She'd look for relatively close four point features (towns, hills, railway stations...) that could have two lines drawn between then with the centre of the cross on the airfield. She'd then fly to the nearest of the features, then directly towards the opposite feature whilst monitoring the one on either side of her.
When the sideways features were in the right places in her field of view, she knew she was over her destination.
As she was one of the few pilots on her squadron to make it to the end of the war, then went on to become a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation, I think she knew what she was talking about. Certainly the technique has also worked for me when I've tried it.
G