Pace: You are on a flight from say Gloucester to Caernarfon cloud base 1500 feet. You are IMCR rated and comfortable flying in clouds
How would you have completed that flight ?
I am not promoting un published or home made approaches just stating a fact that in 35 years of flying pilots flying OCAS regularly used such procedures
The most dangerous flying is attempting to fly vmc in lowering cloud and visibility around high ground or commonly known as scud running
A controlled procedure is better than no procedure
Pace I have NFI where those two places are nor the surrounding terrain. I don't have any charts of the area
However I assume there is an Airway linking those two places, I'd descend to the MSA for that route and if not visual proceed to the closest suitable airfield with a promulgated IAP and land there.
foxmoth: 27/09 - most of what you say is not applicable to this thread as your rules seem totally different to the UK which is where most of this discussion is talking about, IFR outside CAS is not only permitted but frequently flown.
Our rules may be different, but descent below a minimum flight altitude in IMC while not on a published procedure doesn't make any sense no matter which rules you operate under.
By the way there is a significant amount of IFR flying conducted outside of CAS in this part of the word. I'd guess at least some part of about 70 - 80 % of my IFR flights has been outside of CAS.