Some great advice from others here. When you start Gliding you'll invariably think that it's a sport full of the retired, demographically it is biased that way but at Portmoak you'll find a diverse range of ages and backgrounds that you don't see in powered simply because power flying is so expensive and there's a much smaller social atmosphere. You'll find anyone from airline pilots to lawyers and shop assistants in gliding, you won't notice the difference really, everyone mucks in.
Portmoak is a fantastic site to learn at and is very busy, soaring flights throughout the winter on the hill will give you plenty of handling time without the difficulties of a small airfield. There's even a chance of wave soaring, just today someone launched out of Portmoak and managed to climb up to 17,000ft, you won't find many GA aircraft up there!
There will be days invariably where the winch breaks or there is a shortage of instructors and you might not get much flying, but thankfully this is far more rare than it used to be with the modern setup of larger clubs who are recognizing the need to evolve, some offer half day bookings as it is realized that people work!
The skills will set you good for life, I'm just completing a powered licence where most of the handling skills were immediately transferable, navigation and procedures may be a bit different, but the stepping stone from gliding to powered is much easier than the other way round as you get used to high angles of attack and conditions much closer to the envelope. Once through your training you can take 10 hours off a LAPL/PPL or even better convert with less than 10 hours add a motorglider rating to your glider licence, best of both worlds!
6 years ago I sat in the front seat of a glider on a trial lesson, now I work for two of the world's largest and most well known clubs teaching people to fly, I haven't gone to university yet but there's plenty of opportunities to broaden your flying, across the world!
Planesandthings