Power stations and windmills can look very big from 1500'. A large chateau surrounded by a mote was a pretty sight at 1200' on Day 4, but I would prefer to do my sight-seeing from the ground.
Height bands and being choosey about thermals goes out the window when you are most the time below 4000' and in weather that is rapidly changing. The objective is to stay high us much as possible jumping from lift area to lift area.
If the jump is too big, a diversion is required. We rarely divert more than 30 degrees off track at home. It is common in this weather to divert 90 degrees or even turn back to get height. Pushing on into a blue hole hoping to pick up a bit here and there to get you across does not work -- you have to get the height before continuing.
On another day when only 3 from our class made it back home, 2 had made a huge diversion to put themselves in a position on an AAT to avoid upper level cloud which the rest of us did not notice was forming until it was too late.
In Europe the weather is very unstable most of the time and changes rapidly with little warning. If the day is looking perfect at the time of launch there is reason to be concerned about overdevelopment. Sections of the task can overdevelop quickly before you have a chance to divert around the area. The sky can look great 10-20km ahead but be hard to stay up in where you are.
The trick is to be thinking of changing gears all the time. You have to take every chance there is to push the nose down and increase the speed or to discard a weak climb for a promising looking climb ahead if you have the height and the confidence that you will not end up low. When the height is disappearing, you need to back off again, slow down, maybe take weak lift, search for bits of lift and maybe divert for a climb.
If the heating is slowed or cut off by upper level cloud the cumulous quickly disappear, but quickly appear again if a bit of heating gets through. The day can look completely cactus with the lift almost completely gone with a short time -- maybe 15 minutes -- in the same amount of time the cumulus could be beginning to form again.
When things start to look bleak, the objective is to stay alive for as long as possible waiting for a change. This might mean sitting in zero lift for 15-30 minutes. Continuing on is likely to lead to an outlanding.
There is a bit of luck or possibly bad luck in all this, because you can be at the top or bottom of your height band when the weather makes it change with little warning. If you are at the bottom, it is a battle to keep from landing out.
It is very rare in Australia to stop in zero or even very weak lift to wait for conditions to improve - once the day dies it is usually the end of the task and an attempt at getting maximum distance is made.
Height, position and the gaggle are major considerations, but it can be an advantage to head off at the start of an up cycle. In Australia, height, position and the gaggle are key considerations and the other is picking the latest time you can leave to get the greatest convection height at the start and the best part of the day on task.
At home the convection height increases over time with temperature quite a lot. Here, there is little increase in convection height once the day is high enough to launch. The finish of thermal activity for the day can be rapid, so getting home before the thermals begin to die is a high priority, but leaving before the gaggle can put you in last place on the scoreboard. The best time to leave is not an easy decision to make.