I'd say fly in GPS mode to start with till you get the hang of making it go where you want it to go, also great for taking aerial photos and videos.
It should be limited to max altitude of 400ft anyway in the software (most are), so no cloud dancing stuff or danger to low flying aircraft.
Once you have the hang of controlling the thing, you can gain a bit of altitude as a safety buffer in case you stuff up in the controls, then switch to sports mode which takes out the GPS hold feature. It is then generally guite a bit faster and it will fly more like a R/C model.
If it gets away from you, you can always switch GPS back on and it will stop where it is until you give the TX some input to bring it back home.
Set the home point before every flight to be on the safe side. My son flew one of my DJI Phantoms out of visual range on one occasion and I thought the thing was gone forever. I simply switched the transmitter off and because it's home base was set up before flight, it then climbed a further 60 ft and then flew straight back overhead to where it took off from. Many can auto-land, but I simply switched transmitter back on and landed it myself.
Now a bloke with all your flying experience Captain Phil , should be able to manage that out at Cannock Chase without giving too many people a free crew-cut.