One could certainly hand fly long distances (I once hand flew down to Santorini and back, although Justine did help at times; she did the whole trip with me) but it is a tradeoff between staying away (due to the extra concentration) and getting very tired (due to the extra concentration). On balance I prefer to stay on autopilot and have something else to do.
Turn the autopilot off and remind yourself that you’ll examine how precise your flying was in briefing offered by software which tracks everything. Can you stay straight and level
In thermals?
Saint Exupéry would read and sometimes write while flying, and apparently circle his destination until he’d finished reading his chapter!
I think that was before controlled airspace and possibly before ATC radar 
I do sometimes wonder whether it would be smart to read a book or some such, but let’s say one of the cylinders starts to seize up or whatever. You won’t notice until the situation is quite bad. On one long flight back home I did get the laptop out and processed a load of photos with Lightroom, but I haven’t done that again.
Obviously if there are passengers then it is much better for everyone, but often one cannot find passengers, and 50% of the potential population (actually way more than 50% if you look at who has the most time) are likely to be problematic one way or another 
Set 7600 on the transponder and take a nap while the autopilot flies.:)
7500 if you want excitement ;-).
Buckerfan wrote:
reads a book once he is in the cruise
Saint Exupéry would read and sometimes write while flying, and apparently circle his destination until he’d finished reading his chapter!
Ibra wrote:
by car you could have done it in 4h, but I guess you decided to go for mistral winds navigation charges instead of road tollgates
Well, we were on the way home from a trip to Perpignan so we did not have much choice. At the time (way before internet was everywhere, they had a minitel at the airport if anyone remembers these) the meteorologist told us that there was Mistral low down but above FL50 it should be reasonable. Well, it turned out not to be, we tried at FL070 intially but could see the cars on the motorway overtaking us, so we eventually climbed up to 120 I think, where we made some forward speed. Thankful for the Pronav GPS on board anyway as we could see the progress and had some means of calculating an ETA otherwise we’d probably have given up latest near Grenoble.
Peter wrote:
A couple of hours of this, with a 30kt headwind
At least you know you can land anywhere
The scenary is less boring for 1h but I agree probably too much after 3h (by car you could have done it in 4h, but I guess you decided to go for mistral winds navigation charges instead of road tollgates)
He he… this vividly reminds me of a flight from Avignon to Geneva many moons ago in a Cessna 150 IFR.
Mont Blanc stayed in the window for ever in the same position… we had a 50 kt headwind, which reduced the forward speed to about 40 kts. Which in the end made this straightforward flight very much limit for this old 150…. we landed in Geneva with 10 mins to go to the night ban and after a very speditive radar vectoring by Geneva Approach.
Except, that was France, full of military areas at low level which make VFR planning quite a job. ATC don’t clear you through it there (like they do with CAS, usually) so you have to plan it all yourself. I did this for 5 years and was glad to not have to do it anymore once I got the IR
Also the fuel burn per mile at 1000ft is perhaps 20% more than at FL100, so the gain from less wind is more than lost.
