The first bit of advice I'd give is practice, practice, practice. This means getting out on the ground and using all the techniques. I would actually avoid Woodbury Common, unless this is on your doorstep, as it may make you complacent with that area, plus it won't be the only area that you operate in. You want to try as many different types of terrain as possible.
I'm just back from instructing on a WMF / Winter Skills course in the Cairngorms for five days. In addition to the usual pacing, timing, bearings, altitude and developing your map memory, one of the things I get my students to do is to feel what the ground is doing as you move along, eg up, down, steep, flat etc. This includes small dips and rises - normally indicative of a small stream. Snow covers streams so you can't see them, and in a whiteout you'll see even less - a bit like a white dark, if that makes sense, and extremely disorientating. You can actually get very good at this, with practice, and it becomes your eyes, in effect. Using all available clues, just makes life so much easier.
Many years ago, on a call out, we got dropped off by a snowcat in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a winter night to make our way to a bothy, a number of hours away, for a first light search. I looked at the map maybe twice in that time, the rest was done from map memory and ticking off features in my head as we passed them. It was deep snow as well, so no path to follow.
