When you're sat/lying on a recumbent is there ANY pressure/weight at all taken through your sitbones? I'm a fair distance from any dealers - so would be great to know this before I think about travelling to have test rides.
Depends on the seat. A hardshell seat in a very reclined
[1] position ought to unload them completely, with the weight taken by your shoulders, spine and upper buttocks. YMMV with more upright positions. Mesh seats are less supportive, but spread the pressure over a larger area.
Also - I live in Dorset and am surrounded by lots of very sharp hills and windy lanes with limited visibility - general thoughts on recumbent suitability for this type of area would be appreciated.
Windy lane visibility problems are much the same on a recumbent as on an upright. The main issues are squeezing past big vehicles (trikes might seem at a disadvantage by being wider, but they can manoeuvre at dead slow speed and mount the verge without tramlining), and occasionally rounding a bend to spook an unexpected horse.
Sharp hills come down to power to weight ratio as usual, and whether you can carry momentum into them (recumbents tend to lose less kinetic energy to air resistance at the bottom of rolling hills). Trikes have the advantage of being able to gear down without worrying about maintaining balance. Light bikes have better power:weight, but those built for speed can be more tricky to balance when moving slowly. Unless it's a humback bridge type hill, you're generally going to gear down and spin, rather than pushing hard on the peals (which isn't conducive to low-speed balance, or knees).
In that part of the world, you could do worse than a visit to ICE trikes - even if you're leaning towards two-wheelers, it would give you an opportunity to experiment with seat and pedalling ergonomics without having to worry about balance.
I keep lustfully looking at the street machine gte - having realised the thing i miss about cycling the most is the freedom and being able to tour/travel, but then I did enjoy audax and 50/60 miles at weekends with a regular crew - and realise something nippier may be better (but i'm VERY wary of discomfort and risk of further injury now).
I can do pretty much anything on my Streetmachine, though not necessarily very quickly. It's heavy, stable, supremely comfortable, good at luggage, reliable and not too much of a pain to get on a train when necessary.
n+1 is, as always, the answer. My general advice to recumbent bike newbies is to buy a second-hand tourer, learn to ride it, get some miles in the legs, and plan to sell it on when you decide you really want something faster, or you want a different type of steering or seat or whatever: There's a lot you can only really discover through experience.
[1] A very reclined seat is the recumbent equivalent of an aero crouch on an upright, in that it helps you go fast, but your ability to see the road surface in front is compromised and your neck tends to object after a while.