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I was wondering what people's thoughts were about not painting terrain (or at least not extensively). My thoughts around this were that I was wondering whether for basing using river sand, for small boulders using small pebbles, for walls using rocks etc etc. I am wondering whether this would lead to better looking terrain that base coating everything and then trying to get to colours right by painting?

I think the problem with not painting basing terrain is that you don't get as much coherence, and it looks wrong to scale. If you can find terrain that goes together well, go for it.

It's one thing to do terrain for trains it's another to do it for wargaming. I have tried in the past to use ballast in different ways even mixing it to get variation and it never looked right, especially with a painted model on it.

Try it out see how you like it. Also just as a side note, don't buy fancy over priced ballast for basic sand. Find yourself some hobby sand, it is usually a rough/fine grain, cheap and versatile.

Some people do it, but I don't (and simply won't). As mentioned, unpainted natural materials tend to look out of scale. We recognize them for exactly what they are - tiny objects in 1:1 scale. Painting, though, is naturally understood to be illusory. We recognize that yellowish grainy stuff under a model to mean it's standing on sand, regardless of the actual material, grain size, etc. used to create the terrain. It seems odd, painting sand to look like sand and rocks like rocks, but the more visually cohesive results are worth the additional effort, IMO.