I have a list of goals to achieve in my life, and riding a motorcycle has been on that list for many years. Thanks to the British weather, it’s not really a viable form of all year round transportation, which makes it more of an expensive toy, hence the decade delay in doing it.
My wife did a CBT some years back with PRIDE in Taunton, and a work colleague also trained with them, so I thought I may as well book my training with them. I booked a CBT, 2 days of direct access training (6 hours per day), the practical test and 2 hours’ bike hire on the test day. This added up to £510. PRIDE took care of booking the practical test for me, so it really was very easy.
You need to get your theory test done before you start practical training. This only costs £30 and it’s very easy to pass with the help of a revision CD-ROM. I just did about 20 mock tests before I did the real thing, and I passed easily. I actually took my theory almost two years ago, and the certificate only lasts two years, which put me in the rather annoying position of needing to do the theory again if I didn’t pass my practical test first time.
Anyway, here’s my account of the training and learning to ride a motorcycle. I hope it’s of some use to anybody thinking about doing similar. If you are thinking about doing it, get in before they change the test later this year. The new test will be more difficult and has to be done at specific new test centres, most of which will not be finished in time for the changeover.
CBT (Compulsory Basic Training) on a 500
CBT is what you do to enable you to ride a moped or motorcycle up to 125cc. If you have a car licence issued before 2001 you will find that you already have full moped entitlement (no L plates) to 50cc, and you can even carry a pillion. If you want to ride anything bigger you have to complete CBT.
I was expecting to do my CBT on a 125 and then move up to a bigger bike for my direct access training, but it turns out that you can do CBT on a larger bike if you are doing direct access. So, I was thrown straight in at the deep end and given a 500cc bike to ride. This was pretty daunting to say the least. I had only ever ridden mopeds and small motorcycles in the past, so to suddenly have to ride this big bike around lots of cones in a gravelly car park was a bit of a shock. Surprisingly though, you soon get used to it, and actually the bigger bikes seem to be more stable than smaller bikes.
An ex-police rider called Gordon took myself and one other guy through our CBT. He likes to shout a bit, which I am not so keen on. I was convinced I was messing everything up, but when he handed us over to Simon for our on-road training, he told him that he wouldn’t have any problems with us – we were great. Maybe I needed to be shouted at – in truth, as much as I didn’t like it, it made me drop all ideas I had about my skill level. Even if you have ridden small motorcycles, and even if you are a car driver with many years experience (like myself), you need to forget all of that. Riding a geared bike is not like driving a geared car – the use of the clutch is very different and the gear ratios are very different. If you go into your training determined to be a complete novice, you will get more from it.
For our on-road CBT training, we were hooked up with radios and followed Simon out of Taunton and towards Langport. It was a very hot sunny day, and a ride through the countryside was very welcome. Simon talked us through everything he was doing, and I found myself relax and focus on the job at hand. Our ride took us across from Langport to Bridgwater, where we pulled onto an industrial estate to do some emergency stops and practice the dreaded U-turn. The trick is to look at the middle of the road as you turn and not at the opposite kerb. It’s all about balancing the slipping clutch against the rear brake, and it takes some practice for a first timer.
From there it was back to the classroom and the issuing of CBT certificates. The guy I was training with passed too, which was to be expected considering he had confessed to riding illegally for the past 2 years – on a 1000cc supersports motorcycle. Fair play to him for finally getting legal, but it is a stark reminder that there are guys like him on the British roads.
CBT done with, I felt fairly confident for my training 2 weeks hence.
Training Day 1
In between my CBT and first training day, I had popped in to Riders in Bridgwater, “just to have a look”, and walked out the owner of a Suzuki SV650S, which was duly delivered just before my first training day. Frankly, this just added to the pressure. Nice to have a bike to ride as soon as I pass, but it wouldn’t be so nice to have to look at it for weeks if I didn’t.
I was pleased to find that Simon Cox would be my trainer again, and that I would be getting one-to-one training, and after a short classroom session, we got straight to the riding. Once again, I was partnered with a 500cc bike, but I found the clutch on this bike more difficult. It was obviously nearing the end of its life, so the biting point was at the end of the lever travel, and being a man of relatively short fingers, this took its toll.
Training consists of riding the test routes and practicing emergency stops and U-turns. I found Simon to be an excellent instructor who perfectly matched my learning curve with new challenges. Towards the end of the morning, he showed me how to U-turn more effectively by counter steering. Counter steering is a bit of an alien concept at first, but it is key to riding a motorcycle well and cornering quickly. There are plenty of videos on YouTube, which are well worth watching to help you get the idea.
Once I’d been shown that, I found the U-turns were much easier. I even started wondering why on earth I had such a problem with them so far. Instead of slowly wiggling the bike around in the road, I was confidently leaning and swooping around.
After lunch, the fatigue was starting to set in, and I started to make silly mistakes, the worst of which being completely failing to observe a cyclist before commencing a practice U-turn. Once I had got myself flustered, it went downhill fast. All the confidence I had built up evaporated and I went home in a panic wondering how I would ever get to test standard in just one more day.
Nothing really prepared me for the mental trauma associated with learning to ride. I’m a bit of a control freak and the thought of being tested put me right on edge. I had a day in between my two training days, and by the evening I couldn’t take it any longer. So, I got my own bike down to the industrial estate at the end of the road and practiced U-turns for an hour. They were much harder on my bike, which has a more sporty riding position, and I found my foot going down a lot. However, I did get the hang of doing the U-turn from a standing start, rather than riding forward a short way and then turning, and this was the method I stuck with. There are a few ways to do it, and you need to try them all to find what fits for you.
Training Day 2
My nerves were seriously frayed going into my second day, but within 10 minutes of being out on the road I relaxed. The human brain is an amazing thing – it puts things together overnight, and you can come back to something the next day and do it much better. I have seen this with guitar playing and flying radio controlled helicopters, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that it would happen with motorcycling. On day 2, everything just came together, and I thoroughly exorcised my U-turn demons.
Simon also had me working on pulling away in a turn so I could better turn in tight spaces. Again, the trick is to look at where you want to go, not the front of the bike. We also cranked up the intensity of the emergency stop. It’s amazing how quickly these bikes will pull up without skidding or throwing you over the handlebars – even on a wet surface. So, with the tricky bits taken care of, we got to have a bit of ride on the open road.
Riding out of Taunton to Wellington, across to Milverton, on to Wiveliscombe and then back again, was a very pleasant and valuable conclusion to my training, which until this point had been focused exclusively on what was needed for the test. The test is basically a ride around town with an emergency stop and U-turn thrown in. It doesn’t really assess a rider’s ability above 30mph.
Simon pushed me to make progress on the road and even encouraged me to take overtaking opportunities when safe to do so. I got to put my counter steering training into practice on the real bends, all the time receiving instruction and encouragement from Simon through the radio.
I had another day’s gap until my test, so I figured the best way not to stew about it was to get out for a family day trip somewhere nice. Cheddar Gorge in fact. And it rained. Still, it was a pleasant diversion, and with that and telling myself that I could do it, I managed to forget about the test for a day.
The Test
An hour’s training before the test seemed like a lot when I booked it, on the day it seemed unacceptably short, but in truth, it’s all you need just to refresh your memory. After a quick ride and some more practice U-turns and emergency stops, it was off to the test centre.
I think I just got too worked up over this test. When the examiner came out to meet me, I was almost surprised to see he was a human being! He told me to relax, and surprisingly I did, at least until my emergency stop. Turning left onto the road and accelerating until he gave me the signal, I managed to stop effectively, then I looked down and saw I had failed to cancel my turn signal. I switched it off and then looked in the mirror to see a car behind me. I got flustered and pulled in without signaling. I then had to walk the bike around a U-turn, and then ride it around. I managed both easily and didn’t put my foot down on the ridden U-turn (which is an instant failure). The examiner went back to his bike and pulled his clipboard out, so I knew something had been wrong. I guessed the signalling, and convinced myself that I had just failed.
He pulled me in and made me pull out again about 4 times on the run back to the test centre. After the 4th time I started wondering if maybe I hadn’t failed or if he was testing out my signalling. When I got back to the test centre, I was sent to the waiting room and again convinced myself I had failed. When he then said the magic words: “I’m pleased to tell you that you’ve passed”, I let out an involuntary whoop! As it turned out, it was a good ride with just 3 minor faults.
Post Test
It’s been a few days now, and primarily, I’m just glad the trauma is over. The realisation now is that the test is actually not the end at all – it’s just the beginning. Riding a motorcycle safely on the road is a steep learning curve. There really is a huge amount to learn for the novice rider, especially when riding a bigger bike.
I have heard the Suzuki SV650S described as “a girl’s bike”. Maybe it is female friendly, I don’t know. For me, it’s a 74BHP rocket capable of 0-60 in about 4 seconds, and probably 130mph+ top speed. It’ll kill you as soon as look at you if you don’t show it some respect.
On top of learning how to ride and operate your machine, you also have to learn observation that would put the best car drivers to shame. People just don’t see bikes. This was evidenced to me as I was parked up outside Hein Gericke yesterday, fitting my new sports panniers (you can’t carry anything on a standard SV650S, except gloves under the back seat – if you squash them down), when some idiot in a car reversed straight into my bike and knocked it over. He said he never saw me or my bike, despite wearing a bright t-shirt and having been stood there when he pulled in. This is the sad truth. Car drivers are generally oblivious to motorcycles. As it happened, my new luggage cushioned the fall, and I got away with just a scratched wing mirror, for which I accepted some cash from the guy there and then. Hopefully he will look more carefully when reversing in future…
The other key truth I have learned is that motorcycling can put a big strain on a new rider’s muscles. I find the sportier riding position on my bike very hard on the hands, arms and knees. It’s probably best to take shorter rides with frequent rest breaks at first, and not ride all the way to the New Forest in heavy traffic like I did. Agony!
Despite all the above, I am pleased to be a biker. I can see my skills improving with every ride, and I’m starting to really enjoy the freedom that motorcycling brings.
It’s my plan to do advanced training with Simon in a couple of months, to pick up on any bad habits I may have developed, and really improve my skills again. I have to say that he was brilliant, and I thoroughly recommend PRIDE in Taunton for your motorcycle training.
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