7 month bump but for the sake of posterity, or whatever — maybe some other nice chaps have a similar dilemma in the future — I thought I may as well give the update. In January I had one day of training with a nearby school, who were fantastic. I think it cost £130. I asked for training for Mod 1, but after my instructor was happy with my Mod 1 we also did a good three hours of training on the road for Mod 2. I was probably right that I didn't need much training, but that little extra was vital in my opinion. I was certainly making mistakes that he identified and summarized in our first half hour of riding, and then hammered in the corrections. It was stuff like road positioning at junctions and roundabouts and changing up the gears too early. It was the Mod 1 stuff that was most useful. You just don't do that sort strict, controlled of exercises in everyday riding. You're not used to that environment. You don't know how sharp that cornering exercise is, you probably don't know how much you have to accelerate to get from cornering speed up the speed they need to see past the speed trap (tip: it's lots), and so on. We only spent an hour doing the course but I don't think I'd have passed without it. Afterwards, when I knew exactly what the test was, I could do practice specific to what was needed on the test (eg. trying to take tight corners faster, etc). I practised once at night in an empty business estate that had plenty of tarmacked space. During the training the instructor pointed out that my front wheel was slightly buckled. He noticed it as he was standing facing my bike for the emergency stop exercise, and he saw the wheel looked like it was shaking. My Mod 1 was in two days, no time to cancel nor to get it fixed, so I took my Mod 1 with a buckled front wheel and passed with no faults. I got the wheel fixed some days later. I took Mod 2 three days before my CBT ran out, and you have to wait ten days before a retake, so I had one shot or was going to have to suffer more delays and costs. Thankfully I passed with one minor fault, for rear observation at a junction.