Willholmania

I know. I've of others being asked to do them tighter - which I could easily have done. But he clearly liked the idea of just failing me. They walk among us.

Just to be clear, I didn't go around any of the yellow cones in the figure of eight. I stuck to the two blue ones. So I can only imagine he was talking about me going too wide in the other direction. However, I can't have gone that wide or I'd have run him over!

I'm completely new to biking – I've been a car driver for 35 years. I did my CBT then took a direct access course, all of which led to my Mod 1 Test on Monday. The Saturday before I had a session at the test centre, culminating in a mock test, which I passed. I was nervous on Monday - far more so than I expected to be. It reminded me of taking my car test all those years ago. But I told myself all I needed to do was the same as I'd done on Saturday and I'd be fine. Everything went to plan, and I was very confident I'd passed. We walked back to the test centre building and the examiner took me and my instructor into a little room, where we sat down. He fiddled with a form for a while and his pen hovered over a box while he hesitated, before putting a mark in it then telling me I'd failed. I was genuinely shocked and asked him why. He said I'd "gone too wide on the figure of eight exercise." I said I'd been told there was no outer limit to it and to use all the available space, so I did - just as I had during the mock test. "No," he said, "you went too wide." The guy who runs the training school had watched my test and was speechless when he found out I'd failed (he was there with another trainee). My own instructor said she "couldn't watch," so hadn't seen what happened. This in itself makes me angry as it means she can't tell whether I should have been awarded a pass or not. Everything I've seen online, and all the instruction I've had from my riding school is that there is no need to keep the figure of eight to any particular size - just do it without putting a foot down or touching the cones. Does anyone know differently?