I want to tell you about my very own experience on a CBT course. This post is part 1, about the off-road session.
I arrived at the car park where it was to take place, on a very dark and cloudy day, and I thought, yeah, I’m going to get soaked. There were four of us “students” on the course, three lads and a girl. One of the lads arrived on a 50cc moped – how did that work then, I thought?
Anyway, the first thing we did was go into a big container, the sort that you see on lorries, and had our “theory” lessons. This was OK and pretty basic, you know, some stuff about what to do on a bike on the road and some Highway Code questions. Some of us got some of the questions wrong, but the instructor seemed OK with that.
After a while it was time to get on the training bikes. There were nice new 50cc mopeds – the standard automatic twist and go bikes – and there were 125cc motorbikes. The girl was only interested in riding a 50cc bike so she chose a nippy little twist and go to do her off-road stuff. One of the lads was 20, and he wanted to go on the 125cc bikes as I did, which was allowed, and the other lad was 16 so he was restricted to a 50cc moped.
We then spent the rest of the morning practising riding at ever-increasing speeds and ever-decreasing circles it seemed to me, but it was a laugh. We were all OK after a while and the instructor seemed pleased. As far as I could tell anyway!
Then there was a massive shock for the girl. Before we all went on the road, two of us on our 125cc scooters and two on 50cc mopeds, we had to do that vision test, like on the driving test, when you read a car number plate. Well, the girl couldn’t read it could she! In tears she was, because they said there was no way she could go out on the road in the afternoon. They said she would have to come back and do the afternoon session again wearing her glasses, which was fuinny in a way because she never even had glasses and never knew there was anything wrong with her eyes!
So, boys and girls, if you are booking a CBT, just check that you can read a number plate from 20 metres (say 25 paces away to be safe). You can wear glasses to do it, but if you do, you need to wear them for riding your bike too.
Watch out for part two of this which describes what happened when I was out on the road for the first time!
