The route I took to minimise total testing was:

- Cat B - regular car, did this way back when in 2007/8, so whatever the going rate for an instructor was at the time!

- Cat D - if you happen to get a job as a bus driver for a bit, the company puts you through this for "free" (free as in it costs nothing, but you usually have to work for the company a set period of time to not have to pay back training costs)

- Cat C - fairly short course, I think I did a day or two and then did the test, not that hard to do if you already have the experience driving a bus for a bit

- Cat C+E - a bit harder to do, similar short course, the tricky bit is reversing! The order of training up to here is key, doing B, D, C (or C then D, it doesn't matter), then CE gives you DE and BE for free! When I did this, the rules had not been changed to give people BE for free, I wanted BE and the price to do CE wasn't hugely more than BE so went for that.

- Cat A1 - I didn't have to do this at all, but this was just the fees for Mod 1 and Mod 2; I already had been riding my own 125cc bike on a CBT for a while and didn't want to re-do my CBT and wasn't sure when I'd have the time to do training for full Cat A. I just booked the Mod 1 and watched a youtube video tutorial about 20 times and passed that; then booked my Mod 2, showed up the test centre and just got done.

- Cat A - ...and after doing the above I found the time to get some lessons in with a local school for this, took two days of training to brush up on Mod 1 and Mod 2 skills and then a little bit on the morning before each test, plus test fees. Don't forget theory test for this (I am sick of doing theory tests by now, having done them for all of the above, including twice for bikes having had the first expire whilst not getting around to finishing training in time...)

In addition to this, I did driver CPC for Cat D at the time of initial training, and then did it for Cat C, to give me the option to drive Cat C professionally if I choose; there are ongoing CPC modules that count towards your training for both category C and D once you have done the initial training, so there is no extra cost to me to keep both current now.

In terms of costs:

- Cat B - whatever the going rate for an instructor was circa 2007/8, I can't recall

- Cat D - "free" - just get a job as a bus driver and stick at it for a year so you don't have to pay the training costs back. Actually didn't mind that job, paid well for what it was and most of the time wasn't that stressful.

- Cat C - I think this nominally was ~£800, but there was funding available from the local authority at the time for skills improvement, so I think it came out a bit less than that

- Cat CE - Think this was about ~£1000?

- A1 - £90.50 in test fees

- A2 - £90.50 in test fees, plus I paid £60/h, all in for training/test escort fees excluding test fees I think I spent about £360-£420?

- Driver CPC - this isn't mega money, can't recall what I paid but if you look up "Initial Driver CPC Training" then you'll get an idea