Learning to ride a motorbike can be a wonderfully liberating experience, but the time you undertake training can make some difference to how you manage to handle different road conditions.

Undertaking a course in summer may make the whole thing easier, but starting before winter is over means you can learn a lot about how to handle issues like cold and slippery roads, poor visibility in mist and fog, as well as bad light.

There is plenty of expert advice out there on how to ride in winter and handle the extra perils that come from doing so. For instance, Motorcycle News once produced a large array of tips that can help riders deal with the season and its challenges.

This wasn’t just about the most obvious things like the possibility of ice on the road or the need to be cautious and use your lights well in fog. It also included some less obvious but still important considerations.

For example, it warned over the potential of car exhausts on cold days to fog up your visor, as well as the need to find the parts of the road with the best grip, which can mean a trade-off between riding on the best surfaces and finding optimum viewing positions for seeing what is coming your way.

Other elements of advice are more familiar, such as checking tyre pressures (which drop in cold weather and make steering harder) and being wary of the potential of the sun to dazzle you as it sits low in the sky.

In many respects, riding a motorbike and driving a car in winter face the same challenges. The RAC advice on winter driving includes considerations like knowing how to de-mist your windscreen and when to use fog lights.

Training to ride a motorbike involves being aware of all the potential dangers on the road. Doing it in winter means that by the time you have passed, you will be much more aware of these - and a safer rider as a result.