I did mine in a week (well, six days - we lost one to crosswinds outside the main instrument runway "limits") and that was in November. Plenty of opportunity to find 'marginal' weather - even in Summer.
No Pre-course training on a PC - and no faffing around with RANT. Just good old fashioned solid briefing before, morning flight, thorough debrief, lunch, brief, afternoon flight, debrief, home, tea, head in book then sleep. Repeat as necessary.
Not saying that the sim and RANT aren't useful - we just didn't have them then. Do now.
Jet fuel, close to London with good rail links, all the other boxes ticked or tickable.
The Pilot Centre - Denham Aerodrome. PM me if you need/want more info.
HTH
DD