IanPZ
I took my PPL in 2009 and it took about 6 months flying every weekend, two flights booked in for every Saturday
The weather frankly is a disaster. And then you get other things that throw a spanner in the works, plane out for maintenance, some air show on the day of your solo navigation, wind that is deemed too strong for you to solo and the list just never seems to end – I turned up at WW on a bright blue morning, sat down for a coffee and was horrified to see that my car had almost been snowed in over the space of about 45minutes
All I can advice is that you control the factors that you have control over. I have no idea what airport you use, but if it only has one runway, this might be an issue with cross winds, if it is a small club, as you note above, there could be issues with instructors being booked out, on holiday or whatever
The club I fly from has 3 runways, so thankfully the cross wind element is mostly taken out and it is blessed with a number of planes and a number of instructors, most of whom are pretty stable (low staff turnover etc). But it is each for his/her own
As others note above, if you can blag your way out from work at 4pm or so once a week, you can often get some useful flying in late in the afternoon, especially in the summer (and this might free up some time over the weekend allowing you more time with the partner / wife / kids or whatever takes your fancy)
I wish you good luck with your ppl and I feel your pain, it isn’t only the weather in this country that can get you down, the taxes kill me even more
Good luck, Nick