In my opinion, you'd be wasting your money in the sim.
To give you an idea, I spent 5 weeks on my first jet type rating course, flying 40 hours in the sim. And whilst I knew which buttons to press, and how to go through emergency checklists etc, it didn't prepare me at all for real line flying. On day 1 of line training, I still sat there feeling like an absolute numpty!
The biggest example would be descent planning; how do I get from 38,000ft, to an airport 150 miles away, with this amount of tailwind, at this weight, with that potential ATC short-cut on the arrival, whilst making this altitude/speed constraint, etc. None of that is taught or flown in a sim, and I'm sure that your "checkride" would not cover it. So whilst you may have a good idea on which buttons to press and how to fly a normal take-off/landing, you would still be quite a long way off simulating "real" line flying.
Where in the UK are you? Many of the smaller flying clubs can be great at arranging fly-out events, where they would pair you up with another pilot(s) to fly somewhere for the day or perhaps even the weekend. Not only is it a great way of meeting like-minded people, you also get to explore places a little further away whilst sharing the costs of the flying. Sitting in the right-hand seat of the Cessna, manning the radios and helping with the Nav is just as much fun as the flying itself - you get to spend more time looking out the window!