Hi Mark,
sorry for the delay getting back to you, it was my daughter's wedding this last weekend, so very busy. It was wonderful and I enjoyed it so much, just shows how far I have come. Thank you citalopram and quetiapine
About the Access course, yes I suppose it was intensive, although at the time it didn't feel that way partly because the teaching was so good and because also I was excited by the subject matter. I did learn such a lot in that year, all new to me, but it was fun and that helped a lot.
The maths, in the course I did (in Chichester), we had maths once a week only and in fact although we had an exam, the result of that was not counted, only the biology and chemistry marks. But they seem to vary a lot in how access courses are constructed and marked. It was supposed to be equivalent to A level maths but I doubt we covered all that syllabus. I didn't feel out of my depth, although some had come straight from school and GCSE maths, but the teaching just covered what we needed to know and actually wasn't so many different topics.
You will be fine if you decide to go for it. Honestly. I had such a great time on the access course and I had been out of education for so long. I don't think you would regret it.
One option, if you wanted to do a particular degree course is to see if you could apply for an extended degree if they do that. On the access course that I did, a number of people were doing that for the local universities, same course for their year 0 and you get student loans etc as you would for the rest of the degree.
Good luck,