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Dean, you've had some excellent advice here, i'll add a few more.
1. fish a river as close as possible to home, so you can spend as much time on the water as you can, - unless traveling is no problem, hopefully it'll be a river with a good head of Barbel, in the early days the more you catch the more you will learn.
2. don't set yourself weight targets, just aim to catch Barbel, as your confidence grows in your ability to predict Barbel behavior, you will find your self starting to target the better fish without realising it.
3. Dont over compilcate your rigs, straightforward hooklengths in either braid or mono will do fine.
Don't become a slave to the hair rig, - keep your options open, and experiment with baits on the hook, and on the hair.
4. If you find daytime hard going fish into darkness. - If you're not familiar with night fishing take due precautions especially in winter. The only bit of extra kit you'll need is a good headtorch, and possibly warmer clothing.
5. BAIT, don't keep chopping and changing, OK a bit of experimentation at first to find the bait you have confidence in is fine, Tips - Barbel love spicey flavours, meat, or boillies, and both you can make a paste from, but keep the recipe the same, or go the pellet route - elips etc, use as hook bait and or loose feed, or hemp or other particle as lose feed. Personally i would go with small amounts of whatever you use as hookbait or variant of it, but whatever you choose stick to it, let them find it regularly, and if you can visit the river prebait with a small amount especially in areas you have started to catch from, so they become use to finding it and not getting caught, whatever you do don't pile it in, a handfull will suffice, in 2 or 3 swims, piling it in is selfish to other anglers and you won't do your own fishing much good either you don't want to overfeed them, you want them hungry, the object is just to get them to instantly recognise your bait, don't be discouraged if you don't get instant results, using that method your results will get better and better with time. Whilst doing all this you will find you learn more by initially sticking to one stretch of river, over the months you will gain an intimate understanding of the river and the Barbel in it, later you can take that knowledge and it will give you a good grounding on other rivers. If you flit from river to river whilst you're still trying to get a few Barbel under your belt, or even different stretches of one, bearing in mind the kind of baiting i've advised, you will make it very hard for yourself, Like floppy hatter says the most important thing of all is that you enjoy yourself, keep it chilled and enjoy the ride.

All the best
Ian .