Worth Setting the Alarm For! Dark winter mornings, focused practice and a first-time pass for Lucia
Lucia started driving lessons with me in December 2025. Working full-time Monday to Friday meant we needed to find a lesson time that fitted around her job, and we settled on 7:00am starts, usually on a Tuesday morning.
Lucia worked between her company’s Edinburgh and Glasgow offices, so we had to be a little flexible depending on where she was working each week. Sometimes we’d move the lesson to another morning, but between us we always managed to make it work.
Lucia had never driven before, so we were starting right from the beginning.
Living in the Blackford area of Edinburgh gave us some great places nearby to learn the basics. We initially headed around the Grange, concentrating on moving off, stopping and, in particular, developing really good clutch control.
We kept practising until finding the biting point and controlling the car became straightforward. Once that foundation was there, we gradually increased the challenge and, before long, we were heading into Morningside and dealing with busier traffic, pedestrian crossings, buses, junctions and everything else that comes with driving around Edinburgh.
Starting at 7:00am in December also had another advantage — it was dark!
Although driving in the dark isn’t something Lucia would specifically be tested on during her practical test, it’s an important real-world driving skill. Those early lessons gave her experience of driving in darkness, winter weather and cold conditions from the very beginning. All of that added to the range of situations she was becoming comfortable dealing with.
Lucia was always enthusiastic and willing to learn — impressively so for seven o’clock in the morning!
As her driving developed, we began introducing mock driving tests. We carried out our first one around Easter, which gave us a really useful baseline and highlighted some clear areas to work on.
By the beginning of summer, we’d developed a routine that worked particularly well: mock test, focused practice, more practice, then another mock test.
Each mock gave us an updated picture of where Lucia was. We could identify anything that needed attention, work specifically on those areas and then use the next mock to see how everything was coming together.
It also meant Lucia became familiar with the slight pressure that comes with a driving test. Rather than test day being the first time she’d experienced someone sitting quietly beside her and assessing her driving, she’d already practised that situation several times.
Lucia passed her theory test and managed to secure a practical test for November. With the long waiting times for driving tests, having a date booked was great, but November still seemed a long way away when she was progressing so well.
We therefore began spacing the lessons out slightly over the summer. There were weeks when I was away and others when Lucia was away, but that suited us perfectly. We continued making steady progress without doing unnecessary lessons simply for the sake of filling the months before her test.
Then, towards the end of summer, Lucia had some exciting news — she was moving to Glasgow.
Great news for Lucia, although moving away from your driving instructor shortly before your test isn’t necessarily the most convenient arrangement!
She moved to Glasgow around the middle of September, while her practical test was still booked for early November. Although we could have made it work, I started keeping an eye on the Edinburgh instructor groups I use to see whether we could find an earlier test.
Luckily, another instructor was looking to move a test in the opposite direction.
We managed to arrange a swap, moving Lucia’s test from early November all the way forward to the beginning of October.
Perfect!
It meant Lucia only needed to coordinate a few trips back to Edinburgh, staying with her parents and arranging lessons around the days she was working from her company’s Edinburgh office.
Then test day arrived.
I collected Lucia bright and early, just like we’d done so many times before, and we headed out for one final warm-up. We went through all four manoeuvres, completed an emergency stop and covered a good mixture of roads before making our way to the test centre.
Lucia had driven really well during the warm-up. There was nothing special she needed to produce for the test — she simply needed to drive the way she’d already shown me she could.
We got parked up, headed inside and Lucia met her examiner.
Then came my part of the test: patiently waiting for her to return!
I was delighted when she arrived back to discover that Lucia had passed her driving test on her first attempt with only three driver faults. Even better, the examiner told her it had been a very good drive.
Lucia later said that once the test got underway, she settled into it. Her examiner was friendly and helped her feel relaxed, and it eventually felt like she was simply driving around with a different passenger beside her.
That’s exactly what all those mock tests had been helping her prepare for.
After starting from scratch on dark December mornings, working around a busy job, moving to Glasgow and bringing her test forward at relatively short notice, everything came together brilliantly.
Now Lucia can head back to Glasgow with her full driving licence. The next challenge is deciding whether a car might be on the horizon!
Well done, Lucia. It was always a pleasure going out with you, and a very well-deserved first-time pass! 🚗👏
