James Walpole – West Linton

James’ dad got in touch to organise driving lessons for James’ seventeenth. Unfortunately at the time I had too many people to begin at the time James turned seventeen, but we settled on a start date of October 2015. James was a very keen rugby player and had a lot of training and rugby games to attend, so we had to fit our driving lessons in around when we were both free. This meant that we drove at a range of times and locations which is all great as it builds to the experience. James did really well from driving lesson to driving lesson progressing each time and taking on board anything we discussed. We were just getting into the flow of things when James injured his knee playing rugby and he was unable to bend it for a short while. This put driving lessons on hold but James managed to get his driving theory test under way. As christmas came close we had covered everything and we were going to try a mock driving test. James did really well, we had a few things to fix but everything was on track. James had managed to find a driving test for after his prelims and during his February break from school so this gave us a deadline. A combination of driving lessons and James doing some practice with his mum and dad as February came nearer James’ consistency had come right up which was great. On the day of the driving test I woke up to see unfortunately that it had snowed during the night and that it was completely white in the West Linton area. I was really upset as I thought that the driving test might be cancelled. I collected James regardless and we drove into Edinburgh hoping that West Linton was the only place affected. As we dropped into Edinburgh past Hillend the scenery did start to get a little greener but some of the housing estates were still a little snowy. We drove around and we still had 40 mins until James’ driving test was due to begin, slowly the snow was melting so we were both convincing each other that surely it would be all okay. As 1024 came the waiting room in the driving test centre at Currie was full and all the examiners appeared at once to my relief! The tests were going ahead. Just as well as James really did well passing first time with only 1 driving fault, delivering a near perfect drive. Well done what a great way to end your holidays.

• Test Success