Lara – West Linton – Scottish Borders
Lara was desperate to start driving as soon as she turned 17. Learning to drive in West Linton was going to change things so much for Lara, it would mean that she could drive to her work in Penicuik on her own and would give her so much freedom to come and go and visit friends.
We began driving lessons on her 17th birthday, I had been lucky enough to teach Lara’s brother to drive a few years earlier and that had gone really well. Learning to drive in West Linton is a little bit limited so what we did on Lara’s first driving lesson was headed to the back road to Penicuik. This meant we could get general control of the car by stopping and starting and then changing gear before we came across any other features. Lara did really well progressing quickly and seemed to really enjoy it.
Unfortunately around the day of her first driving lesson, a second covid lockdown in Scotland was announced which meant we had time for one more lesson before things were going to shut down completely. This lockdown went on for months in regards to when driving lessons could begin again. Lara was lucky enough that she had her own car and her mum and dad took her out regularly. When driving lessons were allowed to resume it was the very end of April. I got in touch with Lara to see what stage she was at and it sounded like she had done loads. She told me that she had found an intensive driving course which she was booked into and hoped to be on the road really soon. This sounded great and was very exciting. A few weeks later Lara got back in touch to say that the intensive course had fallen through and that she had a driving test booked in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders would I be able to help.
We quickly came up with a plan, I explained to Lara that I had never been with someone for a driving test in Galashiels and that I had no knowledge of even where the driving test centre was. I said of course we could go through and drive around and give it a go. A week before we did a big driving lesson in Edinburgh, running through roundabouts and all the driving test manoeuvres. Lara did really well. We decided that Galashiels can’t be any harder than what we had looked at in Edinburgh so decided if we went through on the day of the test a few hours before we could explore and see what features it had.
Lara did really well, she went through with her mum and also spoke to friends about the sort of areas they had been on during their driving tests in Galashiels. This gave us a good foundation to have a look at. I was really confident that no matter if Lara went through a section that we hadn’t been through that she would have no problems at all.
I was right to be confident Lara passed her driving test on her first attempt setting her up for a fun summer in West Liton now she has left school. Well done.
