Mary Bayfield – Fairmilehead Edinburgh

Mary’s mum got in touch during the summer to organise driving lessons for Mary, at the time I was completely full so wasn’t able to begin driving lessons until September. Mary was happy to wait until then to start. On our first driving lesson Mary explained that she had never driven before, so we were starting from the very beginning. We went to a housing estate just between Fairmilehead and Buckstone. We quickly ran through everything Mary needed to know before putting it into practice on the road. During our first driving lesson we managed to go in and out of junctions turning left and right, and even have a look at some more advanced things. Like emerging from an uphill junction which required a lot of fine clutch control and confidence with edging the car. Mary seemed to follow everything that we went through, and was always good at asking questions to improve her driving knowledge. During the next driving lesson we had a look at some more housing estates, before heading down to Morningside in Edinburgh to take on the challenge of Morningside road! Mary stepped up to the challenge of Morningside and took everything in her stride. After we had done a few driving lessons she managed to get insured on her mum’s car, This meant they could go out and practice in between driving lessons and just build more experience on the Edinburgh roads. Within a short space of time we had covered everything, and Mary was capable of doing everything, it was just a case of getting the consistency up to a good level which just requires hours on the road. The practice Mary was doing with her mum really was noticeable, as every driving lesson we went out on the level had gone up again and again. With prelims coming up at school we decided it would be good if possible to get the driving test done early January so they didn’t get in each other’s way. Mary spent her Christmas break from school logging on and refreshing the driving test website looking for cancellations. As as soon as driving test became available Mary was ready and managed to get one for the first Friday of January. We went out for  final practice on the second last day of Mary’s school holidays, during this we managed to recap everything that we had covered over the last few months. At this point it was clear to me that Mary was more than capable of passing her driving test as everything was going to plan. I collected Mary on the Friday from school and we did a quick warm up, before arriving at the driving test centre with minutes to spare thanks to my cutting it fine timing! This did mean however Mary didn’t have time to get nervous as the examiners were out their office about 60 seconds after we sat down. I was thrilled to find out at the end that Mary passed first time with only two faults at the Currie driving test centre in Edinburgh. What a great result, and a fantastic way to end the first week of 2016 with three first time passes. Well done.

• Test Success