Jess – West Linton Scottish Borders
With a few West Linton driving instructors available I was lucky enough to be chosen a few years ago to teach Jess’ older brother, after that her older sister learned and now it was time to see if we could get Jess successfully on the road. Living in West Linton in the Scottish Borders learning to drive gives a huge amount of freedom and access to so many exciting things. Jess currently in her sixth year at school in Edinburgh commutes each day. Some days in her timetable though she has a half day so being able to drive would give her the possibility of heading home easily.
We began driving lessons in West Linton Jess had been out with her mum already so we were building on some of the skills she already had. We chose to use the moor road leaving from West Linton heading down into Penicuik, it is a great road to get to grips with the basics of driving and hopefully fine-tune some basic skills before dealing with slightly busier traffic. After a few lessons around the Penicuik and West Linton areas along with practice with her mum and dad, we were able to start doing lessons that started or ended at Jess’ school in Edinburgh.
Jess finished school earlier on Fridays so we tried to fit our driving lessons in on Friday afternoons, as the months went on Jess progressed well, we carried out mock driving tests and tried to home in on any weakness. Once we were getting pretty consistent Jess used one of the driving test cancellation apps to find and book a driving test at the Currie test centre in Edinburgh, during her February school holidays. This was great as we now had a deadline to be ready for and also Jess could fit some more practice in with her mum and dad as she was off school that week.
On the week of her driving test talk of Storm Eunice started to build and it looked like it was going to be hitting the UK on Friday when Jess had her driving test booked, the forecast was heavy snow in Scotland with very high winds supposed to be affecting England and Wales but hopefully missing Scotland. On the morning of Jess’ test, the roads were completely white with snow! However, her driving test was scheduled for 1325 so there was time for the snow to melt during the day. I looked on various driving instructors Facebook pages as the day went on to try and keep up to date as to what was happening. Everything was looking good for the afternoon with the snow melting quickly.
I was delighted Jess got her gap in the weather and took full advantage of the day passing her driving test on her first attempt. Well done Jess, she can now come and go from West Linton whenever she likes.
