Driving Lesson Number 15.

Another lesson down, another manouvre ticked off! I've just about nailed parking in a bay so my instructor has decided that we should move onto something else for the moment. We were meant to be reversing round a corner, but decided to do stop junctions instead.

Oh my god, there are some awful ones in Workington, including the junction of Harrington Road/John Street/Mason Street! I thought it was bad enough as a passenger, but you literally cannot see a thing when coming out of there!! I think I may avoid that area once I'm on my own, unless it's really necessary!

My instructor asked me part of the way through the lesson if there was anything that I felt I needed to go over again that I really wasn't sure about and I have to say it's roundabouts! Awful things they are, I just can't judge the speed of other traffic (which didn't really matter at 8am on a Sunday morning!) so I start to panic whenever I get close to them. I'd be far happier for all roundabouts to be removed and replaced with crossroads! Mini roundabouts aren't so bad because they're little, but ones like at Matalan are scary, especially the way some people drive around them!!

Anyway, we're going to concentrate on roundabouts for next week to see if I can get the hang on them. Should be great fun on a Saturday dinnertime...

Hazard Perception Woe.

I'm really not very good with hazard perception yet. Maybe it's because I keep trying at night when I'm tired or perhaps because all the clips are either at night or in the blinking rain!!

I managed 1 pass the other day getting 56/70 but it's only the second time I've managed it! If I could get away with it, I'd sit and click my heart out till the clip finished, but then they'd know I'd cheated. The trouble is that many of the hazards are every day occurrences so I'm not picking them up as hazards, although I am starting to learn now. You have a certain timeframe in which to click and the sooner you spot the hazard, the better the score you get, but it isn't always the cyclist or the eejit pulling up just before a junction!!

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Driving Lesson Number 14.

Well this weeks lesson was interesting to say the least!! Everything went fine till the last 5 or 10 minutes, but I'll get to that later.

As I said last week, this weeks lesson was on parking in a bay. Before I went, I was discussing with my hubby where Nick might take me to do it, the obvious choice being Morrisons car park! "Oh god no," I said, "Anywhere but there!" You see so many people having a nightmare trying to get parked on there!!

Anyway, Nick arrives at the usual time and I reminded him what we were going to do and he casually turns round and says, "Oh yes, well I think the best place to try that is Morrisons." AAARRRGGGHHH!!! My heart sank and I explained what we'd just been saying, but I determined I would get it to work as I always am!

So we get to Morrisons and we find a nice quiet corner (like there are many on a Saturday dinner time?!?!) to sit in. I get it all explained to me, what we're going to be doing and when I should start to turn, etc and then it comes to the actual manouvre. I'm a bit chicken at first because sometimes my clutch control has left little to be desired so I decide to let Nick control the pedals for the first couple of attempts, which we manage to get perfect! Woohoo!! I say we because all I did was turn the steering wheel when I was told to whilst trying to observe what was where when we were turning! Anyway, just to add to my swelling head syndrome, he said I got every single one perfect!! :-D We attempted a left hand turn too but I felt more confident turning right so we're going to stick to that direction because it doesn't matter which way you do it in the test, as long as you don't hit the lines!

We headed round to the test centre for a try because the yard was open and I found it much more difficult in there. The whole thing is on a slope which meant I needed more clutch control than ever, but I got there, slowly, without hitting the lines! Yay!! I reversed into 3 of the bays and we headed off to have another go at parallel parking.

This is where things started going horribly wrong! Some of you mechanical types will know the problem straight away, but I was totally oblivious to the problem! As I was reversing back, the steering felt really stiff and heavy and I found it really hard to turn the steering wheel, even though it usually turns quite easily. I was having problems getting into the space because I couldn't turn the wheel fast enough, so we decided to have a turn in the road and head back home. I couldn't do that either because I couldn't turn the wheel fast enough!! Nick wasn't sure himself what was going on, so asked if I minded him jumping in the driving seat to have a look himself. He instantly saw that something was wrong and realised that the power steering had over-heated. Apparently it can happen with Clio's if you concentrate on manouvres for long periods of time, and almost an hour was obviously a long period of time!

He had a little wiggle about on the road and it seemed fine, but trying a turn in the road stiffened it up again! Anyway, I decided to let him drive us home as I didn't want the thing packing up on me, much better that it do it to him because he's just ever so slightly more qualified at driving!! ;-)

All in all, it was a very productive lesson, it's just a shame that it went so badly wrong at the end, but I didn't break it, honest!! Nor did I hit the kerb pulling up at home because I was the passenger!! :-P

Next week, all being well, it's reversing round a corner! YIKES, YIKES AND TRIPLE YIKES!!!

Driving Lesson Number 13.

Phew! What a day! I don't know whether to blame the weather (which is GORGEOUS Caz! :-p), or the fact that I was tired, or the fact that I didn't go out last week, or even that I just forgot what I was doing and kept panicking, but what a crap driver I was today!!

I hit 4th instead of 2nd a few times and even stalled in the middle of a crossroads! D'oh!! I've got the 3 point turn and parallel parking down to a tee though. Even my husband was impressed when he watched me park as I arrived home. I didn't know he was on the step watching mind or I'd have gone to pieces and totally cocked the whole thing up! Him and me both thought I was going to hit the poor car parked behind me but I didn't and it was a perfect park! Right next to the kerb and everything! Yay!

I even gave way to an old dear crossing the road I was turning into and didn't wave her across as it says in the theory test revision so Nick was well impressed with that! Just need to fine tune my rules of the road and get down to the hazard perception because I really, REALLY can't do that yet! I had it set to 75% pass rate and couldn't even manage 50%!!

Anyway, next week it's reversing into a bay. Yikes!!

Theory Test Revision.

I won't be going on a driving lesson again this week so I've decided to have a good crack at the theory test revision instead! I've done it every night this week so far and managed 2 35/35! Woohoo!

I'm really chuffed with myself and I've almost finished the theory part so will have to move onto hazard perception. My husband says it doesn't matter if I'm not getting top marks in practice, but I'd much prefer that then I know I know my stuff for the real thing! For some reason the rules of the road are letting me down, having had 4 wrong answers and only 1 or 2 wrong on some of the other sections so I think I should go over that section again once I've completed it all.

I've learnt things I would never have known though, like someone with a dog with an orange collar is deaf! I'd never have gotten that in a million years! Or that you have to drive in the highest gear possible in icy conditions. We both thought it was the lowest possible! Mind you, it's a tricky question really because it could be the highest or the lowest depending on how you think. You can't go any lower than 1st, so if you're in 2nd then it's the lowest you can do without stalling, but it's also likely to be the highest you can do without stalling! 6 of one and half a dozen of the other springs to mind in that situation... Let's just hope it doesn't pop up in the test, or I at least remember the answer to it!!