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!!!