Learning to Drive

So I can choose my own road.

Last year, after the van plan was born, I was faced with a huge stumbling block: I don’t know how to drive. I grew up in London surrounded by buses and tube stations that would take me anywhere I could want to go, and so there had been no point in learning. When we moved to Devon it became harder but not impossible to get around, and as I didn’t have the money to learn, I managed without.

Over the years I’d begun to wonder if I would ever learn to drive. Sure, driving would allow me to do some things I couldn’t, or make traveling easier and faster, but I had proven I didn’t actually need to. And yet, there was always a piece of me that desperately wanted to know how to drive. Not to take the dog for a walk, or visit friends, or for any other everyday life reason. I wanted to drive so I could travel.

I’d travelled Australia on trains and coaches, managing to make it the entire way around the country, and seeing some truly spectacular sights along the way. I’d proven travel was possible, and magical, and brilliantly real without a car. But there had been so many places I couldn’t get to, so many choices I couldn’t make, because I couldn’t drive.

I’d always dreamt of the kind of travel that comes with the freedom of driving, of being able to go wherever I wanted, to take whichever road struck my fancy. On the highway between Uluru and Alice Springs there is a turn off with a signpost that simply states Western Australia. The road runs in the straight line until it disappears into the horizon. Imagine being able to decide you want to turn down it, or down a mountain road, or through a forest of towering trees. Those aren’t choices one can make without a car.

I grew up knowing that before I was born my father had driven back to England from Australia in a Land Rover. I grew up wanting to do the same thing. He didn’t talk much about the journey, or any of his other travels, but he did talk about Tamerlane and about the Silk Road. He wove stories from history so rich that I would stare at maps and old copies of National Geographic imagining the wonders waiting for me. And so, my wanderlust was born, and with it the desire to drive.

With the van plan that desire was reborn, the dream rekindled. I had a reason, a real reason, to learn to drive. After all, if your home is a van, you must be able to drive it, or what’s the point?

In Spring, when lockdown began to lift and driving lessons resumed, I found an instructor here in Cornwall. Amy is wonderful: funny, relaxed and clear. We’ve had a few months of lessons now and while I am nowhere near ready for my test I can drive. I even went on the dual carriageway and around a few roundabouts the other day.

It’s a huge and sometimes scary thing to be learning to drive, but much to my surprise I’m enjoying the process. Having life in my new home waiting for me on the other end helps me overcome my nerves and makes learning the highlight of my week.

Like working on the van build, each lesson is evidence that I am getting closer to a new life, and the chance to choose whatever road I want to drive down.