I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time these days, driving daughters around the county. I’m not perhaps quite so put out at this as some mums might be, because I’m well aware that my own mother did much the same for me, forty years or so back.
We never seem to have lived anywhere that had an even vaguely useful or reliable public transport system.
On my recent trip down Memory Lane, I visited the place where I learned to drive – or to be precise, the place where I learned to reverse and drive in first and second gears.
This little car park at Hanbury Woods, is where I had my very first lessons. I was sixteen and pestered Dad to teach me so much, that he brought me here, so I could learn the basics before we went on the road.
I started off by driving around this tree (pictured above) in first gear. Then progressed to second gear – dramatic increase in speed required. And then, scarily as I recall, I went round it in reverse.
I must have spent weeks doing that. Dad always thought it would give the tree a nervous breakdown, and that it would tremble when it saw our car coming.
Perhaps he was right, because as the eagle-eyed will have spotted, someone has now driven huge wooden posts in all around it – presumably to protect it from new generations of learner drivers.
Oh how times change.
Mostly Motley 
I love that you had your first driving lessons driving round a tree, great practice for those daft mini -roundabouts. My dad taught me to drive too, but in straightish lines on the decrepit runway of an old (disused) airfield. Happy days – and I spent hours ferrying my kids around too. Still do in fact, but now its picking up from the pub ………