Is it possible to learn to drive in Bourne?
This blog explores how useful it is to learn to drive in Bourne.
Yesterday, McDonald’s were officially given planning permission to build a drive-thru restaurant in Bourne. The reason I mention this fact is because I know from experience how tricky it can be when starting off driving, to drive into the drive-thru!
It’s a bit like these toll booths on the Dartford Crossing, where you have to throw money into a bin or when you have to drive up to these car park ticket machines. How many times do you see drivers judging it wrong, and having to turn off the engine, release the seat belt, open the door, get out the car to get the ticket and then climb back in again. It regularly happens to experienced drivers, so you can be sure this is a big deal when learning to drive.
But it is all good experience. And building up experience is what we are after when learning to drive.
The problem with Bourne as a place to learn to drive, is that it simply does not have too much opportunity to build up experience of different situations. There are no dual-carraigeways, no multi-storey car parks to drive up and down the levels, no car parks with barriers where you have to get a ticket from the machine, there are very few puffin or pelican crossings, no equestrian crossings (which is slightly surprising seeing as there are often horses seen on driving lessons in Bourne). There are no spiral roundabouts, precious few roundabouts with multi-lanes on the approach.
The way to overcome this problem is to drive further afield. I don’t just mean drive to Deeping, Morton, Rippingale, Corby Glen, I mean drive to Stamford, Peterborough, Grantham, Spalding. Only by getting yourself out to these larger towns and cities will you start picking up a more diverse range of driving conditions, and that will be really good experience.
On the Big Tom Intensive Driving Courses we do precisely that. We will often clock up more than 90 miles of driving experience in a session, getting experience of these larger locations, and very importantly, experience driving on these rural and semi-rural roads between them – such as the A15, A16 and A17.
So to answer the question directly of whether you can learn to drive in Bourne, the answer is yes. But there is the world of difference between learning to drive in a town like Bourne and building experience that is going to help you drive anywhere in the UK.
