I followed my dreams of learning to drive a bus — it has been a bumpy ride

With dreams of learning to drive a bus, Siobhán Cronin embarked on lessons... but this road less travelled is proving a difficult journey

Examiner journalist Siobhán Cronin on a bus driving lesson with instructor Frank O'Driscoll in Skibbereen, West Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

I’m going backwards......

I’m taking my first driving lesson in a 16-seater bus and it’s time to do the ol’ reverse-around-the-corner bit.

I’ve long harboured a dream of sunny days driving appreciative tourists around the stunning south-west coast.

But right now, in this driving lesson, I’m worried my backwards trajectory might actually be a metaphor for my own life. ”DON’T HIT THE KERB!” urges my instructor, Frank O’Driscoll.

Easier said than done, especially when the vehicle I’m attempting to master is almost twice the length of my usual ‘wheels’.

And it’s not just my backing up a hill that sends Frank into frantic outbursts as he watches his beloved Ford being thrown about the bedraggled roads of West Cork like a rag doll in a rabid bulldog’s teeth.

“Don’t cross the line!” is another favourite in Frank’s hit-list of warnings, along with “Watch your speed!”, “It’s a Stop sign, not a Yield sign”, and “NO coasting!”

My first attempts at negotiating the roundabout in Skibbereen have sent him into a real tailspin. I need to pull further across the road on entering, or my rear end will rear-end some pursuing motor, he points out.

Siobhán Cronin learns some of the rules of the road from her driving instructor Frank O'Driscoll in Skibbereen, West Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

It’s difficult to keep in mind the extended length of the vehicle, when I’ve spent 37 years not having to worry about what’s behind me, so to speak. It’s also a challenge trying to remember that this training vehicle — which is not exactly the most recent model — has both an ignition key, and a handbrake, two items which my trusty Qashqai lacks.

“The HANDBRAKE!” Frank booms at the start of my first lesson, as I attempt to pull away from the parking spot, wondering why the bus refuses to budge.

Having scored a respectable 97% in my theory test prior to getting my bus permit, I may have been imbued with a somewhat misdirected sense of confidence. In the same way that reading a book about horse riding doesn’t exactly make you a champion jump jockey.

But from the off, Frank has the measure of me. “We will head to Clonakilty because it will be kind of quiet tonight,” he says, just minutes after I ‘take the reins’ of his trusty chariot.

It’s a pleasant enough drive, because once I have negotiated the nasty roundabout in Skibb’, it’s plain sailing ’til I get to the one near the black pudding factory in Clon’. I fear myself and Frank will resemble some of the ingredients of the famed product if I don’t take this one a bit handier, I realise, so I slow right down to second gear and let the bus chug slowly around the turn on the N71.

Frank seems happy enough. He even allows me to take the bus through the town on the way home, and in no time, I’m singing King of the Road while he raises a few eyebrows — no doubt hoping my driving is better than my warbling.

Lesson number two comes around a few days later, and because in my initial naivete I thought a driving test was surely imminent — having opted to ignore all the news stories I had earlier written about a test backlog.

We are making a return trip to Bantry, Frank tells me, and it’s rush hour, to add just a little more frisson to the adventure. 'Learning to drive this beast is plenty of frisson for me, thank you very much, Frank,’ I think, ‘without any additions needed’. But in for a penny, in for a pound of my flesh, I decide, so off we go.

Bantry is full of narrow streets, steep hills, and distractingly stunning scenery that all combine to make the journey a fair challenge, but I follow my long-suffering instructor’s advice to take my time and let everyone else worry about their share of the road, and we make it through unscathed.

On the way back, Frank points to a retail park and tells me to indicate to enter it. I knew this was going too well.

Within minutes we are back in reversing-corner hell, and I am being asked to repeat the move five, six, even seven times, in order to get used to my positioning on the road before and after the manoeuvre.

But, thankfully, all the units are closed now, so there is nobody about to observe my manic over-and-back operations.

On our third ‘date’ — because Frank brings me to all the best places — we rock up outside Skibbereen Rugby Club, where the town’s driving test centre is also located. Somebody found the juxtaposition of this body contact sport with the placement of a driving test centre perfectly normal, it seems.

Frank makes the valid point that we may as well practise leaving and arriving at the centre, as those will be the bookends to my impending driving evaluation.

With a lot of starting and stopping, and a few neat little tricks from Frank about where to position the vehicle before beginning the test, we head out onto the N71 once more and I finally feel like I am getting the hang of this.

But when, several weeks later, my test finally comes around, I am crestfallen after hitting the kerb just a few minutes into the challenge. My tester tells me to redo the reversing and I do a much better job second time around. But, believing the game is up, I have lost my enthusiasm for it, and am totally crestfallen by the time I finish up — back at Skibbereen Rugby Club.

“I have bad news for you,” my instructor says as I sit in his office after the test. I tell him I realised that as soon as I hit the kerb. But apparently that wasn’t my reason for failing — because I aced it on the second attempt. No, my main misdemeanour was failing to drive in a high enough gear on the N71, and I made that mistake several times.

I am placed back in the test queue and after another four months, I get called again. But this time, the test is cancelled due to frosty roads in West Cork.

And now? Almost a year on from my first driving lesson, I’m back in the queue once more....