Mention of the DUKW amphibious vehicle in another thread reminded me of one of my driving exploits as a teenager.
Many years ago it was possible to drive a mile or two along Pendine Sands in south Wales, not sure if it still is.
Very attractive holiday activity for a 14-year-old Iffy with an understanding mother and a new Cortina.
So off we set and all is well to start with.
My driving skills probably weren't up to much, but there was nothing to hit.
Decide it's time to turn around and as I execute a gentle arc the Cortina bogs down in soft sand.
Oh dear, it's going nowhere, so older brother is despatched back along the beach to summon assistance.
After about an hour, a distant rumble can be heard and an odd-looking vehicle hoves into view with brother in the passenger seat.
I reckon it was a DUKW, but can't be sure about that.
The driver hitched a chain to the Cortina and the vehicle towed it out with ease.
He said he rescued quite a few idiots like us during the holiday season.
The Cortina was mechanically unharmed, but it did suffer from the broken windscreen syndrome - we were hoovering sand out of it until the day mother traded it in for the next one.
Any other stories of under-age driving?
Last edited by: Iffy on Sun 9 Jan 11 at 12:21
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My father owned an oil distribution business and his depot was on a large industrial estate he also owned.
In the school holidays from about the age of 12 I would drive around the estate, taking cars for petrol (there was a small garage with a fuel pump), getting them washed and slowly graduated to driving HGVs around the estate and positioning them under the gantries for loading with oil. By 15 I could take a fully loaded six wheel rigid without thinking about it. Came in useful a few years ago when a delivery driver blocked access to a car park but left the keys in the slot.
He came back a few minutes later to find the wagon locked up a few hundred yards up the road. That taught him a lesson.
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I learned in a Maxi on Southport Sands when I was about 15 or 16... Very useful all those beaches!
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I bought my first motorbike just before my sixteenth birthday, a mate rode it home for me.
I couldn't resist riding it up the back garden.
Smashed the gear pedal off on the washing-line post!
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...He came back a few minutes later to find the wagon locked up a few hundred yards up the road...
I did something similar with an agricultural tractor and trailer in Ireland a few years ago.
We were touring in the countryside outside Dublin and had stopped for a cup of tea.
My mate - from Dublin - was driving, and I think he parked considerately.
But when we came out from the cafe, his car was blocked in by a tractor and trailer.
It was an old Massey Ferguson, and having driven those things since I was 11, I knew there would be nothing to stop me starting it.
So I hopped on and chugged off down the lane a few yards to turn the thing around and put it back where it was after my mate had moved his car.
Grumpy farmer appeared from a farm gateway, but my mate got to him first and told him his fortune.
I imagine the farmer might not have accepted the ticking off from me in the way he did from a fellow countryman.
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Farmer's children near us have been driving a landRover on the road since 12. Only slowly, hearding cows.
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I think about 12 is the going rate for kids to start driving on farms. One I know progressed from a de-bladed sit on mower / tractor, to an unregistered Fiesta on red diesel, to a small tractor, and by 15 was driving a full sized tractor, but using the Fiesta as a farm runabout.
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>> I think about 12 is the going rate for kids to start driving on farms.
Its about the same age in inner city Birmingham as well!
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I think I was about 10 when I first was allowed behind the wheel of Dad's Vauxhall Victor 101. We went shooting frequently on friend's farms and I was allowed to drive on the tracks. Any further stories of driving underage when I was a little older are best never repeated.
By coincidence eldest daughter was also 10 when she was allowed to drive our Discovery on our land and access tracks.
Last edited by: Fenlander on Sun 9 Jan 11 at 16:46
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I'd be about 13, used to help our local milkman on a Sunday morning. there was a private housing estate in the village, he used to let me drive the milk float (one of those electric things) around there.
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>> I'd be about 13, used to help our local milkman on a Sunday morning. there
>> was a private housing estate in the village, he used to let me drive the
>> milk float (one of those electric things) around there.
>>
During my driving instructor days a pupil told me that when he was about that age he was a helper on a milk round and the milkman used to let him drive the float...until he buried it into the back of a Granada.
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I'm really reluctant to show my elder two (almost 13 and almost 11) the bits of car control that they can't figure out just by watching me drive. I can just imagine them at 15 or 16 being passengers in an older friend's car and thinking "I can drive this" when the friend nips into a shop for a minute and leaves the car running.
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, there are frequent enough twisted piles of metal full of teenagers around here as it is.
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>>when the friend nips into a shop for a minute and leaves the car running.
They're not friends!
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Driving when too young for a licence - Netsur
