The Freedom Started When I Got Behind the Wheel
When we bought our motorhome, I had absolutely no intention of driving it.
None.
I was quite happy to let Barry do all of that while I sat in the passenger seat offering helpful comments such as, “You’re very close to that hedge,” and “Are you sure we’re going to fit through there?”
The truth is, I was terrified.
Not of driving itself. I’d been driving for years. I’d driven all sorts of cars, in all sorts of weather, on all sorts of roads. Driving wasn’t the problem. The problem was that this thing looked enormous.
Every time I stood beside it, I couldn’t imagine myself sitting behind the wheel. I worried about clipping parked cars, drifting out of my lane, taking corners too tightly, getting stuck somewhere embarrassing, or worse, causing an accident. I couldn’t work out how anyone knew where they were positioned on the road when they were sitting that high up.
For about two months, I avoided it completely. Every time the subject came up, I’d find a reason not to drive.
“Maybe next trip.”
“It’s a bit busy today.”
“The roads are narrow.”
“The weather’s not great.”
The excuses were endless.
Then one day, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I decided to stop overthinking it. I climbed into the driver’s seat, adjusted the mirrors, took a deep breath, and drove.
And do you know what happened?
Nothing.
Well, nothing terrible anyway.
I didn’t hit anyone. I didn’t scrape a hedge. I didn’t end up in a ditch. I simply drove.
Slowly at first. Very carefully. Probably gripping the steering wheel harder than necessary. But within minutes, something surprising happened. It started to feel normal.
Not exactly like driving a car, but familiar enough that my confidence began to grow with every mile.
The biggest surprise was realising that all those years of driving experience hadn’t disappeared just because the vehicle was bigger. I still knew how roads worked. I still knew how to judge speed, read traffic and make decisions.
The motorhome was bigger. I was still me.
Now, do I occasionally take corners wider than necessary? Absolutely. Do I sometimes ask everyone to stop talking while I’m navigating a particularly awkward junction? Also yes. Have I discovered that motorhomes can actually overtake things? Surprisingly, yes.
But the fear that stopped me driving for two months was far bigger than the reality.
And that’s what I see so often at Campervan Retreats.
Women arrive convinced they’re not confident enough, not experienced enough, not adventurous enough or not capable enough. Yet time and time again, they discover they are.
Sometimes confidence doesn’t arrive before you do something scary. Sometimes confidence arrives afterwards.
It turns up quietly and says, “See? I told you that you could do it.”
Learning to drive the motorhome gave me far more than the ability to take turns behind the wheel. It gave me freedom.
Freedom to go where I wanted. Freedom to share the driving. Freedom to know that if I needed to, I could just go.
And perhaps that’s one of the greatest gifts motorhome life gives us. Not just the freedom to travel, but the freedom to discover what we’re capable of.
Even when it takes us two months to work up the courage to put the key in the ignition.