Car-free – and carefree

I have always liked cars and have always enjoyed driving, but just recently I decided to try and live the rest of my life car-free.

So how am I coping? At first, I felt rather like one of Philip Pullman’s characters when forcibly separated from their daemons – lost and adrift.

But, gradually and to my surprise, an enormous sense of liberation emerged. I realised I would no longer have to fork out for expensive services, MOTS, insurance, car tax, new tyres, bodywork, speeding fines or parking tickets, or complain about the price of petrol. Until you no longer own a car, you don’t fully appreciate just how much time, energy, anxiety and money you expend on it.

Particularly money, as nothing depreciates faster than a car. A friend bought a beautiful Mercedes sports car ten years ago for £50,000 and sold it recently for just £5,000. My humble hatchback didn’t depreciate quite so catastrophically, but even so when I bought it I more or less said goodbye to ten grand.

The greatest revelation is that I no longer need a car. I’ve been amazed at how much public transport has improved in the decade I have lived in Oxford. Many small villages that were previously inaccessible except by car now have frequent bus services. There is another bonus in that these buses are free – thanks to my bus pass, once rarely used and now pressed into service all the time.

We have two mainline stations and there are coach services to just about every part of the country. This means that instead of having to keep my mind on the road, I can now sit back on the bus or train and read, work or stare out of the window. There is another phenomenal advantage – I no longer have to concern myself with the costly nightmare of parking the beast.

I have come to bless modern taxi services. If I order a cab, it’s here almost before I am off the phone. Fast, efficient deliveries mean huge supermarket shops or drives to out-of-town shopping centres have become unnecessary. And the best thing of all is that I can go to the pub or out to dinner and enjoy a drink, because I’m not driving. Also – gosh! – I’ve discovered something else. Walking.

Are there any drawbacks to not having one’s own iron overcoat? It’s true you can’t be as spontaneous. When your car is no longer sitting outside for you to jump into, you can’t visit a friend or a stately home, for instance, on a whim. Journeys have to be planned in advance.

But once you get used to it, that is a small price to pay. Or, alternatively, a huge price to save. You can take as many trains and taxis as you like and it’s unlikely you will spend as much in a year as it costs to keep a car on the road.

I never, ever imagined that my love of cars would end but, at the age of 76 and still safe on the roads, I find it has – although my friends and family are still very welcome to go on driving me around.