How to test without a car?
Greetings! Hoping for some insight, advice, and maybe a tiny bit of patience as I rant about how ridiculous the system is here...
I'm an Australian, living in London, with a UK passport, who until March 2026 had an aussie licence. That's now expired, and thanks to cancelling a trip back home due to fuel prices skying flight ticket costs, I lost the chance to renew my australian licence and now wont until I'm back in Aus late this year or early 2027.
For context - I've had my full driving licence for nearly 20 years, I've been driving here on my Aus licence the last few years I've lived here as I'm regularly back and forth between here, Europe and Australia and didn't action the licence trasnfer to a UK licence in time post arrival. That's on me, my fault, no excuses, not looking for any tiny violins or sympathy for it.
As a result I'm now a learner again. Passed my theory test last month, and have my practical booked in Wales next week. Wanted to get a test ASAP, as everyone does, so just asked Gemini what the most likely availabilty was and it spat somewhere out I was able to book and ended up only waiting about 8 weeks for the practical.
My conundrum is I don't own a car, I don't have any family here or friends who own a car, and I obviously can't rent one with a learner licence. I misread the 'bring your own car or use your instructors car' on the booking confirmation as that the instructor testing you on the day will have a car you can use, as this is how I did my test in Aus back in the day. However without access to a car, seems I'm completely unable to complete the test.
I messaged a driving instructor in the area of my test about renting their car for the test time, and driving with them to and from the testing center, and their advice was to by myself a car... which I still cant drive anywhere on a learner licence.
Any ideas?
Really appreciate your advice, thank you in advance. Tough out here for us learners!