Twenty minutes of moving, most of it in a car park, and nobody goes near a main road.
People arrive for a first lesson expecting to drive, and then are quietly disappointed by how little of the hour is spent moving. So here is the hour, honestly, before you book it.
The first ten minutes are stationary and they are the most useful ten minutes of the whole course. Seat position, which people get wrong for years. Mirrors, all three, set by you rather than by the instructor. Where the pedals are and how far they travel. Where the handbrake is without looking.
The next twenty are the car park behind the ferry terminal: starting, stopping, and finding the point where the clutch bites. If you are in an automatic, stopping smoothly instead, which is harder than it sounds and is most of what an examiner watches.
The last twenty five are slow circuits of the car park with turns and one hill start. A few people go onto the quiet end of the road behind it. Most do not, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Nobody is taken onto Hiyaleege Hingun in their first hour. A school that offers to is selling you a fright rather than a lesson, and a fright in lesson one costs three lessons to undo.
The last two minutes are your instructor writing on your record. Ask to read it. It will be short and unflattering and it is the most useful thing we hand you.