ONE of West Devon's safer drivers will no longer take to the roads. After 70 years of happy motoring — without one blemish on her driving licence — when Beti Griffiths pulled her Ford Fiesta into her Whitchurch drive last Thursday, it was handbrake on, gear lever into neutral and engine off for the final time. So it came as a surprise to her when the Times knocked on her door to congratulate her on her three score years and ten of clean driving. Beti has two daughters, Pat and Lesley, and it was Lesley, who now lives in Canada and keeps up with the Times on its website, who contacted the newspaper to tell it about her mother's achievement. Beti learned to drive in 1938 when she was 17 and living in Hereford. During the second world war she volunteered as an ambulance driver in the town. She and her husband, Harry, whom she met when they worked for the Inland Revenue, married in 1942. They lived in Whitchurch, firstly between 1959 and 1966 when Harry worked at Launceston and settled there again after retirement in 1977. Harry died in 2006, aged 92, but he too had many driving adventures, having once, with a little help from a friend on his motorcycle and sidecar, transported an entire cricket team in his car to a village game! Modestly Beti, who was for many years a member of Whitchurch Tennis Club and Whitchurch WI, knows there are other drivers who have been driving for longer and did not really want to mark the occasion with much fuss. But Beti's driving adventures came to light as she belongs to the U3A group and one of her assignments was to write about her early driving adventures. Now her car has gone and she wishes the young driver she sold it to 'happy motoring'. Beti said: 'I enjoyed my years of driving but now I have arthritis, especially in my shoulder, I found the steering harder to cope with. 'I didn't have to give up but felt it was time to do so. It is the right thing to do and I would never forgive myself if I had hurt somebody else if I had an accident.' Daughter Lesley, who went to Tavistock Primary School then Tavistock Comprehensive between 1960 and 1965, has been living in Nova Scota since 1971 and works as an environmental planner, involved mainly in environmental impact assessment. 'For quite a few years now I have been coming back to Tavistock twice a year. I've been in touch with some of my fellow students from Tavistock Comprehensive but haven't yet managed to get to one of the reunions but I'm going to try for 2009,' said Lesley.
