Travellers World

Travelling with a wheelchair — the good, the bad and the not-a-chance

Author: ssuk

  • What good staff do differently

    We have been helped by hundreds of people over the years — on platforms, at gates, in hotel lobbies, at the bottom of unexpected flights of stairs. Almost all of them meant well. A smaller number were genuinely good at it, and the difference between meaning well and being good at it is enormous.

    Here is what the good ones do. It is a short list, and none of it is difficult.

    They talk to Bev

    Not to Steve, about Bev, while Bev is sitting right there. This is the one that comes up most and it is the easiest to fix. If the question is about the person in the chair, ask the person in the chair.

    They ask before they touch the chair

    A wheelchair is not a piece of furniture in a corridor. It is part of somebody’s personal space. Grabbing the handles and setting off is startling at best and frightening at worst. “Would you like a push?” takes two seconds.

    They say what they do not know

    “I’m not sure, let me find out” is a brilliant answer. “Yes, it’s fully accessible” from someone who has never looked is how you end up stuck. We would far rather wait three minutes for a real answer than act on a confident wrong one.

    They know where the equipment is

    The ramp, the key, the lift override, the person who is trained on the stairlift. Good venues make sure more than one person on each shift knows. Bad venues have one man called Dave, and Dave is on his break.

    They do not make it a performance

    Loud announcements, a small crowd, a lot of fuss about how marvellous everyone is being. We appreciate the help enormously. We would just like to receive it the way anyone else receives a service — quietly, competently, and without becoming the entertainment.

    They follow through

    The single best thing anybody ever does for us is the boring bit at the end: radioing ahead, ringing the next station, telling the restaurant we are coming, writing it in the book. The help that arrives is good. The help that is arranged for the next stage of the journey is what makes a trip work.

    If you work somewhere the public visits and you have read this far — thank you. That list is genuinely all of it.

  • “Accessible” is not a yes or no answer

    When we started writing places up, we tried a star rating. Five stars for accessible, one star for not. We gave up on it within a month, because it was useless.

    A museum with a perfect step-free entrance, a lift to every floor, and no accessible toilet in the building is not a three-star experience. It is a place you can visit for ninety minutes and then have to leave. A hotel with a magnificent accessible bathroom and two steps at the front door is not four out of five. It is zero, because you cannot get to the bathroom.

    Access is not a score out of five. It is a chain, and it is only as strong as the weakest link in it.

    So we do two things instead

    First, a blunt overall verdict, in plain words:

    • Good access — we got around without a fight.
    • Mixed — doable, but with caveats you want to know about first.
    • Poor access — hard work. Only with help and planning.
    • Not accessible — we could not get in, or could not use it.

    Second, a checklist, because the verdict alone does not tell you whether the specific thing you need is there. We check the step-free entrance, doorway widths, lifts, the accessible toilet, the accessible room and bathroom, blue badge parking, getting there at all, and whether the staff knew what they were doing.

    Why “staff knew what they were doing” is on the list

    Because it is the single most reliable predictor of how a day goes, and it appears on almost nobody else’s checklist.

    Good architecture with bad staff is a bad day: the ramp exists but nobody knows where the key is. Mediocre architecture with good staff is often a fine day, because someone competent finds a way round the problem before you have to ask. We would rather go somewhere slightly awkward with people who have thought about it than somewhere beautifully built by people who have not.

    What our ratings are not

    They are not an audit. We are not access consultants and we do not arrive with a tape measure. They are a record of what two people found on one particular day, with one particular wheelchair and one particular set of needs.

    Access also changes. Buildings get refurbished, good managers move on, the accessible toilet becomes a store cupboard. So please treat everything here as a strong starting point and a list of questions to ask — not as a guarantee. Check before you travel. We do too.

  • Theatres, cinemas and the wheelchair space lottery

    Theatres are, on the whole, one of the good news stories. Most decent-sized venues now have wheelchair spaces, an access line, and staff who have done this before. But theatre tickets have a quirk the rest of travel does not: the accessible seats are often not on the website, and the general booking page will cheerfully sell you a seat you cannot get to.

  • Taxis and WAVs: booking the ride that actually turns up

    The taxi is the connective tissue of every trip. The train can be perfect and the hotel can be perfect, and the whole day still hinges on an eight-minute ride between the two. It is also the least regulated, least bookable, most variable part of the chain.

    Know the two kinds of accessible taxi

    A WAV — wheelchair accessible vehicle — takes you travelling in the wheelchair, up a rear or side ramp, with the chair strapped down. The other kind is an ordinary car with a driver who is happy to stow a folded chair in the boot while you transfer to the seat. Which one you need is the first thing to say when you ring, because firms constantly send the wrong one. “Wheelchair user” means both things and neither.

    Booking one outside a big city

    In London, every black cab is legally required to be wheelchair accessible, and mostly this works. Outside the big cities, WAVs are scarce, often owned by one or two local firms, and often booked out doing school runs at exactly the times you want to travel — early morning and mid-afternoon. So:

    • Book days ahead, not hours. For a morning train, we book the taxi before we book the train.
    • Avoid 8–9.30am and 2.30–4pm in small towns if you possibly can. That is school contract time and the WAVs vanish.
    • Get the booking confirmed by text or email, with “wheelchair accessible vehicle” written down. A verbal booking for a WAV has a way of becoming a saloon car on the night.
    • Ask the hotel for the local firm they actually use. Receptions know which firm turns up and which one doesn’t.
    • Take the driver’s card when you find a good one. A driver who did it well once will do it well again, and most will take a direct booking.

    In the vehicle

    The driver should strap the chair down at four points and offer the seatbelt. A driver who waves you up the ramp and sets off with the chair loose is not doing you a favour, however friendly he is. It is fine to ask for the straps. It is your neck.

    One more thing worth knowing: a licensed driver cannot legally charge a wheelchair user more than anyone else for the same journey, and refusing the fare because of the wheelchair is, for most drivers, an offence. You will almost never need to say this out loud. It is still worth knowing on the night you do.

    Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.

  • Eating out without a scene

    Eating out should be the easy bit of a trip. It is often the most quietly stressful, because restaurants are full of small obstacles that nobody thinks about until they are in the way, and because it all happens in front of an audience.

    Ring ahead. Always.

    Not to check “if you’re accessible” — we have covered why that question is useless — but to ask for three specific things:

    1. A table you can actually get to. Say plainly: a wheelchair user is coming, please put us somewhere we can reach without moving four other tables.
    2. A table with legs at the corners, not a central pedestal. A pedestal base is the number one reason a wheelchair cannot get near a table. Nobody ever mentions it.
    3. Confirmation there is an accessible toilet on the same floor. An accessible loo down a spiral staircase in the cellar is not an accessible loo.

    The other things worth asking

    • Is there a step at the door? A single 15cm step is enough to end the evening, and it is invisible on every photograph on their website.
    • Fixed booth seating? Lovely for everyone else. Useless if you cannot transfer out of the chair.
    • How loud is it? Not an access question for us, but it is for a lot of people, and hard surfaces plus music makes a room where nobody can hear anybody.
    • Is the accessible entrance the same as the main one? We have been sent round the back through a kitchen more than once. It is not the end of the world and it is also not a nice way to arrive somewhere for your anniversary.

    What good places do without being asked

    They have already moved a chair away from the table before you arrive, so there is a space rather than an obstacle. They bring the card machine to the table. They do not remove the wheelchair to “store it somewhere safe”. They ask where you would like to sit rather than deciding for you.

    It costs them nothing and it is the difference between being a customer and being a problem to be solved.

    Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.

  • Blue badge parking: what to check before you set off

    A blue badge does not get you a parking space. It gets you the right to a parking space, which is a different thing entirely on a wet Saturday in a seaside town.

    What the badge actually does

    The badge belongs to the person, not the car, so it travels with you into a taxi or a friend’s vehicle. Since 2019 the scheme in England has also covered hidden disabilities, which was a long overdue change. Councils charge different amounts — up to £10 in England, free in Wales, up to £20 in Scotland — and it runs for three years.

    The rules on where you can park vary by council, and they vary a lot in central London, where several boroughs run their own schemes and the standard badge concessions do not apply. Check the specific borough before you drive in. We have learned that one the expensive way.

    What to check before you set off

    • How many accessible bays are there? “We have disabled parking” can mean twelve bays or one.
    • Are they bookable? Some attractions will reserve one. Always worth the phone call.
    • What is the surface? A gravel or cobbled car park is effectively inaccessible however wide the bay is.
    • Is the bay wide enough for a side transfer or a rear ramp? If you use a rear-loading vehicle you need space behind, which a standard hatched bay does not always give you.
    • Height barriers. The great enemy of the adapted van. Multi-storeys and supermarket car parks are full of them, usually at 2.0 or 2.1 metres.
    • How far is the bay from the entrance, and what is between them? A bay two hundred metres away across a slope is not really an accessible bay.

    Two things worth carrying

    A parking clock, the blue plastic dial that some councils require alongside the badge on single yellow lines. And the badge itself displayed clock-face up, expiry visible — a badge that has slid face-down on the dashboard is a ticket, and appealing it is a tedious afternoon.

    If the bays are all taken by people without badges

    In a private car park — supermarket, retail park, hospital — it is worth telling the staff, because enforcement there is entirely down to the operator and they often do not realise how bad it has got. On a public road it is a council matter. Neither will help you today, which is why we always have a plan B car park before we leave the house.

    Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.

  • The questions we ask before we book a hotel

    “Is the hotel accessible?” is the worst question you can ask, because the answer is always yes. Everybody says yes. The receptionist says yes, the booking site says yes, the little wheelchair icon says yes. Then you arrive and there are three steps up to the front door and a bathroom you could not turn a shopping trolley in.

    So we stopped asking it. Now we ask specific questions that cannot be answered with a cheerful yes, and we ask them on the phone, not by email, because you learn as much from the pause before the answer as you do from the answer.

    Getting in the building

    • How many steps are there between the car park and reception? (Not “is it step-free” — make them count.)
    • If there is a ramp, how steep is it, and is there a handrail?
    • Is the main entrance the accessible one, or is it round the back past the bins?
    • Is the front door automatic, or does someone have to hold it?

    The room

    • What is the clear width of the bedroom door, in centimetres?
    • Is there space to get a wheelchair down both sides of the bed, or just one?
    • How high is the bed from the floor?
    • Is the room on the ground floor? If not, how many lifts serve it, and what happens if the lift fails?

    The bathroom — where it usually falls apart

    This is the one that catches us out most often, so we ask the most here.

    • Is it a wet room with a level floor, or a shower tray with a lip?
    • Is there a fixed glass screen? (A screen can make a side transfer impossible even in a room that is otherwise fine.)
    • Is there a shower seat, is it fixed or free-standing, and which side is it on?
    • Which side of the toilet are the grab rails on? Left, right, or both?
    • Is there a red emergency cord, and does it reach the floor?
    • Can you get a wheelchair under the sink?

    The question that tells you everything

    After all that, we ask one more: “Could you send me a photograph of the bathroom?”

    A hotel that is genuinely set up for disabled guests will have those photos to hand, or will happily walk down the corridor and take them. A hotel that hesitates, or says the photos are on the website (they are not), is telling you something. We have booked on the strength of a blurry phone picture of a grab rail more than once, and we have never regretted it.

    Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.

  • Flying with a wheelchair: the bit nobody explains

    Flying is the part of travelling we plan hardest, because it is the part where you have the least control. On a train you can wait for the next one. At thirty-five thousand feet, in an aisle chair, you cannot.

    Your rights, briefly

    Assistance at airports is a legal right, not a favour. Airlines and airports must provide it free of charge, and your wheelchair travels free — it does not come out of your baggage allowance. Give the airline at least 48 hours’ notice and they are obliged to arrange it. Give them less and they must still do what they reasonably can.

    Knowing that matters, because you will occasionally meet someone at a desk who talks about it as though it were a kindness they are doing you.

    What to tell them when you book

    • Whether you can walk a short distance, walk a few steps, or not at all. Airlines use codes for this and getting it right determines what turns up for you.
    • The make and model of the wheelchair.
    • Its exact weight and folded dimensions.
    • Whether the battery is wet, gel, or lithium — this one genuinely matters and lithium has extra rules.
    • Whether it folds, and how.

    The bit nobody explains

    You do not stay in your own wheelchair. At the gate you transfer to a narrow aisle chair, and your own chair goes into the hold with the suitcases. This is the moment that worries people most the first time, and reasonably so.

    What we do about it:

    • Photograph the chair from every angle at the gate, with the date visible if you can. If it comes back damaged, you are arguing from evidence rather than memory.
    • Remove anything removable — cushion, footplates, joystick, bag — and take it into the cabin.
    • Tape a laminated card to the chair with handling instructions and your phone number.
    • Ask for it back at the aircraft door, not at baggage reclaim. You are entitled to ask, and at many airports they will do it. Being pushed through a strange airport in someone else’s chair is a miserable way to arrive.
    • Report any damage before you leave the airport. Once you have walked out of the terminal, claims get much harder.

    Onboard

    Most short-haul aircraft do not have an accessible toilet. Long-haul often does, but “accessible” is doing heavy lifting in that sentence. Plan accordingly, and do not let anyone make you feel awkward about it.

    Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.

  • Booking rail assistance: what actually happens

    Rail travel in Britain can be genuinely good or genuinely awful, and the difference is rarely the train. It is whether the person with the ramp turns up.

    How the booking works

    The scheme is called Passenger Assist, and it covers every train operator in Britain through one booking. You can arrange it by phone, online, or through the Passenger Assistance app. The required notice period was cut to two hours before travel a few years ago, which was a real improvement — it used to be a full day, which made spontaneous travel impossible.

    You can also simply turn up and ask. Staff are supposed to help on the spot where they can. In practice, at a big staffed station in the middle of the day, turn-up-and-go usually works. At a small unstaffed halt on a Sunday evening, it will not.

    What actually happens on the day

    1. You go to the assistance meeting point, usually near the main ticket barrier, and give your name.
    2. Someone escorts you to the platform and waits with you.
    3. When the train arrives, they put a portable ramp across the gap and you board.
    4. They radio ahead to your destination station, and — this is the important bit — to any station where you change trains.
    5. Someone meets you at the other end with another ramp.

    Four of those five steps are usually fine. Step four is where it breaks.

    What we do to protect ourselves

    • Arrive earlier than they tell you. If they say twenty minutes, we make it thirty. It costs us a coffee and saves us a panic.
    • Get the name of the person who helped you board. If nobody is waiting at the other end, you have somewhere to start.
    • Ask the boarding staff to confirm they have radioed ahead, out loud, in front of you. Not because they are lying, but because saying it makes it real.
    • Avoid tight connections. A twelve-minute change looks fine on paper and is not fine with a ramp involved. We will take an hour’s longer journey for a half-hour buffer every time.
    • Know the guard is your fallback. If you are stuck on a train and nobody has come, find the guard. They can usually get a ramp out themselves.

    If it goes wrong

    Being left on a train past your stop is not a minor inconvenience and you should not treat it as one. Every operator has a complaints process, and failures of booked assistance are taken more seriously than most complaints because they are reported to the regulator. Write it down at the time: train, times, station, what happened. It is worth doing even when you are tired and just want to go home.

    Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.

  • Cottage or hotel? The self-catering trade-off

    Self-catering looks like the answer to everything. No breakfast times, no reception, no explaining yourselves twice a day. And it can be — some of our best weeks have been in a cottage. But a cottage is also the accommodation with the least backup, and that changes how you book it.

    The trade-off in one sentence

    In a hotel, when something is wrong, there is a person downstairs whose job it is to fix it. In a cottage, when something is wrong, there is a laminated sheet with a phone number for a woman called Margaret who is at her daughter’s this week.

    What “accessible cottage” usually means

    It usually means a ground-floor bedroom and a walk-in shower, which is a fine start and nowhere near the whole story. The listings are written by owners, not access auditors, so the photographs matter more than the words. Things the listing will not tell you:

    • Whether the “level entrance” includes the path from the parking space, which is often gravel, grass, or a picturesque line of stepping stones.
    • Whether the walk-in shower has a seat, rails, or a two-inch lip that made it into no photograph.
    • Internal door widths. Cottages are old. Old doors are narrow.
    • Whether “ground floor bedroom” means the living room with a sofa bed in it.
    • How far the nearest shop, pub and hospital are — the last one matters more than anyone likes to say.

    The questions we put to the owner

    Same principle as hotels: nothing that can be answered with a cheerful yes.

    • Can you measure the bedroom and bathroom doors for me, in centimetres, while I hold?
    • What is the surface between the car and the front door, and is it lit at night?
    • Is there a step into the shower? Any step at all?
    • How high is the bed, and can it be raised on blocks if we need it?
    • If the heating, the hot water or the key safe fails at eight on a Friday evening, who do we ring, and how far away do they live?

    A good owner enjoys these questions. They know their house, they are proud of it, and they will often volunteer things you did not ask. An owner who gets vague or slightly irritated is telling you what the week will be like.

    Our rule of thumb

    Hotel for short trips and cities, cottage for long stays and countryside — but only a cottage whose owner answered the phone, answered the questions, and sent the photo of the shower without being chased. The booking conversation is the audition.

    Your turn: if you have experiences of your own — the places that got it right, and the ones that got it badly wrong — tell us in the comments below. Every report helps the next traveller.