Travellers World

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

Category: Kit and gear

  • The kit we never travel without

    Every trip we take, the same small pile of things comes with us. None of it is exciting. All of it has saved a day at some point.

    A RADAR key

    The standard key for locked accessible toilets across the UK. A few pounds from Disability Rights UK, Amazon or your council, and it opens tens of thousands of doors. If you buy one thing off this list, buy this. We carry two, because we have lost one in the past and that causes problems.

    A basic puncture kit and a decent pump

    If the chair has pneumatic tyres, this is not optional. We found these on Amazon. A flat tyre two miles from the car is a completely different problem to a flat tyre you can fix on a bench. Slime or a similar sealant in the tubes as well, if the chair allows it.

    A folding travel ramp

    A lightweight suitcase ramp handles the single step that stands between you and a shop, a pub or a cottage. It will not solve a flight of stairs and it is not meant to. It solves the small, stupid, extremely common obstacle.

    A laminated card for the airline

    Handling instructions for the chair, plus our phone numbers, cable-tied on before every flight. Baggage handlers are not trying to break your chair; they often simply do not know how it comes apart.

    Spare charger, spare cable, spare battery

    For the chair and for the phone. The phone matters more than people think, because it is the thing you use to call the taxi, find the accessible entrance and ring the station when nobody has turned up. We swear by our power banks, I have a dozen or so, but my Anker Powerbank is the one I trust and use the most.

    A tape measure

    Slightly obsessive, genuinely useful. We know the chair’s width to the centimetre, and being able to measure a doorway settles an argument with a hopeful receptionist in about ten seconds.

    Written confirmation of everything

    The accessible room booking, the assistance reference, the parking arrangement — printed, not just on the phone. Screens go flat and signal disappears exactly when you need to prove something.

    And the unglamorous one

    Extra time. Not a thing you can pack, but the most valuable item on the list. Nearly every bad day we have had came from a tight connection, a rushed transfer or a plan with no slack in it. We build in an hour we do not need, and most days we do not need it. The days we do, it is the only thing that saves the trip.

    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 rules we travel by now

    Every trip we take generates two lists: the things we packed and used, and the things we learned when something went sideways. This post is the second list — the habits we now treat as rules, each one bought with an afternoon we didn’t enjoy.

    Never arrive after dark, first time

    Every unknown building is worse at night. The accessible entrance is round the side, unlit. The dropped kerb is somewhere. The key safe is at the wrong height. We book travel so we arrive anywhere new in daylight, even when it means leaving earlier than feels necessary. Second visits can be any time; first visits are daytime.

    Confirm everything 48 hours out

    One round of phone calls two days before: the room, the assistance booking, the taxi, the parking. It takes twenty minutes and it catches something — a rebooked room, a lapsed taxi booking, an assistance reference that never made it into the system — more often than you would believe. The person who confirms is never the person who is stranded.

    The first hour rule

    On arrival anywhere we are staying, before unpacking, before the kettle: check the bathroom actually works for us, check the bed height, find the accessible fire exit, and test that the promised things are true. If the room is wrong, the time to say so is in the first hour, while reception can still do something and before you have colonised the wardrobe. Rooms get fixed for the people who ask early and pleasantly.

    Photograph the promises

    The booking page that said wet room. The email that confirmed the ramp. The chair at the departure gate. The parking bay you were told to use. None of it takes a minute, all of it settles arguments later, and the discipline of it has quietly won us refunds, upgrades and apologies without a single raised voice.

    Build one empty day into every week away

    Not a rest day — an empty one, with nothing booked and nothing owed. Travelling this way costs more energy than the able-bodied version of the same itinerary, and the difference compounds. The empty day is where the trip breathes. Sometimes it becomes the best day; sometimes it is naps and a crossword; both are the holiday working as designed.

    And the one that took us longest to learn

    Leave. If a place has got it badly wrong and is not fixing it, stop negotiating, get the evidence, and go somewhere better. We spent years grinding out bad stays because leaving felt like a defeat. It isn’t. The money usually comes back; the days never do. Somewhere in every town is a place that will be glad you came — the whole point of this site is to help you find it first time.

    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.