Travellers World

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

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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The accessible toilet that wasn’t

    There is a particular sinking feeling that every wheelchair user and every carer knows. You have found the accessible toilet. You have got there in time. And the door will not open, or it opens onto a mop bucket, a stack of high chairs and a broken parasol.

    It happens constantly, and it happens for a small number of very repeatable reasons.

    The five ways it goes wrong

    1. It is being used as a cupboard

    The most common failure by a distance. The accessible toilet is the biggest room with the fewest daily users, so it quietly becomes storage. This is worth mentioning to a manager every single time, politely and without heat. Half of them are genuinely embarrassed and clear it out.

    2. It is locked and nobody knows who has the key

    Many accessible toilets are on the National Key Scheme, which means they use a standard RADAR key. Carry your own — you can buy one from Amazon, Disability Rights UK or a local council for a few pounds, and it is the single best value item in our bag. When a venue has its own key instead of a standard one, you are at the mercy of whoever is on shift.

    3. The emergency cord is tied up

    The red cord should reach the floor. It is there so that someone who has fallen can pull it. It gets knotted up out of the way because staff are tired of it being pulled by mistake. Untie it. Every time. It takes four seconds and it is genuinely a safety issue.

    4. The grab rails are on the wrong side

    Transfers are usually one-sided. A toilet with a rail only on the left is unusable for someone who transfers to the right, no matter how big the room is. There is nothing to be done about this on the day, which is why we ask about it in advance.

    5. It exists, but you cannot use it

    A standard accessible toilet assumes you can transfer yourself, or with one person’s help. If you need a hoist and a changing bench, a standard accessible loo does not help at all. That is what Changing Places toilets are for — larger rooms with a hoist, an adult-sized bench and space for two carers. There are now several thousand across the UK, and new large public buildings in England have been required to include them for a few years. The Changing Places website has a map, and we plan long days around it.

    What we do

    We find the toilet first, before the coffee, before the exhibition, before anything. It sounds joyless and it is not — it is the opposite. Knowing where it is, and that it works, is what lets you relax and actually enjoy the day.

    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.

  • Ferries and boats: boarding, alighting and the gap

    Boats are strange. A big cross-channel ferry can be one of the most accessible ways to travel in Britain — you drive on, you park, there are lifts, there is space, nobody hurries you. A small tourist boat on a lake can be one of the least accessible things you will ever encounter. The word “ferry” covers both.

    Big ferries: usually good

    On the major routes, things generally work. You book assistance in advance, if you driver you are parked near the lift, and the accessible cabins are properly done. Points to confirm:

    • Ask to be parked on the lift deck. This is the single most useful request and it is usually granted if you ask when booking.
    • Check whether you are allowed to stay in the vehicle during the crossing — on most routes you are not, so you need the lift to work.
    • Ask how many lifts serve the passenger decks. One lift is a single point of failure on a four-hour crossing.
    • Book an accessible cabin early on overnight routes. There are very few and they go first.

    Small boats: ask about the gap

    Here is the thing about boats that catches people out. The tide moves. A gangway that is level at high water can be a one-in-four slope four hours later, and no amount of goodwill from the crew changes the laws of physics.

    So the questions to ask a small operator are:

    • Is there a fixed pontoon that rises and falls with the tide, or a fixed quay wall with steps?
    • At what state of the tide is boarding easiest, and can we book that sailing?
    • Is there a ramp, and how wide is it? Some are narrower than a wheelchair.
    • Once aboard, is there a step down into the cabin? This is very often overlooked and very often a dealbreaker.
    • Is there a toilet on board that we can use? On smaller vessels, frequently not.

    The honest answer we like best

    “I’m sorry, we can’t board a wheelchair safely on this boat.” That is a good answer. It is disappointing, but it is honest, it is safe, and it lets us make a different plan.

    The bad answer is “we’ll manage, we’ll lift you on” from a cheerful crew of two who have not thought it through. Being manhandled over a gap onto a moving deck is how people get hurt. It is entirely reasonable to say no thank you, even when everyone is being kind 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.

  • 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.

  • Museums, galleries and stately homes: how much will we actually see?

    Museums and galleries should be the easiest day out there is: flat floors, lifts, cafés, staff everywhere. The big nationals mostly are. But the word “museum” also covers a Tudor manor with a spiral staircase and a volunteer on the door, and the two experiences have nothing in common. Here is how we tell them apart before we set off.

    Read the access page, then ring anyway

    Most attractions now have an access page, and its quality is itself a signal. A good one gives you door widths, lift dimensions, a map of accessible toilets, and honesty about which bits you cannot reach. A bad one says “we welcome all visitors” and lists the car park. When the page is vague, the building usually is too.

    Then ring, and ask the question the page never answers: “How much of the collection will we actually see?” “The house is partially accessible” can mean you miss one attic room, or it can mean you see the tearoom and a corridor while everyone else sees the house. Those are very different £19.50s.

    Historic properties: the honest arithmetic

    Old buildings are allowed to be old. Listed status genuinely does limit what can be altered, and we do not expect a medieval gatehouse to have a lift in it. What we do expect is honesty and effort: a decent virtual tour or photo book of the floors you cannot reach, ground-floor highlights arranged so the visit still has a shape, and — the good ones do this — free or reduced entry when most of the property is off limits to you. Many will also admit an essential companion free; carry proof of disability benefits or an access card and ask, because it is rarely advertised on the sign.

    The grounds are half the visit

    Gardens and parkland are where the surface question comes back. Ask what the paths are made of — compacted gravel is usually fine, loose gravel is a slog, bark chip is a trap. Ask if there is a recommended accessible route map. And ask whether they lend all-terrain wheelchairs or mobility scooters: a surprising number of big outdoor attractions do, free, and it transforms the day. It is the single most underused service in British tourism, mostly because nobody knows it exists.

    Small things that mark out a good one

    • Seating through the galleries, not just at the ends.
    • Labels at a height you can read from a chair, angled rather than flat on a plinth.
    • A quiet hour or relaxed opening, which helps far more people than it is designed for.
    • Staff who offer the lift route unprompted instead of watching you find out about the stairs.

  • Getting to the beach (or close enough)

    Nobody plans the beach properly, because the beach is supposed to be the un-planned bit. But sand is the least wheelchair-friendly surface in nature, and the difference between a lovely afternoon and sitting in the car park watching other people have one is about twenty minutes of homework.

    What to look for

    • A promenade or sea wall. The honest baseline. A firm, level prom with the sea on one side is a genuinely good day out even if the sand itself is off limits, and Britain has hundreds of them.
    • Boardwalks onto the sand. Some beaches lay matting or timber walkways from the slipway down towards the water in season. They get you onto the beach itself, which feels completely different from looking at it over a railing.
    • Beach wheelchair hire. The big one. A growing number of beaches keep balloon-tyred beach wheelchairs to borrow, usually free, usually run by the lifeguards, the council or a local charity, usually needing a phone booking a day or two ahead. Some hoist-equipped beaches even have floating chairs that go into the sea. Search the name of the beach plus “beach wheelchair” before you assume there isn’t one.
    • A slipway you can actually use. Boat slipways are ramps, but many are steep, weed-slicked, or end in soft sand. Look at the photos on the map app; you can usually tell.

    The practical checklist

    • Tide times. On a flat beach the tide can move a very long way. Firm sand near the water at low tide is often the best rolling surface there is — and it disappears on a schedule. Check before you go, not on the beach.
    • Where is the accessible toilet, and is it open? Seafront toilets are seasonal. In October the answer may be “the pub”.
    • Parking on the prom or behind it? A bay on the seafront road beats a bigger car park two streets back with a dropped kerb that may or may not exist.
    • Sand in the bearings. Dry soft sand gets into everything. If you do take the everyday chair onto matting, a stiff brush at the car saves the wheels later.

    Lower the bar, then enjoy it

    Our best beach days stopped being about getting onto the sand at all costs. Fish and chips at the railing, the prom at golden hour, twenty minutes of watching the sea do its thing — that is the beach. The balloon-tyre chair days are a bonus, not the entry requirement.

    We love the beach at Filey it’s where we spent the summer for the first 5 or 6 years of our relationship.

  • Motorway services: the stop is part of the journey

    Motorway services are the part of the journey nobody writes about, which is odd, because on a long drive you will spend more time in them than anywhere except the car. For us a services stop is not a pause in the trip. It is one of the legs of it, and it can go wrong in all the usual ways.

    The good news first

    Services are actually one of the more reliably accessible environments in Britain. They are modern, single-level, automatic-doored, and legally obliged to be open to everyone 24 hours a day. Blue badge parking is free (the general two-hour free rule applies to everyone, but badge bays sit closest to the door), and nearly every major services has an accessible toilet. A large and growing number now have a Changing Places facility too — the big room with the hoist and bench — and that is worth planning around.

    Plan the stops like you plan the route

    Our rule: on any drive over two hours, we choose the stop before we leave, rather than taking whichever services appears when someone needs it. Because:

    • The Changing Places map tells you which services have one. If you need it, that decides the stop, full stop.
    • Services vary wildly in distance-from-car-to-door. Some have badge bays right at the entrance; some have them across a lane of moving traffic.
    • The RADAR key comes with us, because accessible toilets at services are sometimes on the key scheme — and occasionally “closed for cleaning” at exactly the wrong moment, at which point the staff can open the second one they usually have.
    • Fuel matters too: some forecourts will send someone out to help you fill up if you can’t get out — there are apps and horn signals for this — but it depends on staffing, so the reliable move is to fuel where a second person can jump out.

    The details that separate good from bad

    • Counter heights. Most food units are fine; ordering screens set high or card readers bolted at standing height are the modern nuisance. Staff will always come round, but you have to catch someone’s eye first.
    • Seating. Fixed benches bolted to fixed tables are everywhere in services, and they are exactly the restaurant booth problem again. Look for the loose chairs; there are always some.
    • The 2.0m height barrier on the “premium” parking nearest the door at some sites. The badge bays are fine, but if they are full, the overflow may not be, if you drive anything tall.

    None of this is difficult. All of it is the difference between a ten-minute stop and a forty-minute one, and on a long travel day those thirty minutes are the margin between arriving fine and arriving done in.

  • Buses and coaches: the ramp, the space, and the lift

    Buses are the transport we use least and rely on most when we do, because a bus is usually the fallback — the train is off, the taxi hasn’t come, the town is the kind where everything else has stopped for the day. So it is worth knowing exactly how the bus is supposed to work, and where it doesn’t.

    Local buses: better than their reputation

    Every full-size local bus in Britain has been required to be accessible for years now: low floor, a powered ramp at the middle or front door, and a wheelchair space. The ramp is deployed by the driver at the push of a button, no booking, no notice. When it works — which is most of the time — it is the most spontaneous accessible transport in the country. Turn up, wave, ride.

    The failure points, so you can see them coming:

    • The ramp doesn’t deploy. They jam, mostly from grit. The driver is supposed to try the manual override; some don’t know it exists. It is fine to ask.
    • The kerb. The ramp needs a kerb of decent height to land on a usable slope. A stop where the bus pulls up on a painted line on flat tarmac gives you a steep ramp; rural stops are the worst for it.
    • The space is occupied. The wheelchair space is legally the wheelchair user’s priority — the courts settled that — and the driver is supposed to require, not just request, that a buggy makes way if it reasonably can. In practice this depends entirely on the driver’s spine. Most of the time it resolves with ordinary politeness.
    • One space per bus. Two wheelchair users travelling together will almost never fit on one bus. We plan around this rather than test it.

    Coaches: a different animal entirely

    Long-distance coaches are high-floor vehicles, and access is by lift, not ramp — where it exists at all. The big scheduled operators run wheelchair-accessible coaches on their main routes, but you must book the space in advance, usually at least a day or two ahead, and confirm whether your chair’s size and weight fit the lift’s limits. Powered chairs press against those limits quickly. This is not a turn-up service and never pretends to be; treat a coach like a flight, not like a bus.

    The question that matters most, because it catches people: “Is the accessible coach guaranteed on my specific departure, and what happens if it is swapped?” Vehicle swaps happen, and a swap to a non-lift coach strands you at the stop with a valid ticket. Get the answer, and the assistance phone number, in writing.

    Our honest ranking

    City bus networks: genuinely good, use them freely. Rural buses: good bones, patchy kerbs, have a plan B. Coaches: workable with planning, but the booking-and-confirmation dance means we usually take the train unless the price difference is silly.

    Tell us below in the comments of any issues you have with buses and coaches

  • 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.