Lizzie's Summer Outings

Over the summer holidays this year, I went to a number of places which I thought were worth a mention!

At the beginning of August, my friend Antje came to stay for two weeks from Germany . We went to the London Eye by train from Havant to Waterloo station. We told the train company in advance that we'd be travelling to London , and were helped onto the train with a ramp at Havant. However, when we arrived at Waterloo , there was nobody waiting with a ramp to help me get off the train! Luckily, I was in my manual wheelchair so Antje and my mother were able to bump me down onto the platform. It was quite annoying as it hadn't made any difference that we had let them know in advance. We walked from the station to the London Eye, which took about 10 minutes. The route was much simpler than on my last trip to London as the building works at the Festival Hall had been completed so there was a more level route. Our tickets for the London Eye had been booked by phone the previous day so we headed straight for the ticket office in County Hall. We were then ‘fast tracked' in the queue to get on the Eye. This meant we didn't have to stand in the really long queue, but being August, the ‘fast track' still took about 10 minutes to move through. The pod was stopped so we could get on, and then about 12 more people were let on. We slowly started rising, the London buildings getting smaller and more buildings, further away becoming more visible. We had a great view of Buckingham Palace , and could easily spot the new Wembley stadium in the distance! The only annoying thing for me was at my eye level in my manual chair, there was a railing around the inside of the pod. This meant that I had to look below the bar to see the views properly! The railing also blocked out my face on the in flight photo which we had the opportunity to buy afterwards – we didn't buy it! After our ‘flight' we walked along the South Bank and enjoyed watching all the buskers. We had a lovely lunch in the South Bank Centre café which overlooked the River Thames and had loads of space around the tables!

The following day, we went out in the Chairboat at Cobnor. It was very grey in the morning so we were quite worried about whether the trip would be cancelled, but by the time we had boarded the boat, the sun had come out and it was a hot day! We had a fantastic 3 hours on the boat, going all the way up to Emsworth. After an hour we moored on one of the buoys in the harbour and had our picnic lunch! It was a brilliant way to spend a sunny day and I feel so lucky we live where there I am able to get out on the water like all the other people with boats!

Later in August, my parents, my sister and I went to Torquay for 6 days. We'd booked ‘wheelchair friendly, ground floor rooms opening onto a private terrace' at our hotel which I found on the internet. On arrival we found that the ground floor was upstairs via a lift and our bedrooms had 2 big steps onto the terrace. However we didn't stay annoyed for very long, as we were glad to be on holiday! After breakfast the first morning we set out from the hotel to walk to the beach. This took about 10 minutes through the park and across the main road, but after that we could walk a full mile with our electric chairs along the smooth promenade, along the seafront and round the boat marinas. We walked all the way to the end of the pedestrian area to a penguin zoo called Living Coasts which was built into the cliff. The wheelchair access was excellent, with big slopes around the enclosures. At one of these, a little penguin waddled out of the pen and came to peck the mud on my wheel! When we arrived back at the hotel after being out the first day, we found that the hotel carpenter had built us a ramp to enable us to get out onto the terrace! We were amazed at how quickly this had been achieved and were then able to sit outside on the terrace, reading our books and soaking in the sunshine! All the staff in the hotel were extremely helpful and friendly and did all they could to help us. We walked along the seafront every day and had lunch at different places each day. On our last day, we discovered the café at Living Coasts which was upstairs and overlooked the bay and the rocks. It felt as if we were on a ship! We had excellent food at the hotel and were enjoying our holiday so much that we extended by an extra night. We all really want to go back again for another holiday, as although we live near the sea here, it was so brilliant to be able to get to the sea without going in the car!

If you'd like any more information about the places I visited over the summer, please email me, and I'll try to answer any questions! Also, if you have been anywhere you'd like to tell other readers about, send in your stories. When you have special needs it is always helpful to hear from someone ‘in the know' before visiting somewhere.

Lizzie Baily lizzie@wellspringwestsussex.org.uk