Disabled Motoring UK - Disabled Motoring UK is the charity for disabled drivers, passengers & Blue Badge holders.

It’s now 40 years since the UK Disabled Person’s Parking Badge was first introduced and many countries around the world have implemented similar schemes. Bert Morris who is the former AA Motoring Policy Manager/Director recently completed a project gathering information on schemes worldwide to compile The Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) guide for the disabled traveller. Continue reading »

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1. 1. When you type brasserie, it autocorrects to brassiere. I could go back and correct it, but I rather like the image.
3. 2. “Vis a vis” means “approximately” in French, so when we went looking for a restaurant named ‘Vis a vis” it took us an hour to work out that there was no such place. Funny now, but at the time I was ready to eat a horse (and of course, here you can actually eat a horse).
5. 3. Scheissplatz is a shooting range, not a toilet.

Provins Castle

And we’re back. Sorry about the 48 hrs absence, but technical issues have meant that live blogging wasn’t possible for the last couple of days. However, Dinger has applied concussive maintenance, (i.e. hit the computer with a hammer) and it appears that we are back on track. Ironically, the trike has had a really good run, and old Iron Lung has been behaving herself. I put it down to the sweet nothings that Dinger has been whispering into her condenser.

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Jan McDonald and Kitty Walker of the Forth & Tay Disabled Ramblers report on a week-long rambling trip in Aviemore.

Disappointed at the cancellation of the annual Aviemore Walking Festival a group of intrepid disabled ramblers from Fife decided to go it alone and travelled to Aviemore to sample the excellent network of accessible trails in the area. The eleven holidaymakers, who are all members of Forth & Tay Disabled Ramblers, spent a week in the area staying in a mixture of accessible self-catering and B & B accommodation. Seven of the ramblers use mobility scooters or powered wheelchairs to access the outdoors, whilst the other 4 are volunteers and carers. Thanks to the excellent scooter hire scheme run by the Badenoch and Strathspey Community Transport Company several of the rambles on this holiday were made possible.
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Want to get back into driving? Andrew Dalton, Information Officer at The William Merritt Disabled Living Centre and Mobility Service, explains how a mobility centre could help get you back in the driving seat.

Having a limb injury or illness that has stopped you driving can have a big impact on your mobility and quality of life. But with a bit of help you may be able to return to the wheel. At The William Merritt Disabled Living Centre and Mobility Service in Leeds we offer a Mobility Service that can assess your ability to drive and recommend adaptations to make it easier and safer.

Our aim is to help people get back on the road if possible, and to help people drive safely. Being able to drive again can open many doors. If driving is not for you we can also help make getting into and out of cars as a passenger easier. Continue reading »

Mobilise member Fred Walden is a regular visitor to London. He tells us about three of his favourite accessible hotels.

Copthorne Tara Hotel, Kensington

Over the last twenty years I have stayed many times at the London Tara Hotel in Kensington and booked one of their adapted rooms. The Tara was one of the first hotels in London to properly cater for visitors with disabilities and they have adapted around a dozen rooms on their Mezzanine floor by fitting roll-in showers, ceiling hoists, automatic doors and special furniture. Continue reading »

Suselle Boffey  tells us about her early adventures with her mother, who inspired Suselle’s lifelong love of travel.

My mother was quite an unusual person.  From an early age, she bucked the trend – a trait she probably inherited from her father, who chose to follow a professional career and so alienated his family of traditional Jewish business-people.  Mum’s own mother was absent for most of Mum’s life (she was sent to a distant psychiatric hospital when Mum was seven years old). As a result, Mum’s upbringing was left to her dad and the housekeeper. Perhaps it’s not surprising that she followed her own thoughts and ideas as she grew up, developing an enquiring mind and a passionate curiosity about the world.  Even in the early 1950s – still a period when convention and tradition ruled, she chose to go into nursing and to hitchhike across France and Germany with her nursing friends! Continue reading »

When two young children came to visit Helen Dolphin she found just the excuse she needed to visit the local Dinosaur park. With life-sized dinosaurs, climbing frames and guinea pigs to stroke, the day trip was a roaring success!

 Although it’s 65 million years ago since dinosaurs roamed the earth, in a small corner of Norfolk these monstrous creatures can still be seen. Albeit made of plastic the dinosaurs at the Dinosaur adventure park at Lenwade, Norfolk are still pretty realistic. Some of the dinosaur’s heads can be seen from the road popping out of the tree tops and I’d always quite fancied a closer look. However it wasn’t until my husbands god-daughter Natalie and her brother James came to stay that we had a reason to visit.

 The park is very much aimed at children and there is plenty for them to do. Everything from an adventure play area to crazy golf. Natalie and James had a great time on the 23 metre climb-a-saurus despite it pouring with rain. 

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UPDATE: For information on the memorial tribute to O A Denly, please click here.

It is with great sadness that Mobilise has to announce the death of our founder and president, Oswald Arthur Denly, known to many of us as “Denny”. He died at the age of 86.

O A Denly was born in 1924 in London, and entered the Royal Navy in 1942. He contracted polio whilst in Ceylon and returned to the UK in 1945. Paralysed from the waist down, he was invalided out of the navy and became a hospital administrator. The expectation of many might have been that Denny’s adventuring days were firmly behind him, but the handsome 22-year old thought differently. He had planned to spend his first Foreign Service leave in Switzerland and saw no reason to change his plans despite his disability. In June 1947 he set off to conquer the Alps in his 147cc petrol-driven Argson tricycle, or “Invalid Carriage”. His was to take him 1,500 miles over the Alps, including a climb of almost 8,000 feet through steep mountain passes. Continue reading »