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

Charlotte Smith, 26, shares her passion for dog agility.

All of my life the two things I have been most passionate about are animals and art. I studied art and graphic design when I was in college and have always had a pet of one sort or another since I was young. In my teens I was a keen horse rider. I had a pony which I would ride every day and take to competitions at the weekends. Continue reading »

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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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 »

When his mental and physical health deteriorated leaving Daniel Anderson-McIntyre disabled, he encountered some very different attitudes among employers. Not all were positive. He tells Mobilise his story.

In 2006, at the age of 29, I became disabled.  This wasn’t just an overnight thing but was gradual over several months and I believe, looking back, had been going on for a number of years beforehand.

My disability consists of a mental illness, known as Conversion Disorder, which causes me several physical and mental disabilities.  I have difficulty for example with walking, often using my wheelchair or crutches to get around.  Among the more “invisible” problems are my poor memory and lack of ability to concentrate for long periods of time. 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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Mobilise member Jenny Banbury loved her manual Renault Clio but there was no way she could fit a hoist and a scooter inside such a small car, and she needed an automatic for the hand controls she required.  Her only option was to get something bigger and after much soul searching she settled on the Vauxhall Zafira 1.9 CDTI.

I had been having driving lessons with Rob Lukehurst (in his BSM Corsa with hand controls), and my Disability Living Allowance award letter had come through.  The time had come to look for a car.  I went to see Andrew Vernon, the Motability Specialist at Hartwell Oxford Vauxhall, for advice on what car he thought might be suitable.  I’d been to many dealers and didn’t like the look or space the other cars offered.  I was also fixated on having a small car.

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Mobilise member Greg Hayball from Dorset tells Mobilise about his travels through France and Spain in his new Ford Focus Zetec.

Having visited France and Spain on numerous occasions I decided to avoid the chills of the bleak UK winter and head across the continent for a few days on a mini motoring holiday.

I’d recently taken delivery of a new Ford Focus Zetec with sports trim and all the extras I could afford. This was an upgrade from my previous Focus, from my Motability dealer in Weymouth, and the Zetec goes like a rocket. It has good handling, steering and suspension, and the 17.5” alloy wheels hang on to the road as if their lives, and mine, depend upon it. I feel as though I’m almost glued in to the driver’s sports style seat, and the ‘rally style’ automatic, tiptronic gearbox is easy to use.  The car has adaptive headlights; those that follow the direction that you turn the steering wheel, which really do let the driver see round corners. Definitely a great choice! Continue reading »

Venice is built on 117 small islands, with over 150 canals, and connected by an amazing 409 bridges. It may not sound the most accessible holiday destination for a wheelchair user but Mobilise member Maisie Carter was pleasantly surprised to find that it was! She tells Mobilise all about her trip.

Maisie trying out a wheelchair lift in Venice. Photo courtesy of Maisie and Nick Carter.

It was magical sailing into Venice at noon, the sun glinting on the water as a wonderful spectacle unfolded before us. Suddenly large buildings appeared on our left and to the right St Marks Square. We cruised along Canale della Giudecca, so close you could clearly see people enjoying their lunch at the cafe tables that lined the waters edge.

This was my first sight of Venice as we sailed into port aboard the Fred Olsen cruise ship Boudicca. The cruise to the Adriatic called at numerous other destinations, but the time spent in Venice was the most important for us. This was a place I was initially reluctant to visit – I use a lightweight wheelchair and couldn’t imagine how I was going to get around – but the next two days proved to me just how accessible a city Venice is. Continue reading »

Mobilise member John Jewitt tests out the new Jenny-Wiz powerchair from Fieldmaster

I had been aware for a while that my faithful Euroflex electric wheelchair was coming to the end of its life. It needed several expensive repairs and given the age of the chair itself I began to draw up a shortlist of suitable replacements.

I wanted a chair primarily for indoor use, but one that could cope with some limited outdoor duty. I needed an electrically elevating seat and I wanted this to be mounted on a proper frame as in the past I have found single-post models prone to developing squeaks and groans (which engender equally noisy complaints from my better half!) Very importantly, it had to be compact; unfortunately these last two requirements ruled out most of the chairs currently on the market.

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