I had intended to make this entry about the crucial need for disabled people to have to plan their lives in minute detail. Then, as if to underline my point, two incidents happened on our ride – our hotel stairlift broke down, and the elevator for the Tyne cycle tunnel wasn’t working when we got there. More of these later…
One of the things nearly all disabled people learn to develop is a knack for military precision planning and forward thinking. Because often someone else (without the ability to mindread) is doing tasks for me and because of my inability to adapt to unexpected situations it helps no end to plan things ahead, in order to live my life with a minimum of frustration and stress.
This skill has proven to be essential in making plans for our cycle ride: for example, our support vehicle needed to be fully equipped with traffic-calming measures such as emergency vehicle flashing lights, signs and flags. My trike has been especially adapted to minimise any likelihood of me losing control and ending up in a ditch. Every route and every hotel has been pre-planned and booked for specific days – unlike other travellers, I can’t just stop off at the nearest B&B and find a room for the night. Properly equipped and working accessible rooms are few and far between.
So, when we arrived in Morpeth and the stairlift needed to get me down the staircase to my ‘accessible’ room wasn’t working, this threw a complete spanner in the works. All of a sudden the possibility of simply having a shower or having a pee became a real issue. Equally, having got downstairs to the room, with a huge struggle, I was now faced with having to get back up them in order to eat dinner. The hotel was extremely apologetic, but did nothing to remedy things during our stay. Their attitude was akin to telling walking guests that the staircase was being re-built and they’d have to use a pole to climb up to their bedrooms after dinner!
Before we got to Morpeth, we spent day 11 of our ride cycling along the spectacular Northumbria coastline. What appeared to be a dramatic ancient tower was now highly original self-catering accommodation.
Day 12 was a gentle descent from Alnwick to Morpeth. We cruised through poppy fields before occasionally having our progress interrupted by cycle path barriers. The one you see here was one of the more difficult to negotiate. However, a local council worker, on seeing our difficulties, helpfully suggested that he would sidestep local council bureaucracy by “getting a JCB to make the gap three inches wider”!
The following day, after being waved off from our hotel by the Mayor of Morpeth, started with a miserable crawl alongside the A1 being pelted by hailstones (here’s a photo of me afterward). Finally, we finished with a gentle cruise into Newcastle on smooth tarmac cycle paths.
When we arrived at the pedestrian tunnel under the Tyne, our second lift problem became evident. The elevator down to the tunnel was closed due to nearby roadworks. This posed a bit of a problem since I couldn’t take my trike down the many steps to tunnel level. An inability for me to find an alternative solution put an end to the ride here. We would pick the trail up from the south side of the tunnel after our rest day tomorrow.
That evening we put together the first “Max cam” film.
Max cam, shot from my point of view whilst riding the trike, details our journey through Scotland – it’s like Formula 1. But slower. You can find it at:
