One of the things that is guaranteed to get on my goat is the likelihood that disabled people are almost always lumped together into a group called “the disabled”. This throws into focus two things that my English teacher would have had me up on:
Firstly, since when did an adjective that should be applied to a person become a noun? Frequently, I am referred to as a member of a curious club called “the disabled”. Occasionally, I have even (insultingly) been referred to as “a disabled”.
Secondly, as a noun, “the disabled” is a pretty vague word. I mean, what does a blind person, say, have in common with a deaf person, with an amputee or a wheelchair user? Very little. It’s meaningless. People who share very little, apart from an inability to do something in the same way that others do, are lumped together into one pretty arbitrary group. I have more in common with other Arsenal fans than other “disabled” people.
Added to this, this adjective is often inaccurately applied to things as well as people. Throughout this journey, I have used disabled bathrooms, taken up disabled parking spaces, checked into disabled rooms. Since when did the actual hotel room become disabled?
All of this underscores the inadequacy of the English language to accurately summarise my situation. It is important I feel that we find a new word. Not because I’m a pedant, but because the misuse of this word leads to the exclusion, often easy and convenient, of this group of people from mainstream society.
Anyway, I spent three nights in my “disabled” room at our hotel in Bedford. We had been basing ourselves there for the previous day’s leg and our rest day.
Our hotel’s breakfast menu suggested that we had now definitely arrived at the southern end of the journey. 
Along with Eggs Benedict, we were now in Latte land. Before driving back to Huntingdon to begin our leg to Bedford, we had a send off from our hotel from the Mayor of Bedford. Local big cheeses are a very effective way of generating interest and therefore publicity from the local media. Mayors and the like tend to wear their official Chains of Office to formal engagements. The Bedford Mayor brought his along. Jolly heavy they were too.
I’ve cycled with various individuals with disabilities over the last few weeks. One of the most colourful was an amputee called Nigel Wesson. Nigel rides a trike and has only one arm. The other was bitten off by a tiger in a circus (he wasn’t winding me up).
All the rain in the heavens poured down on our rest day before our penultimate leg to Hemel Hempstead. Today we cycled with the founder of Inclusive Cycling Forum, Kevin Hickman. Kevin is a fantastic real-life demonstration of the full inclusion of disabled people in society.
It was still drizzling all day today and it was thoroughly miserable. The day was made worse as a puncture in my trike held us up by the roadside as the rain fell. The only upside to the incessant precipitation was the creation of low clouds over the higher ground and the consequent thick fog as we cycled through it.
