Don't forget the plant pots!

Staying at home is fine - you have all the equipment that you need and things are organised to work as easily as possible. Not so with hotels!

We use hotels quite often, both for business and pleasure but the list of things that we have to take with us to make a hotel stay possible is unbelievable - let's start with the plant pots!

Yes, I really do mean plant pots! To be completely accurate, they are plastic plant trays about 30 cm long and 10 cm deep. You can get them in any garden centre. We take six.

The plant trays are used to raise the type of divan bed used in most hotels ( no space underneath) so that we can use a portable hoist. It's really irritating and unnecessary. All it requires is for hotels either to have beds with sufficient space underneath, or at least to provide bed raisers. But most don't...

But the plant pots work well. They are lighter than bed raisers, they can be stacked inside each other so they take up less space and you can use them either way up. This is particularly useful when you are trying to raise a double bed that is in two parts with castors in the middle. That needs a tray the right way up with the castors inside!

Simple. Doesn't everyone have to do this when they go to a hotel?!

Travels with wheelchair

I'm not disabled but I can't get away from wheelchairs!

My partner is disabled and uses a wheelchair. I run a unique property website called The Accessible Property Register www.accessible-property.org.uk. So I get to know a lot about wheelchairs. We have three - well four if you count the shower chair. Conspicuous consumption of wheelchairs!

The Accessible Property Register (APR) has a pretty good wheelchair accessible holiday accommodation section so I thought I would write a little bit about how we manage to overcome the barriers involved in taking a holiday, or even staying away overnight.

My partner can't move at all apart from her head. Her head works fine. Her brain is as razor sharp as it has always been but the body is another story ...

She has to be transferred to a chair or a bed using a hoist. And she can't sleep on a conventional bed because she needs one that profiles (you can raise the shoulders and legs). Just to add to the problems, the kind of hoist that we use needs around 10 cm space under the bed. So the divan beds that you find in most hotels are useless.

So just for starters, when we are choosing somewhere to stay even for one night, we need wheelchair access including bedroom, a profiling bed, a ceiling hoist or space under the bed for a manual hoist (bring your own!). And if Christine wants a shower, we need a level access (roll in) shower with a wheeled shower chair.

If you know any hotels like this, do let us know....