Good but wearing

To Great Malvern at the weekend for the Spring flower show. Well worth the trip and it even stayed dry, but the effort involved can be pretty wearing. And at least some of it could be avoided by better facilities and less unnecessary barriers!

Travelling from Sheffield and back would be a bit much for one day so we decided to stay overnight in a Premier Inn at Worcester. Premier Inns are okay and you can select a disabled room (shouldn't that be an adapted room?!) when booking online. But things could be better...

If you have read the earlier part of this blog (what do you mean, you haven't got round to it!) you will know that whenever we stay anywhere overnight an awful lot of equipment has to go with us. In addition to the usual things that anyone would take to a hotel, add a portable hoist and an adjustable chairbed because Christine can't sleep on a flat bed - it has to profile. There are also various bits of medical equipment.

So for one night, we arrive at the hotel with two wheelchairs (one power, one manual), one hoist, one bed and four bags of clothes and sundry bits and pieces. I suppose it's unreasonable to expect a hotel to have a hoist available? Or is it? Same applies to a profiling bed - maybe.

Anyway, until things change we are stuck with it. The nice people at Premier Inn are always very helpful, but that is not necessarily true of their architects! At Worcester, the disabled room (plenty of space) is on the first floor so you have to use a lift. It is then right at the end of the floor through three fire doors plus a right angle turn.

The other problem is that we do need to use the hotel bed to get Christine dressed and undressed. That involves use of the hoist and this means clearance of around 10 cm is needed under the bed. Premier Inn beds are divans so they don't have this clearance. This means getting out the plant pots (see previous blog) and raising the bed to create the necessary space. It really doesn't need to be like this, does it?

But it is always worth it. It didn't rain, we enjoyed the show and without making this sort of effort we would never go anywhere. I would just like it all to be a little bit easier...!