I am traveling to Scotland with my handicapped daughter who is in a wheelchair. We are going to visit several cities including Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Glasgow. Does anyone know if it is easy to get around in a wheelchair? We are trying to rent a wheelchair accessible van and a power wheelchair. Can anyone offer help?

Hi bgc,

I hope someone can offer more specific advice but as far as Edinburgh goes you might have an easier time using taxis - all city taxis are wheelchair accessible and it might be easier to use them to get around than having to worry about parking in the city. I believe there are the same taxis in Glasgow as well.

Do you know where you want to go in Edinburgh? I'm sure people can help more if we know specific things you'd like to see.

I am not sure yet where we will be going. We just decided to go today. Can you suggest places? My stepdaughter recently came to live with us, and we are taking her on her first international trip. I have to check to see what places are accessible. We like museums, theater, parks, castles, the countryside. My stepdaughter likes to do anything. She just likes to go. She is severely handicapped, so we like to rent a van when we go places. The few times we have tried traveling by using taxis, we have had problems. We tried in San Francisco to just go to one place, and we had to wait 2 hours for a taxi in the cold. Is parking very difficult?

Hello bgcbarbara, on Google I typed in "Handicap Travelling in Scotland" and here is one website that showed up.

http://www.chiff.com/travel/handicap.htm

I didn't look at any of the links in this website but perhaps it will be of some help. You might want to go to Google and look at other websites that showed up.

Wishing you and your family good wishes and a lovely and relaxing time in Scotland.

How much experience have you got of taking your daughter around cities?

What you're planning to do is really, really, tricky. Parking is a serious problem, especially in Edinburgh, and Glasgow's not much better.

Non-European foreigners can't rely on their disability badges being accepted at disabled parking spaces - and the practical problems of finding even disabled parking (never mind public parking) near most Edinburgh sites are serious. If you're thinking of driving yourself, I'd say you were crazy even to think of it, unless you've got real experience of driving and finding car parking spaces in a congested city where they drive on the left. If you haven't, two weeks of having a real disabled person to look after isn't the time to acquire this experience.

I can't understand the relevance of your San Francisco problem: all taxis plying on the streets of Scottish cities have to have a wheelchair ramp, and there's loads of them most of the time.

Unless you really are used to driving round congested left-handdriving cities, then use taxis, or cost out getting a driver (but reckon at least £100 a day and over) or use a specialist disabilty travel company. In the latter case, you might have to share a tour with others - but it'll be in a properly designed bus, with arrangements made to drop you all right outside the site concerned.

Don't expect too much from foreign websites: apart from anything else "handicapped" is an American term rarely used in English these days, so sites designed by foreigners will rarely reference the relevant British sites. Start from:
www.direct.gov.uk/en/DisabledPeople/index.htm

And don't regard this post as some kind of challenge. Lots of disabled people tour Scotland and enjoy it - but being driven round its cities by someone inexperienced in British urban driving, without a European disability badge and with a prejudice against taxis is a pretty sure fire way of guaranteeing it'll be a miserable experience. There are lots of alternative strategies

Thanks for all of your responses. I have limited experiences taking my daughter around in cities. I have no experiences taking her out of the country.

I was a little concerned about driving on the opposite side of the road. But I had not even considered parking. I am going to look into other options along with renting the van.

I have no idea of what accessibility is like in Europe. The last time I was there was about 10 years ago, and I did not have a daughter. Wheelchair accessiblility did not occur to me.

Our hotel is Ballater. We will stay there and visit the other cities on day trips. That is why we were thinking of renting a van. I did some map quests, and found that most of the cities are one to two hours apart. Is it difficult to travel on the highway from city to city?

Hi bgcbarbara - I suggest that for your city sightseeing your best option may be to make use of Shopmobility.

Shopmobility provides electric scooters and wheelchairs etc in most large towns and cities in Britain.

In Edinburgh the most central one appears to be in Gyle Ave.

http://tinyurl.com/4xwlu2

I don't think this is far from Princes St., the castle and the city centre. Maybe someone else can confirm ...

Can your daughter get in/out of a car? It may be easier for you just to get a taxi to the Shopmobity centre - rather than driving and trying to find parking nearby.

If Edinburgh is your first base, Shopmobility there may be able to offer - or advise on - rental of a scooter for a longer period.

Your main consideration will be to hire a car large enough to take a scooter (- modern scooters can be dismantled to fit into a large boot space or car with fold-down seats).

Most tourist office websites have a section on access
You may find these useful:

http://www.edinburgh.org

http://www.visitscotland.com/guide/w...ible-scotland/

http://www.seeglasgow.com/

http://www.agtb.org/

Hope this helps ...

Steve

Yes Steve, it does help. It gives me a lot to think about.
My daughter cannot operate a scooter. She does not have enough control of her arms or upper body. We have this problem a lot when we travel. We are offered scooters a lot, but she needs a power wheelchair.

She is very small for her age, (4'9" and 80 lbs) so she has to get a small power wheelchair with a seatbelt because she cannot sit up for long without one. She will just slide right out of it. That is also a problem because a lot of wheelchairs that you rent don't have seatbelts. They asume that people don't really need them (even when you request it). We always bring a large belt just in case.

Not only does the wheelchair have to be small, but it has to have the joystick on the left and it has to be a certain length or she still cannot operate it. She cannot bend her arm or reach enough to accomdate a lenth that is not exactly right.

My daughter cannot do anything on her own. She cannot get in/out of a car, but her father can pick her up and put her in a car since she is so small. Most power wheelchairs that you rent don't come apart enough to fit into a regular car. (Or they don't come apart that easy.) They are also very heavy so you need a few people to pick them up. That is why you need an accessible van with a lift. We tried a regular van in Puerto Rico because we could not get one with a lift. It was so difficult. The wheelchair was so heavy!

It takes a lot of planning to travel with a disabeled person. Things that I never thought about before she came to live with us. After this first experience with her in Europe, this will be like old hat for us.

You have given me a lot of useful info. I am going to take time and go through all of my options and look at all the websites. Thanks for your help. I will let you know what I find out and what I come up with.
Thanks, Barbara

Is it not possible for her to bring the wheelchair she uses at home? Or will the airline not allow it?

Have a look at www.wheelchair-travel.co.uk/.

Also http://www.ableize.com/ which has lots of potentially useful links.

I hope these help.

I think Rick Steves has a book Accessible Europe. There are many links for services needed on his website.
http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/tips/easyaccess.htm

Since 1999 new public buses are required to have wheelchair ramps, and wheelchair users have priority use of wheelchair bays on the bus. You could use park and ride to park outside the city centre and then go in by public bus. I don't know about Glasgow or Aberdeen, but here is some info on Edinburgh:

www.lothianbuses.com/parkandride.php

The Lothian Bus website also states that: "under normal circumstances, most journeys on the following bus services will be operated by low floor easy access buses: 2 3 7 8 11 13 16 20 22 24 25 X25 26 29 30 31 33 34 35 36 37/47 38 44 X47 X48 49 100"

I'm sorry I don't have direct experience in Scotland, but I recently broke my leg in Paris (we are currently living in Amsterdam) and I am still in a wheelchair, so have had to learn, on very short notice, about wheelchair travel in parts of Europe. We have no car (we're only living over here for a year) and so are completely dependent on public transportation - train, metro, tram, bus, etc. With taxis as a last resort due to costs.

The greatest help for me were some websites I found by googling the name of the city/country and "wheelchair". For instance there are sites that show exactly which metro stations in a given city are wheelchair accessible, etc. as well as sites that give detailed (number of steps and so on) first-hand reports about all kinds of places.

Here are some sites that cover Scotland:

http://www.wheelchairscotland.co.uk/

http://www.disabledgo.info/ -
on this site you pick what Scottish city you are interested in (it covers all 3 cities you mention) and then has sub-categories for disabled info on restaurants, hotels, public transport, tourist sites, etc.

Another thing we discovered is that there is sometimes special help for wheelchair-bound travelers at trains, metro, and bus stations, etc. but you may have to ask for it. (Busy transport people are not always thinking of what might be helpful in your particular situation, so my advice is always ask for help - they can be quite creative about coming up with solutions to your problem.)

Best of luck to you!

To flannerUK who wrote >>Non-European foreigners can't rely on their disability badges being accepted at disabled parking spaces...<< I traveled with a person on a wheelchair and we have been all over Europe MANY times. The blue handicap parking badge that hangs from the car mirror and used in the USA is ACCEPTED EVERYWHERE. We have used that for YEARS EVERYWHERE IN EUROPE and it is widely accepted.

What he/she stated which I whoheartedly agree is that you may want to ease up into this type travel. I find PARIS to be very handicap friendly; not a lot of metros are handicap accesible, but the ones that are do are very easy to use. Another surprisingly easier city to maneuver with a wheelchair? Madrid.

Thanks to all of the replys. I have a lot of info to help in my research.

Someone asked if my daughter can bring the wheelchair that she used at home. It would be much easier and cheaper for us if she could. Has anyone traveled to Europe on British Airlines in a power wheelchair?

Airlines don't make it easy for travel with power wheelchairs. They have rules that say they might have to take the chairs apart if they don't fit into the door where the luggage goes. When you call on the phone, the person answering never can answer the question--neither can their supervisor). The person at BA was the worse so far.

We went to a siminar on travel once, and one woman told us that her wheelchair was taken apart and not put back together correctly. She was traveling by herself. My daughter's chair should not have to be taken apart, but airlines do not have a lot of training. If they break it, we are screwed.

Also, there is the problem with plugging in the wheelchair in another country.

I have been on at least 30 websites so far. I have contacted many places and have gotten a few responses that have been extremely helpful. I am still working on an itinerary. Thanks for all the help.
Barbara