My sister and I want to take my Mother back to England and maybe through the tunnel to France this spring. We live in the US. She is from England, we have all been before and she is 84 years old. She is not feeble but does not get around as well as she used to. Anyone have any ideas on how to plan a UK trip with an elderly person.This would be a last trip overseas together and we want to make it special. We have traveled a lot but not since the Dr. told her to really take it easy and not to be climbing hills or walking up stairs. We want to go in the spring. He said she can fly since he does not feel we should stop living because we get old. I agree. Any ideas..

My sister and I took our mom to Italy when she was 81. Kind of the same situation as far as physical limitations. We just paced ourselves and slowed things way down for her. Used taxis quite a bit. I also booked hotels in the historical sections of the cities we visited. Although more expensive, it made it handy to the major sites we wanted to visit.

In Rome, we also splurged on a private guide for the Vatican. He was worth every penny and he was great with my mom.

After dinner, mom usually stayed in the room and my sister and I would go out and have FUN!!

I can't give you any advice on England, but hope this encourages you to do this trip with your mom. Special memories.

I went to London several years ago with my 78 year old mother and 16 year old daughter - a 3 generation trip never to be repeated.

My mother had problem knees - and her MD was able to time a cortisone shot to have peak effect during the trip - without this she would have had trouble walking around. You mother's stair restriction would largely rule out using the Tube - so plan on using bus or taxi.

My mother especially enjoyed day bus trips to countryside - Bath, some castle I do not remember name of. She could then pace her time off the bus to her own tolerance.

We chose to take day flight rather than usual night flights from east coast US. I knew she would not sleep on a plane and this way be the time we arrived at hotel, it felt like late afternoon US time, was actually dinner time. We got restaurant take-out that night and allowed her to rest and get good nights sleep prior to touring next day. We made mistake of getting only 1 hotel room. Many elderly people do not sleep well, and she constantly woke us up moving around in early morning hours.

Research dinner options very close to hotel - after a long day, my mother rarely felt she had interest or energy to go out to dinner someplace involving more transportation.

A package bus tour might be something to consider for at least part of the trip. They generally are able to arrange for seamless transfer from one place to another with minimal exertion.

You probably should re-post this over on the Europe Forum. Lots of us will be able to help you w/ specific suggestions. (Or you can click the triangle w/ the ! and ask the editors to move this thread over there).

I personally would avoid a package tour because there would be no down time at all and you'd spend hours sitting on a coach each day. There are MANY options for a leisurely trip to the UK.

"We made mistake of getting only 1 hotel room. Many elderly people do not sleep well, and she constantly woke us up moving around in early morning hours."

This is so true. I travel occasionally with my 78 year old mother, and I have had some sleepless nights. Once I am awake I have trouble going back to sleep, and my mom is one of those older people who gets up frequently during the night. We will have a 2 room suite on our next long trip.

I hope you all have a great trip together.

Well.. a few years ago we did that trip...my husband was about 80 at the time. Very youthful in spirit but the energy was flagging. I don't know where you live... but if it's close to NYC you might consider taking the QM2 over... a really relaxing way to start a trip and they have some good fares. We hired a private car to take us from Southampton to London to make life even easier. On the trip my husband developed a back problem, so by the time we were scheduled to take the train to Paris I arranged for a wheelchair at the train. THAT makes life easier too.. since you get priority treatment. He hobbled around Paris with a cane
and I must say whenever we were spotted by museum guards, etc. they would come immediately to assist and escort us to the front of the line. Same thing happened at the airport on our return. The French get a lot of bad press... but they sure are attuned to helping elderly people. It ended up being a wonderful tirp.

Whoops....... trip!
(Tirp sounds too much like TARP -

It's a grand idea, and I think it'll be great! I took my mom (age 87) last Fall to Australia, where she grew up. The travel part was difficult, but I always kept in mind that the trip was about HER (not me, not what I wanted to see and do).

Since the flight was so long and she does have some back problems and mobility issues, we flew Business Class, so she could have leg room and sleep in a comfortable position. I arranged with my doctor for a low-level sleeping pill (for me), because I knew I would have trouble sleeping on the plane and also due to various issues as stated above. The dr. said this type would not put me in a dead sleep, that I could easily awaken if my mom needed me for anything, and that was the case. It also helped to prearrange a wheelchair with the airlines. Even if your mom is fairly mobile, the walk through an airport can be exhausting with luggage, and this way, you get a lot of assistance, including preboarding and going through customs.

Another essential is to plan for rests during the day - an actual naptime. She just seemed to need a timeout every afternoon.

Also, it worked better for her to have a larger meal in the middle of the day, with just snacks or a very light supper in the evening.

Also make sure your mom drinks plenty of liquids. It's easy for them to become dehydrated - this caused my mom to get sick a few times.

I also paid close attention to her when she talked about the trip, so I made sure she visited places that were important to her, like seeing the nighborhood and house where she grew up, the park where she and my dad spent evenings on the swings, the dance hall where they met. We bought her favorite candies from childhood, had meat pies from the street vendor, visited some cousins and a few other people she hadn't seen since she was young.

Make sure you get a list of all her prescriptions and dosing schedules as well as a list of pre-existing conditions. Keep this with you and have her keep one also. Get a good travel insurance plan that has the medical coverage you need.

In other words, it works well when you plan carefully, just as you might for a young child. It will be a fabulous time that you will never regret and that you will remember always.
Have a great time!

Oh, one of the wisest things I did was to carefully select hotels. I chose the ones that would make the trip comfortable and enjoyable for her, no matter what. In Sydney I chose a room on a very high floor in a hotel that had a fabulous view. I did this in case she didn't feel well enough to go out and site-see. And, of course, that happened. She still talks about how wonderful that hotel was! It had a lounge on the top floor with 300 degree views and also served food there, so she spent hours gazing at the harbor and the bridge and the opera house; even though she wasn't well enough to go out, she still felt like she had seen Sydney.

I think you need to focus on what SHE really wants to see/revisit. Focus on central hotels and assume you will be using taxis a lot to save her walking for what MUST be walked. You might consider getting her a walker (if she doesn;t have one) with one of those folding seats. You don;t need to use it all of the time - but if she gets tired somewhere she's got an automatic seat at hand. (My mom, 89 has one she uses for longer distances. In the house she uses nothing and outside she just takes a cane in case she runs into uneven pavement or a couple of steps. She can do a reasonable distance - 10 or 12 blocks - with no trouble - but once she's done that and the touring around she's ready for an afternoon nap before heading out to dinner.)

And for the airports do let them know as soon as you get the tickets that you will all need one of those carts to transport you/luggage to and from the plane - no sense wasting her energy trekking all over the airport.

I agree with nytraveler about focusing on your mom's wishes for this trip. And I agree with janisj that you might get more help on the Europe Forum.

My mom is a very spry 88, but she does much better when a busy day is followed by a quieter day. She's up at the crack of dawn but fades earlier in the evening than I do, so I have to adjust my body clock to match hers. She has to adjust her preferred dinner time (6 pm or earlier!) to 7 or so, and it helps if we take an afternoon tea or coffee break. The biggest problem is her feet, but she's found that custom orthotics make a world of difference in her endurance and comfort.

Have fun planning and then enjoy your trip!

Do you live near a major airport so that it's a nonstop flight? That might help. And be aware that an 84 year old will probably start with the "gee, it's a long time to sit, isn't it?" about two hours into the flight.

I wouldn't recommend an overnight flight, older folks don't do to well with changes-of-body-clock, and don't pick a 7am flight either, you gotta get to the airport by 5am and, well, older folks generally need to stick to a "regular" routine in the morning as much as possible. I guess what I'm trying to say is that she'll have a much better flight if she has a good poop before she boards the plane.

It's absolutely essential you make no assumptions - or draw any conclusions from other people's experiences, except that everyone's different.

A couple of practicalities:
- Even though your mum is probably still British, she almost certainly doesn't qualify for free NHS treatment (available free ony for those with evidence of entitlement under an EU medical programme), except at the onset of an emergency. So you need good travel medical insurance.

- The people I know older than your mum who do this reasonably regularly try as far as possible to travel in Business and/or take daytime flights eastbound. Daytime flights are available only from the East Coast/Chicago: my 95 yo friend now strongly prefers to overnight in New York, taking two daytime flights, when flying to London from California

- No British person I know in that agegroup who still does this would be seen dead on a transatlantic ship. None want to be surrounded by other old women, they think they'll find their fellow passengers common as muck - and find the prospect of a few hours on a plane talking to random selections of other travellers almost exciting. Your mum may or may not have similar views: she's who she is before being in late middleage, and the fact that some other people of that age group like ships tells you little about your mum.

- you don't tell us how used you are to long periods of time these days with your mum, or to recent extended travelling with her. My recent experience with both mine and my MIL, is that I've been struck from their mid-70s' at how much they've changed since the last time we spent a long time together, and how often assumptions made on the basis of a few days together a year ago don't apply any more. From sleeping habits to toleration of what strikes them as extreme heat or cold.
I'd say the key lesson is planning for the likelihood of needing huge flexibilty, at short notice, in everything you do - from sharing/not sharing a bedroom, to switching modes of transport. And that means organising the whole thing for them, not you

- Both of mine got even less toleration for being told what to do as they got older. Reminding them to go to the loo before getting on a plane, for example, is grossly insulting for anyone who's not already well advanced into dementia.

- Tact. I took my 90 yo MIL on a birthday treat on Friday. After seeing the modestly famous country house she had some ancestral connections with, we all wanted to go to an outlying site about half a mile away. Turned out the direct path across the fields was too uneven for her dodgy ankles and the route along the road was too long - so we had to drive, which irritated her because "how can anyone be too wet to walk half a mile?" A quick white lie about the dog's wimpish fear of cows he might meet on the path restored self-respect.

- Comfort. The Tube is no place for people who have trouble with stairs. London's buses are perfect, as long as she's happy with crowds (she'l be able sit, and no-one of that age I know avoids buses, but she might have forgotten). Cabs really aren't a sensible way of getting around all the time. On trains, book First Class in advance: far too many British trains are overcrowded in standard class, and you and your mum are among the few people who might benefit from the total flexibilty offered by First Class BritRail passes. Intercity trains typically don't start boarding till 10-15 mins before departure. Don't panic about this: I frequently use a route with a high density of over-80s, and no-one's ever been left behind.
- "Disabled" facilities. In Britain, pre-research railway facilities at http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/passen...ed_passengers/ and for airports at http://tiny.cc/2fmvd (for Heathrow: google other airports then search "accessibility on their sites). These - mostly free - are available to anyone, but you need to organise them, and you'll get limited help from airlines.

I took my grandmother to a number of places at that age, and my own word of advice is to stay on the lookout for the exact location of restrooms at all times.

I can only share my own experience of transatlantic travel with an 83 year old mother, and perhaps some will apply to you:

I highly recommend that if your mother did not initiate the idea of going to England, or is questioning the wisdom of it, think twice about doing it. If you and your sister want to do it, and she is lukewarm, consider that she might be much happier at home. If she is eager to go, great!

Restaurant meals were more than my mother wanted to eat and longer than she wanted to sit. I rented a place with a kitchen for us, and we almost never ate meals out. She preferred eating familiar foods, with only occasional local treats.

The main focus of my mother's attention and happiness was talking with her children. Her interest in travel sights was next to nil.

My mother -- who is tremendously fit and lives alone without assistance, fully indenpendent -- initially said, in the planning the trip, that she was looking forward to my showing her the sights. Once in Europe, she experienced some of the difficulties of pubic transportation, uneven sidewalks, traffic going the opposite direction, bicycles on sidewalks, and she began expressing a preference for just staying close to "home." I could tell she was quite worried about falling, and in general, being out of her familiar surroundings was demanding on her. Beyond a certain comfort zone, she wasn't able to really relax and enjoy things.

I planned a longish trip so that my mother would have plenty of time to recuperate after the transatlantic flight before getting on the return flight. It proved unnecessary, and I think my mother would have preferred a shorter trip, to get back home sooner. I know I would have, in the end! Basically, everything had to be centered on my mother. It was not a foreign trip for me. It was just two weeks with my mother.

If someone else hasn't mentioned it, book wheelchair assistance for the flight at both ends; the walks to the gate can be long.
I took my then 80 year old Mum up to London for the day a few years ago, reasonably mobile, but walking with a stick. At Paddington station we were told that we should have gone to the front of the taxi queue by the taxi marshalls and they would have got us in the first cab. At St Pancras (we'd been looking at the station and having a glass of fizz in the champagne bar) as soon as we arrived in the queue for the ladies toilets, they opened the seperate disabled one for her, again no waiting. When getting a taxi from St Pancras, there was no queue, but the very dapper guy running the rank gave her his arm to walk her to the cab, which pleased her no end.

I ate many evening meals with both my grandmother (and now my mother) in the hotel room. A few simple items from the supermarket or the local take-out place are highly appreciated. At that age, most people want to crawl right into bed after the evening meal. At a restaurant (even the hotel restaurant!) they can become cranky and/or fall asleep at the table, and it can become a real problem to get them back to the room.

And zeppole brought up an extremely important point -- do not do this trip unless your mother has expressed spontaneous enthusiasm about it. I have known trips that were ruined (not mine, thank god) just by the obsession of missing one's daily soap opera or other such routines.

I want to reiterate what kerouac said about the restrooms. Yes, know where they are at all times. Sometimes you have to help her make an emergency dash.

Yes, knowing where the bathrooms are is a good idea. Another excellent point, that almost can't be stressed enough, is to schedule some rest/naptime in the afternoon.

Wonderful suggestions! This thread makes me think of family members who took their 84 something year old relative to Europe. He always enjoyed traveling but it had been about ten years since he had been to Europe.

The family meant well but they didn't plan well sad to say. To keep costs down the reserved hotels outside of the main center of cities. Consequently by the time they finished with lunch this dear man was ready for a nap. Getting him back to the hotel took a lot of time and more energy than he really had and so that was usually a disaster. Again, to save money they used buses, they should have taken taxis. And he was ready to go to bed to relax and to watch some TV which would have worked out if the various hotels had been located in areas where the other family members could have gone out for the evening. They also booked economy class for the entire famiily. If one of them had booked BC for themselves and their elderly family member that would have worked better regarding the flights. And they could have afforded better located hotels, taxis when needed, two BC tickets but I guess they didn't think about all that as they were going on the assumption that he had done so well in Europe ten years earlier he would still have the same stamina etc. Well,you get the idea.

Best wishes, musicman. You and your sister's thoughts are beautiful but while preparing your internary keep in mind the fact your dear mother will need careful consideration so that you all have a happy and healthy time together.