Barnard Castle 2.0 – With wheels!

This year we went back to Barnard Castle. We were there the beginning of June last year, and this year we went back to the same cottage but this time for two weeks.

The main other difference was this time I had bought an electric wheelchair. For the last few years, going on holiday has been a mixed blessing. it IS great to get away from the daily stress – but it often makes me feel very self concious when we have to stop early because I am too fatigued to carry on.

I think I have written before how I started looking at people with mobility scooters and wishing I had one. For months I have debated getting one – but at the last moment I decided to order an electric wheelchair instead. Initially I didn’t want a wheelchair – but I am very glad now that I went for this choice.

With the chair I have managed to get into gift shops in museums, and cafes and even an Italian Restaurant in Bishop Auckland.

A mobility scooter would have been nice, but would simply not have been usable in as many places, and would have really needed to have a wheelchair as WELL.

It didn’t take long to get used to the chair, although I have had some problems with it when encountering camber on a path. For those that may not know, a wheelchair has two “sets” of wheels: The back wheels are the “powered” wheels. These are either powered by electric motors, or are powered by you putting your hands on an inside bar that runs around the wheels that lets you physically pull the wheels round without having to actually grab old of what may be dirty wheels. The front wheels but are pretty much casters. They turn in whatever direction you are going.

The way the wheels work on a wheelchair means that when you are on a path with a camber (a hill sideways to the direction you are going) the front casters will have a tendency to turn down toward this camber. To counter this natural tendency to “turn” instead of going straight ahead, you have to apply power to turn in the OTHER way. On an electric wheelchair, you turn by increasing the power to ONE wheel and reducing power to the other wheel. This forces the caster wheels to turn in the direction you want but this means you are really using the power of ONE motor to keep the chair going, and in this chair it really does not have the torque to do this. The end result is – that in some cases – when you meet a camber you will just steer down it. There is nothing you can do to do otherwise. You can usually reverse (where you may encounter the same problem in reverse) and choose a different route – but there may be situations where you can do nothing. If you are alone…… you can be totally stuck unless you can get out of the chair and physically move it!

Regardless though – we really enjoyed our two weeks and we didnt feel the need to come back the evening before like we have often before. I DO still get overtired when goign out, but now I can last a few hours (usually) instead of a few moments! I was getting to the point where 15 mins in ASDA was too much for me. Now I will usually take the chair and I dont worry.

I think as well that not having to push myself to walk when I am really not up to it much has been a factor in me not needing any more time off work recently. I AM approaching my limit now though – and struggling – but for the first 6 months of this academic year – I was off ill for 2 months! I’ve not been off at all in the 2nd 6 months so far.

Bowes Museum

One of the best places we visited was the Bowes Museum. We still didnt manage to see EVERYTHING and plan to go back – maybe next year. However, we would not have been able to see HALF of what we did see if it wasn’t for the wheelchair. We spent around 2-3 hours in their on two days and I think I may have managed 30-60 mins without and would still have been sitting down waiting for my wife to finish looking (and feeling stressed that I was waiting for her).

Purpose built as a Museum by John Bowes and his wife Josephine Benoite Coffin-Chevallier, Countess of Montalbo who both died shortly before it was opened in 1892, the building itself is amazing and the collections inside varied and engrosing.

Perhaps its most iconic item is the “Silver Swan automaton”.