I’m Paul Mountain, and I am Aspire’s Independent Living Advisor in Wakefield. I work with the patients, offering them advice and guidance on a huge range of issues and helping them find the answers to all those questions they have. A lot of people when they’ve had a spinal injury think that all the doors suddenly just close on them; I’m there to make them see that actually the doors are still open.

Not surprisingly, at this time of year a lot of people’s thoughts turn to holidays and I’ll get a lot of questions on whether, with a spinal injury, you can still get on a plane, how you make sure your hotel will be accessible, and even if just going on a family holiday will ever be possible again. Well, the short answer to that last one is; of course it will!

That’s not to say that you don’t have to do a bit of advanced planning when it comes to holidays. If you’ve got the time and the inclination then you can do the research to find a suitable place yourself. It’s worth checking and double checking the details to be clear about what you’ll need. But it can be a lot easier to use a specialist travel agency that works exclusively with disabled people – the accommodation will have been vetted for you which gives huge peace of mind, especially the first time you go away as a wheelchair user.

Plane travel has improved so much in recent years. Once on the plane you use a special wheelchair to get down the aisle to your seat – it’s not luxurious, but it works. Make sure that your wheelchair is stored in the small hold and is readily accessible as you’ll be wanting it as soon as possible once you are off the plane. Going back a few years I’ve had airlines lose my wheelchair but the service now is, more often than not, spot on. What hasn’t been sorted though isgetting to the toilet when you are on the plane – apparently the newer, wide bodied planes can have an accessible toilet but otherwise it just isn’t really possible. It’s the one thing that still really needs to be addressed.  

At the end of the day, we all love holidays. Last year we went out to Australia, and I’ve just got back from Tenerife. I had to do a bit of planning and there were a few hiccups, but having a spinal injury hasn’t stopped me enjoying my summer breaks!