City Slickers

Hello dear readers!

And so the wanderer returns!

Well, actually, the wanderer returned over a week ago, as did the wanderers wife, and, by a minor miracle, all the luggage too.

For those of you that haven’t the first clue what I’m going on about, I am alluding to our little trip to London, this Sceptred Isle’s capital city. There were thrills, there were spills, there were no less than three hotel rooms in four nights, and that’s just for starters!

Traveller's Checks

I think it only right, however, to start at the beginning. In this case that entails a taxi ride from our home in Mirfield, West Yorkshire to the nearby city of Huddersfield. As this is only a matter of seven or eight miles, this wasn’t the kind of journey I’d normally worry about but we needed to be there at 4:30 in the morning to catch the bus for the more significant part of our journey, and if we were late the whole holiday was down the poop-chute from the start. If you add in the fact that I’m a wheelchair user, and that we had been left in a dilly of a pickle at the exact same point less than a year previously, and I’m sure you can understand the concern.

That incident had caused us to patronise a rival taxi firm however, and they did us proud. Not only did a suitable taxi turn up at the right time, the driver turned out to be the same one who had rescued us in the above scenario. I seemed like fate.

And so, connection made we settled in for the six hour drive down south. Again this passed without a hitch (Well a little hold up to get into the city), and a tired but tired Mark & Tina disembarked at Victoria bus station with aching limbs and a desperate need for caffeine. We therefore gathered our luggage and set out to find coffee and a loo (the other desperate need) only to find it was raining.

About A Boy

This wasn’t that much of a surprise. It had been raining when we were on the bus, and when we got off it. The real surprise was just how much water was actually falling from the sky, and how persistent it seemed to be in this endeavour. In short, by the time we’d covered the short distance from Victoria Bus Station to Victoria Train Station we were a little damp. Undeterred we abluted, and caffeinated ourselves before getting in touch with the reason for our trip; namely my step-daughter and the boyfriend we were due to meet for the first time.

I’ll skip over the rainy journey to meet up with them, and our decision to wait for them under a drip. And fast forward to a pub, which was much warmer and drier and serving delicious sounding and not too extortionately priced food. We chatted. I almost got a word in edgeways once or twice, the two ladies giggled and got far too excited about relatively minor things. Boyfriend Ben looked a little lost as Sarah (The step-daughter in question) asked about people he’d never met and possibly never heard of, and, as Sarah copied her mother’s uncanny knack of belying her intelligence with wonderfully random moments of foot-in-mouth disease, face-palmed in a manner that was wholly recognisable.

Ben seems like a nice chap though and, although I was prepared to find fault, on first meeting nothing really presented itself. We spent an hour or so with these lovely young people and made our way back out into the rain. A train and a bus saw us almost miss our hotel.

Styles Over Substance

We didn’t though, well, not by much, and soon we were in the clean, if basic foyer of the Ibis Styles (Croydon) hotel. I don’t normally name the brands I encounter on my travels but Ibis deserves it as you will soon discover.

There are few things in life more important to a wheelchair user than access, it being handy to be able to get about, get to, and use, those things most people think nothing of utilising. London impressed me, on the whole in this regard. From the way the ramp comes out of the mid section of the buses at the press of a button, to the excellent, and very considerate staff in the train stations. Ibis Styles (Croydon) was the exception to this rule.

My suspicions were roused when I failed to spot an elevator in the lobby, or in the short corridor that ran off it. They were subdued somewhat when the receptionist explained I been put in an ‘accessible’ room on the ground floor, but came roaring back to life when she finished the sentence by mentioning the two small steps I’d need to navigate to get there. We were tired, we were soaked, and we needed a nice warm bed then and there, so we endeavoured to get the lay of the land and possibly make do until morning. This turned out to be a non-starter.

Ramp Up The Pressure

The good news was the two, admittedly small, steps had been ramped. It wasn’t a permanent feature but it was solid and it seemed secured in place so big tick there. The bad new was that the room in question was by the side of this ramp, and although the door opened inwards, the ramp blocked any chance of a wheelchair getting into it. Less of a big tick.

At this point my wife, Tina, was threatening to explode. Her stereotypically red-headed temper reaching a crescendo and I wasn’t that far behind. We marched back to reception and made our displeasure clear. Very clear. Twice. The result being the panic-stricken receptionist gave way to a colleague, who in turn went to speak to the duty manager. I assume that somewhere along the line the offending ramp was inspected and proved unbudgeable, because the solution presented to us was that we would be moved. Not to a different room, to a different hotel.

A Star Is Born

It meant a very short walk in the rain, under the apologetic manager’s umbrella, to a rival hotel that backed on to the Ibis. It meant an upgrade from three star to four star accommodation, and it meant a complimentary cooked breakfast. All of which might have meant more if we weren’t on the brink of collapse.

That then, was the story of the first day, and the first room. I’ll get to the others next week.

Until then.