Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-03-07 18:09:58 - Graham Ellis
A poor decision but a great insite. I'm in a hotel "a couple of hundred yards" from the place I'm training at this week, and I decided to leave my car here rather than load it up with all the equipment and drive "round the corner" to unload it again. After all, I have a wheeled trolley and the road crossings all looked like they were disabled-enabled (if you know what I mean).
I'm always thankful to be fit and healthy. But I now realise just HOW thankful I should be.
It's not much good having a slope down if it only goes halfway down and still leaves a lip; approaching across a road, I walked siren-like to an up-ramp to find that it started with an up-step and I was stranded in the road as the traffic lights went green.
Neither is it much good having ramps onto the pavement at one spot just to have, a few yards along, another curb and entrance way to a factory that's got an awkward step down and then an awkward step up ... before the next road junction which again has the half-ramps! Use the other side of the road perhaps? Not a chance - that pavement's closed by building works.
I'm sure that the responsible council here in Leeds would give me a number of reasons, perhaps including some good ones, as to why the journey on which so much money seemed to have been spent to make it "wheelchair friendly" was quite the opposite.
and still leaves a lip; approaching across a road, I walked siren-like to an up-ramp to find that it started with an up-step and I was stranded in the road as the traffic lights went green.