About Disability Holidays Guide
I’m Marnie Sutcliffe, and Disability Holidays Guide is where I set down, plainly, what I have learned about travelling as a wheelchair user.
I was 34 when a fall left me with a spinal cord injury. The physiotherapist who taught me to transfer from a bed to a chair did not, understandably, cover how to get that chair onto a boat in Croatia, or what to do when an airline sends it round the carousel in three pieces. For most of that first year I assumed travel was simply one of the things I had lost. It turned out not to be. It was a thing I now had to plan properly, in detail, and usually twice.
Since then I have taken this wheelchair to more than forty countries. I have found the hotels that mean it when they say roll-in shower and the ones that mean a step and a shrug. I have worked out which airlines handle a chair well, how to travel with a spare cushion and a repair kit, how to book assistance so it actually turns up, and how to read the gap between the word accessible and the reality on the ground.
What you will find here
The site is written from experience, in plain language, and it covers the practical side of getting away:
- Booking flights and airport assistance so it holds together on the day
- Flying with a wheelchair, a powered chair, or a scooter, and getting it back in one piece
- Judging whether a hotel or a beach is genuinely step-free before you commit
- Travelling with medical needs, from oxygen and medication to dialysis away from base
It is written for wheelchair users, but a good deal of it holds for anyone travelling with reduced mobility, with equipment, with oxygen, or on dialysis. What I do not do is tell you whether a given trip is safe or right for you. That turns on your own body and your own circumstances, and it belongs with the people who know them.
How the site stays sound
I am a traveller, not a clinician, so I keep the two roles apart on purpose. The lived experience is mine. The practical and safety detail, the advice on equipment, transfers, airport assistance, and travelling with medical needs, is reviewed by occupational therapist Steph Doran before it goes up. Her job is to check that what I have written reflects sound practice and to flag anything that could put a reader at risk or set up a false expectation. She does not write the guides and endorses no airline, hotel, or tour operator named in them. More on all of this sits in my Editorial Policy.
Get in touch
Hearing from other people who are planning a trip, or working out whether one is possible, is one of the best parts of running this. The Contact page will reach me. Please read the Travel Disclaimer too: what you find here is practical reading and company, not advice pitched at your own situation.