Marnie Sutcliffe

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. I was 34 when a fall left me with a spinal cord injury, and for the first year I assumed travel was one of the things I had lost. It was not. It was just 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 learned 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.

Disability Holidays Guide is where I set all of that down, plainly, for anyone who is where I was in that first flattened year. It is written for wheelchair users, but a lot of it holds for anyone travelling with reduced mobility, with equipment, with oxygen, or on dialysis. Steph Doran, an occupational therapist, reviews the practical and safety detail so it is sound. The mistakes, the workarounds, and the very good days are all mine.