travel blog

To Paris via Eurostar for a Eurocopter press briefing. Tube map proclaims step-free access at Waterloo, London Bridge and St Pancras and so it is, but to achieve that you have to leave the station as well as the Jubilee Line at LB. Then a 2-300 metre push via Guys Hosp entrance to lift down to Northern Line platforms. As a result your one-tube-journey ticket is rendered invalid, requiring much fluttering of eyelashes to gain access. Was I the first wheelchair user to do this? Is a concession not already in place?

Eurostar brilliant as always. Paris less so as always. Tres élegant hotel (Du Louvre) with large room but no thought given to how to one might use shower. Sink taps at eye-level so unable to distinguish chaud from froid. Next morning, outraged to discover five steps down to breakfast brasserie; only alternative to go outside (it was raining) and round the block. Finally succumbed to indignity of being lifted down (and back up) in the chair. V bad news.

To Wyndham's Theatre with L to see Driving Miss Daisy with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones. Really enjoyed the show but the wheelchair access was astounding. I remember hearing about this place when visiting the Donmar a year or so back but it truly was the worst I've ever encountered.

We entered via a door from the street, which I'm used to, but this shielded three steep steps down to a gloomy narrow box at the back of the stalls -- which I'm not. Undignified descent. Once down, feeling less than independent, two of the four chairs had to be moved before I could manoeuvre the chair at all. On the plus side, we had our own toilet.

Door shut tight behind us, with the usher's assurance that he and the fire officer would be along at the end of the play or, if the theatre was to catch fire, even sooner, fading into the street noise. Magically, he reappeared in front of us to selll us a programme and two G&Ts.

Beautiful Victorian theatre but an odd position, behind the stalls seats. One of the audience even asked if we were supposed to be there, so I told him we'd slipped in off the street and offered to sell him a Big Issue.

At the end of a touching evening I was bodily lifted by the two young men, in my chair, back up to street level. Grade 2 listed building I understand, and how else would I have seen the play, but please -- in 2011? It's a Health & Safety nightmare as it is but, if they stopped people like me using the theatre, how would I get to see productions like this?

Something Must Be Done, by someone else in an ideal world.

Another Rough Guides commission; this time a top day with Ryan and Adam, white-water rafting at the Lee Valley centre in Essex (canoeing centre for the 2012 London Olympics). Beautiful sunny day but bloody cold water. Katie, Colin & Irene joined us in the raft, first undergoing lengthy briefs that could be summed up as "hang on like feck but not to that rope handle!" Then had to practice falling in and being hauled back -- dignity at all times.

Four or five gos at the slalom course, one just with the flow and the rest doing stupid stuff like trying to surf the torrent. You do that by driving the bow upstream into the flow and, so the theory goes, balancing on top of it. It took me a while to understand the plan -- my surfing experience to date has invariably involved pointing downhill.

Meanwhile I was at the front and spent much of these manoeuvres underwater, with guide Max's instructions totally unintelligible as a result. They made only marginally better sense, once I got the water out of my ears. With the boys' derision ringing in those same ears, Max had made me put on a yellow helmet, like the non-swimmers and otherwise Special Needs wimps. Not good.

We lost Colin overboard and, at one point, three or four bods from other rafts were flailing around in the thrashing spume, their paddles somehow leading the wreckage downstream. That was quite exciting. And at the bottom of the course each time, we steered onto a travelator and glided up to the top again. Toot toot. Felt quite steely-eyed as we passed close by spectators, leaning over the fence at the Terrace Cafe. "You Weren't There!"

Plenty more pics at http://tinyurl.com/5to3783 The video clip of us surfing is rather short.

... In so far that I've just got back from Helitech, a helicopter show that I cover next door. But it's held at Duxford Airfield in Cambridgeshire, the Imperial War Museum site that coincidentally was on my Rough Guides list this year. So I snuck out of the exhibition yesterday for a tour. The highlights are the two main display halls, AirSpace and the American Air Museum. Spectacular stylish spaces, stuffed to the sweeping rafters with aircraft -- so many of them that huge Lancaster and B52 bombers can easily be missed. From the TSR2, F4 Phantom and Blackbird spy-plane to a Wessex helicopter, my final RN conversion. Many suspended from the curved roofs, they form a fascinating insight and tribute to proud UK and US aviation heritages. Can't help thinking that our own history stops right here. Are we designing any aircraft in Britain at the moment? Neat little museum dedicated to airborne forces tucked off the side of AirSpace. Great son et lumiere and full of real guns.