During January we are having a break from our longer travel adventures, but our Gap Year fun continues. The first weekend of 2026 was spent staying in the Martello Tower in Aldeburgh, on the coast of Suffolk. My brother, Stuart, joined us for this weekend as our post-Christmas get together. This trip needed some additional planning, due to its inaccessibility but, as we holiday in Suffolk every year, I was able to make a couple of reconnaissance visits last year and the year

We were very impressed with the accessibility at Jugendherberge Leipzig (International Youth Hostel Association), so I wanted to write a blog specifically about the features we found here. The first thing to note is that the youth hostel is within the low emissions zone of Leipzig, however by emailing the City Council a few weeks before we travelled, as Blue Badge holders, we were given an exemption. The youth hostel does charge for parking, but again as Blue Badge holders pa

You may have noticed that the last blog only mentioned days 1,2 and 4 in Leipzig. This is because on day three we took the train to Berlin for the day, well the afternoon really! The fast train would have take two hours each way, but the cost was prohibitive, so we chose the much cheaper and slower option, which involved changing trains half way, taking three hours. We would arrive in Berlin at lunchtime and catch an evening train back, returning to Leipzig quite late. The f

Yes, more Christmas markets! After our brief stop in Prague, we continued into Germany. Our destination was Leipzig youth hostel, but we broke the journey at Meissen for lunch. Wandering around the town we found a delightful square containing a small Christmas market. The youth hostel in Leipzig provided us with truly accessible accommodation, but I will write about that later as it deserves a blog of its own. We were to stay for five nights giving us four full days in the ar

The drive from Vienna to Prague should only have taken around three and a half hours, so we had loaded as much as possible into the car the night before ready for an early start. The aim was to get to the outskirts of Prague around lunchtime and spend the afternoon in the city. However, the weather was against us and most of the drive was in thick fog. Although we didn’t get to Prague until 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I was still determined that Racheal and Summer should get

Our first day in Vienna we walked around the Opera House multiple times! Having come up from the Vienna Underground right next to it, we walked around two sides to get to the Tourist Information Centre, then past it to go to the Museum Cafe for lunch. Then back past it on a different side to find the accessible toilet, and around again to book tickets to a concert for the following day! It’s an imposing building but we didn’t find time to go inside to see the impressive inter

Our drive from Salzburg to Vienna allowed for time to leave the motorway in search of lunch. So we found the small town of Ybbs on the bank of the River Danube. Sadly it looked far from blue in the grey weather. After a short walk through the old town, we found a cafe by the name of Haubis (which Norfolk Guiding friends might appreciate!). Back on the motorway for half an hour, then another half hour on smaller roads, we arrived at our next ‘home’ and Herbert, the owner was t

The next stop on our European adventure was the city of Salzburg in Austria. After another day of driving, mostly on motorways, we arrived at our accommodation in Puch, a few miles from Salzburg. I had booked a ground floor flat on the edge of the village. We were welcomed by Bea and her husband who are in the process of renovating the rest of the house. The house was at the end of a lane and had beautiful views of the mountains. The flat was spacious and cosy, with an all im

We spent two nights staying in a cabin at another HU site near Venice and made the most of our time there. It’s a fascinating city, but not the easiest to navigate in a wheelchair. At the tourist information office we were given a map to show the accessible routes, but it was a black and white photocopy which was difficult to read. Water buses were reduced for wheelchair users and one companion which was helpful as we couldn’t get far at all without using them. We found the s

It’s difficult to know where to start with Florence. Such a beautiful city. For the most part I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. We stayed at Firenze HU Camping Village in a wheelchair accessible chalet, which was fairly small but sufficient for us. It was located just south of the city and on a frequent bus route making it easy to get in and out of the city. The chalet had two bedrooms, with en-suite shower rooms, either side of a central living area. The wall between

From Luxembourg we travelled through Germany and France to Switzerland for an overnight stop at Lucerne youth hostel. The journey was mostly on toll motorways, in the rain, with a stop at a service station for lunch. The youth hostel wasn’t anything special, but the staff were friendly and helpful. The accessible room we had booked was tiny, certainly no space between the beds for a wheelchair, so we all ended up in a six bed dorm which was much more spacious and cheaper. A v

Our first base on our Europe trip was the country of Luxembourg. We stayed at the youth hostel in Remerschen, south of Luxembourg city, near the borders of France and Germany. It consisted of two buildings, a large, old house and a modern building, connected by a bridge. We were on the ground floor of the older building which was convenient, but we did have to go outside to get to the other building where the dining room and accessible shower were located. Our rooms were basi

This trip takes in a number of European countries over four weeks. We will be staying in Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany and France, and passing through Belgium. Having driven down to Folkestone, we stayed at the Premier Inn near the Channel Tunnel and made use of their free carer’s room which had an interconnecting door to the accessible room. The next morning we were up at 5.15am, which gave us an hour to get to the terminal. That was a bit ambitious! Even

We had a very early start the day we flew home from Canada. Our alarm went off at 4:30 am, and after a full evening of packing the night before, it felt as if we had hardly been to sleep. Fortunately we had no neighbours nearby to worry about disturbing. With everything loaded in the car, after a quick breakfast, we set off in the dark an hour later, along the island track . In fact it was dark most of the drive to the airport, the sun just rising as we drove into the car par

Land of the silver birch Home of the beaver Where still the mighty moose Wanders at will Blue lake and rocky shore I will return once more Boom did-y-ah-dah Boom did-y-ah-dah Boom did-y-ah-dah, boom Nova Scotia certainly has a lot of silver birch trees, and when we woke up on our first morning in the Fisherman’s Cottage, we realised that we were totally surrounded by them. Beautiful. Our new ‘home’ was at the northernmost point of Big Tracadie Island, and sat high above the w

We were a bit sad to leave the Boathouse with its beautiful views over the river, but it was time to move on. The main roads across Nova Scotia are not really very exciting. Miles and miles of highway or divided highway (dual carriageway), often with little traffic, doing 100 to 110km/hr. The autumn colours are beautiful, but after two hundred miles of the same scenery even they can get a bit boring! We broke our journey, roughly half way, at the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park. T

Our first Nova Scotia was spent in a budget hotel near Halifax railway station. As we only slept, showered, ate breakfast and waited for our hire car to be delivered, I’ll skip straight on to Bridgewater, just over an hour south of Halifax. Our accommodation was an Airbnb in Upper Lahave, a small, riverside boathouse with open plan living downstairs and two ‘haylofts’ above, and our own jetty. Racheal had a double bed, while Summer and I each had a ladder to climb to our ‘be

A short video showing the accessible room on the VIA Rail train from Montréal to Halifax

One of the big adventures on this trip was to take the overnight train over 800 miles from Montreal to Halifax. A scheduled journey of 23 hours, which actually took nearly 26, through three provinces, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and crossing a time zone taking us one hour closer to UK time. The train was due to leave at 6.30pm, so we arrived at the station in plenty of time. On this train we could check in some of our bags to make more space in the cabin. This was a

Montréal has the nickname of the City of Saints because of the numerous churches around the city. We certainly saw a few. Our accommodation in this interesting city was in an aparthotel near Central Station and right in the middle of the city. We had an accessible apartment, though the only difference to the other rooms was a few grab rails in the bathroom. We had a large main room with sofa, easy chair, writing desk, a double bed and open plan kitchen area, the second room w