My husband has serious arthritis. He isn't in a wheelchair - or not permanently - although he occasionally uses one to get about. But what he can't do is climb up and down stairs, and what he certainly can't do is climb into a bath with one of those over-bath showers.
He's not alone, yet if you go to any booking site, and try to find a reasonably priced, comfortable hotel with disabled access, in the Scottish highlands or on the islands - you're going to struggle.
Drimsynie was a serendipitous find.
It is a combination of a holiday park with a hotel as part of it. There are (good looking) lodges and some caravans with bedrooms in the main building. It is a very well kept place. There is masses of space, and the setting is absolutely stunning and well off the beaten track - a long, single track road, in fact. It has a curiously old fashioned and comfortable feel to it, and I mean that in a very good way. I kept thinking about Kellerman's in Dirty Dancing. Whenever I watch that movie, I wonder if such a place could still exist. Well maybe it does. Somebody somewhere may even have been carrying a watermelon, although I didn't see any candidates for Johnnie. The holiday park seemed to be full of young families, or grandparents spending time with grandkids, or small groups of older women - with a few couples like us, mostly passing through.
We had booked a room with disabled access, something we always do with trepidation since they tend to be relegated to the bowels of the hotel. There was good disabled parking. There was a lift. (Yay!) The room was light and spacious, and had a wonderful view. The bathroom was sparkling clean and wheelchair friendly, if that was what you needed. The vast bed was a marvel of comfort. We were both tired after a long drive, and we had the best night's sleep we had had in years. There was a coffee machine, drinks, a kettle, free mineral water and toiletries too.
All in all, they deserve praise for supplying a service that is, it is worth pointing out in this Disability Pride Month, rarer than the proverbial hen's teeth, especially in this part of the world.
The excuse other hotels give is generally that the building is 'too old' for disabled access. But there is no reason why more old buildings shouldn't be able to install a small lift. Our village hall - a listed building with the main hall on the first floor - has one. Drumlanrig Castle along the road has one. Failing that, a stair lift would help. But most old Highland hotels reply to all enquiries with the casual brush-off that all their rooms are on the first and second floors. Then, even if a customer struggles to climb to a first floor, the over bath shower, with no helpful handles, is commonplace. Hard cheese to any customer with mobility problems. Which given the demographic of many of their guests, seems remiss at best. And it's not just oldies. Plenty of younger people have problems too.
We stayed in another highland hotel on our way north and although the room was nominally accessible, i.e. on the ground floor, it was a long walk from the car park and it was tiny. 'Cat swinging not possible' remarked my husband. There was a walk-in shower in a bathroom so minuscule that it was physically impossible to sit on the loo without knocking the loo roll off its holder, and a washbasin so tiny that you couldn't fill the kettle without decanting water into a cup first. Worse than all this, however, the window looked out directly onto a tall fence beyond which was the beer garden. You literally couldn't see what the weather was like by looking out of the window. There was virtually no natural daylight in the room at all. Fortunately we were there for only one night - the staff were obliging and cheerful, the bar was comfortable and the food was good - but I was glad we weren't staying longer. Because the staff were so nice, we might even book it again in similar circumstances, but Alan would have to attempt to crawl upstairs and - worse - down again.
As a writer, I've encountered a few appalling single rooms in my time. The very worst was in Edinburgh, up a precipitous flight of stairs, a tiny, madly expensive, crazily hot room with no view, right beside a flat roof, housing some piece of machinery from a nearby restaurant that made a deafening noise all night long, so you couldn't possibly keep the window open. No breakfast. Just a room. I fell out of there at about 7am and made straight for the nearest coffee shop. It's why cheapish and cheerful chain hotels with decent levels of comfort are popular with writers doing events. But the problems facing single travellers are as nothing compared to the problems facing anyone with a disability. You waste hours trying to figure out what's actually on offer when booking, only to have them respond to your enquiries with the news that all their rooms are on the second floor. Or there is no parking, let alone disabled parking. Or the disabled parking is half a mile away. Or there is no walk-in shower. Or no lift.
This means that the occasional gem like Drimsynie is a rarity. Surely, we need more consideration. In fact, it should be the rule, rather than the exception.
