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North Meadow Cottage, Mendham Mill - a luxurious, accessible holiday cottage

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North Meadow Cottage exterior North Meadow Cottage is located on the site of the historic watermill in Mendham, situated right on the Norfolk / Suffolk border. Having spotted the cottage a couple of years ago on the Accessible Holiday Escapes website, Mr S had been keeping an eye on availability and was keen to book to visit. What stood out to us both when looking at Mendham Mill's website, was that it looked as though accessibility had really been thought through. We were reassured of this by being able to ‘walk through’ the cottage using the wonderful virtual tour feature. Alongside this, the website offered detailed information of door widths and other accessible features which reassured us further. Accessibility information is fundamental in our decision making when it comes to booking something for our family. We have to be confident that Miss S will be able to access everything and that we can all have a comfortable and enjoyable stay without the stresses of things not quite ...

Canvas and Campfires - a Wheelchair Accessible Camping Experience

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  Sheep and pig visit our tent! Camping is something we had considered over the years and we had checked out a few camping shops along the way, to see how camping may work with Miss S as a wheelchair user. It isn't an absolutely impossible task to try traditional camping but there are so many considerations and practicalities that ultimately, each time we’ve discussed it, looked in to it a little more, we’ve not gone any further along. For instance, it would need to be the right tent, one Miss S could physically get in to in her chair, one big enough to stand up in so we can transfer her and have enough space for Miss S get around and that’s before we start to think about what she’d sleep on, how we can get her comfortable enough, warm enough, etc. With so many considerations we just didn’t get round to looking at traditional camping any further.  We first came across Canvas and Campfires after reading about the visit fellow blogger Simply Emma had, around the time Canvas and ...

A Merry Disney Christmas...mark 2, 6 years on!

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A nother magical Disney Christmas!  If you’ve been following us for a while, you may remember our first trip to Disneyland Paris as a family of 4, 6 years ago! If you haven’t or would like to take a look back at this, you can read all about it here . 6 years on, now with an 11 year old Master S and an 8 year old Miss S, who incidentally now has a significant fear of big characters (!) we set off again on the 20th December to truly be immersed in to Christmas once more, Disney style! Due to Miss S's fear of big characters, we couldn't plan a trip without discussing it with her first, so we certainly couldn't surprise the kids with it this time round! Miss S was very excited at the prospect of everything ELSE at Disney and with the agreement we would keep our distance from all the big characters around the park. The only exception to this was Rapunzel, she didn't mind meeting her, as she is her favourite Disney Princess!   Just like last time, we drove up to Folkestone th...

Sail away, sail away, sail away...accessibly!

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  On the 12th August we set sail on P&O’s Iona, cruising to the Norwegian Fjords. If you read our previous blog post, you may remember this was our long awaited first cruise experience. Having first booked it back in the autumn of 2019 and many changes later due to Covid, surgeries and lack of availability, we finally made it on board! So here we share our experience. Warning! it's a biggie... Embarkation… Onboard and eating lunch within 45 mins! We were dropped off at the cruise terminal and it was nice and easy dropping our bags to the designated area for deck 10, where our cabin was located. Instead of following the masses, we were swiftly diverted to an accessible entrance and whisked off up in a lift to a dedicated accessible check in. We must’ve timed it right as after a quick check of our passports, we were directed through to security and we were quickly ascending the gangway up up enter the ship at deck 6. After a safety brief on deck 8, we grabbed our first bite to ea...