A road trip in search of Alan Partridge...and a suitable loo!

I apologise in advance that this may not be the most exciting blog you’ll ever read. They’ll get better, I promise! The bad news is we didn’t find Mr Partridge on our visit to Norwich, just a ‘very fine city’ as the welcome to Norwich sign promises. If you’ll hang in there, what this is, is well, a fairly normal road trip to visit family but hopefully highlights the needs of families such as ours that don’t quite fit the ‘norm’. You could say this is our quest to find ‘normal’ perhaps? Or trying to make ‘our normal’ the norm?! 

What do we expect as a family embarking on a road trip? Many hours spent sat in the car, a packet of sweets to work through, downloads of Peppa Pig and Postman Pat to entertain the kids in between the ‘I’m bored’ and ‘are we nearly there yet?’ cries. Stops for coffee, a bite to eat, stretch of the legs and using the toilet. All standard, all what you expect of a road trip with kids. What do you do however if on-route you get to the coffee shop and it’s closed? No reviving coffee for the driver. Buggar! It could happen, but in the middle of the day, you’re likely to be able to grab that coffee somewhere. The Burger King you stop at, has run out of burgers? Inconvenient, but again, unlikely and they’ll be a McDonalds down the road or somewhere else you can eat. The services you get to don’t have the right facilities to allow you to use the toilet? Unbelievable, right?! The reality is, this IS something that is happening on a daily basis, not only for us but for approximately a quarter of a million disabled children and adults across the UK. Disabled adults and children are being denied the basic human right of adequate toilet facilities. So I share with you now, our experience of our ‘bog’ standard family road trip in search of the right ‘bog’!

We set off on our journey. It can take a little while to get anywhere in Devon through it’s beautiful, but winding country

roads. A river ferry crossing and an hour and forty five

minutes later, we stopped, 100 miles in to our 345 mile journey. I honestly did not hold out much hope of there being the right facilities for Miss S at the services. I felt resigned to another nappy change in the car, not even able to use the boot as it was full of our luggage! What I found at the Welcome Break services, was an area with a variety of facilities for different needs. A baby change room, a standard disabled toilet with grab rails etc AND a Changing Places facility, hooray! (Changing Places toilets are a much larger room with an adult sized changing bed and hoist system plus much more). As you’ll see in the photo, little Miss S is smiling away as she’s comfortable on the large pull down bed instead of, scrunched up on a baby change table. All in all, a relaxed, stress free, experience using appropriate facilities. If you had told me three years ago that I would get so excited over a disabled toilet, I most likely would have laughed, out loud, a lot!


Our journey continued with a game of Paw Patrol Top Trumps with Master S, Eye Spy, more Peppa Pig and Haribo to keep us going. 230 miles in, we stopped again, HOORAY, another Changing Places facility and at a Moto Services this time! *Excited dance once again* The only trouble this time was I accidentally burst in on someone in there. I thought I had the only key as I had to collect it from W H Smith’s but the cleaner had annoyingly let a young family in to change their baby’s nappy...not entirely the purpose of the facility but I was relieved at least that Miss S had appropriate facilities when they did finally vacate. My only slight worry then, was that the cleaner may let others in whilst we were there and my red cheeks wouldn’t be the only cheeks someone would catch a glimpse of, if they sprung in on me quickly using the facilities after changing Miss S! *Note to self to beware of this!*

We continued on our journey and finally arrived at the Mercure Norwich after eight and a half hours of travelling. Sadly, we think the road side travel tavern that Alan Partridge lived in for 183 days, would have been classier and the (fictional) failed chat show host described that as a ‘dull, unattractive place but being impressed with its service!’. We knew it wouldn’t exactly be the Ritz when we booked it, but we had hoped it would be basic and clean. It was cheap, suited what we needed for this trip but it could have done with being a little more cheerful! The hotel was extremely dated, in desperate need of a refurb and had a particularly unpleasant musty smell. We had planned to use the swimming pool whilst we were there but following our breakfast after our first night stay, we not only decided to ditch the hotel breakfast for the remainder of our stay but thought better of the pool, judging the cleanliness of the hotel restaurant! To give the Mercure some credit where it is due, we did receive a call prior to our stay offering us two interconnecting rooms downstairs at no extra charge, as all their family rooms are situated on the first floor and there was no lift. This was a reminder to myself to always include our accessibility needs when making a hotel reservation. Had I not added that we needed either a ground floor room or a room to be accessible via a lift, we would’ve had a nasty surprise when we arrived. This did also mean Mr S and I had a room to ourselves instead of whispering to each other in a dark room, having switched the lights out by 8pm or hiding in the bathroom drinking wine whilst the kids were nodding off!

Following our stay at the Mercure, Mr S and I came to the conclusion that Premier Inns are a safer bet for our budget travel needs.We have stayed in Premier Inns a fair few times now (Leek, Exeter, Bristol, Folkestone, Portsmouth, London) and always find them clean, comfortable with a decent breakfast the following morning. The kids are always well catered for, they eat for free when we pay for adult meals and often Master S and Miss S have been handed sweets or a little souvenir of some kind to take home. Master S often asks ‘are we staying at the nighttime hotel?’ whenever we say we are going away. It’s definitely good in their book! Our Family rooms have always had a double bed and two extra beds, with still enough room to wheel Miss S’s wheelchair in and around the room. We are yet to test their disabled rooms so that will be next on the list to try out!

We were pleasantly surprised just how lovely the city of Norwich is! It’s only fairly recently our family have moved up there and

we had never given Norwich much thought, other than associating the city with what we had seen on ‘I’m Alan Partridge’. If shopping is your thing, Norwich has two large shopping malls Chapelfield Intu (which has a Changing Places facility) and the Castle Mall. You’ll find all the usual high street shops along with various family events going on in the holidays such as; family space hopper races and the giant Scalextric to entertain families during their shopping trip. Master S and Miss S were overjoyed to find a Disney Store and it was hard to prize them away without buying up the whole shop! On a corner of London Street is the large, well established Jarrolds department store. An independent store dating back to 1770, when it was first set up as a grocers and drapers in Woodbridge, Suffolk. The business began to take shape in it’s current location in 1823 and today this impressive department store is over 5 floors with more than 50 departments. Our instant reaction was that Jarrolds is on a par with John Lewis in terms of quality (we are big John Lewis fans!). We were visiting around lunchtime and as tempting as the beautiful deli was down in the basement, we headed to the Pantry restaurant on the top floor of the store as we felt this was easier with our ever so slightly fussy children! There was a huge selection from hot meals such as chicken pie, lasagna to omelettes and a huge range on the salad bar. The children were over the moon with their lunch bags with the usual sandwich, crisps, yoghurt etc and the added addition of a toy and Mr S and I had a delicious pie with an abundance of veggies and potatoes. My only grumble is that changing Miss S was not as easy due to there being just a small baby changing area. At two and a half years old at the time, it was a bit tight to get changed comfortably.      

Not only does Norwich offer the shopping facilities already mentioned, but it seemed every where we turned there was an interesting little side street of individual shops, a shopping arcade to wander down, a market to explore or an antique shop to peruse. I can recommend Digby’s Fine Chocolates in the Royal Arcade, in particular the cappuccino mouse! The covered market was great to stroll around with stalls providing anything from clothes to mending shoes or cutting keys. The many food stalls with their offerings, reminded Mr S and I of our trip to the famous La Boqueria food market in Barcelona last summer, where we had spent hours sampling tapas and Cava. We visited one of many of the antique shops which was absolutely huge inside! Master S was beside himself when we spotted a little guitar just the right size for him so he could continue to impersonate Miguel from the Disney film Coco, but actually try and play along whilst he sings ‘Remember Me’! We didn’t visit Norwich Castle but it’s an impressive sight from the high street. We will have to suss out the accessibility of the castle on another trip as generally getting around Norwich city centre was fine. 

After a lovely few days, we started our journey south. Starbucks along the A14 was our first stop this time and sadly fell short of facilities. As tasty as my Caramel Machiato was, the standard disabled toilet facilities were disappointing and just not up to scratch. It was a narrow, pull down baby change table which was a bit on the small side for our growing girl. To quote Miss S ‘I don’t like it Mummy, not comfy’. Come on Starbucks! A bit of small change from your multi-million dollar pockets could be, well, life changing for so many. Onwards, and for our final two stops we were back on motorways and thankfully could rely on Moto and Welcome Break to give us what we needed again. It may have taken four members of services staff to track down the key at the first of these stops, but we got there!

I am hopeful now that both Welcome Break and Moto are providing Changing Places facilities throughout the UK. If this is the case, this is amazing progress and what is required now is to pester other large companies to provide the same. Having these facilities at motorway services is fantastic but what do we do along routes on A roads? Starbucks now seem to be dominating these roadside facilities having taken over many old Little Chef premises. I think its time to make such a huge worldwide company accountable and make the change to provide these facilities as standard. Currently on these A-road routes, we are back to squeezing children and some times adults (!) on to small baby change areas or on to revolting, dirty toilet floors. Often Miss S has been changed in the boot of the car with her bottom on display for the world to see. With the correct facilities readily available disabled children and adults dignity can remain intact.   

Congratulations if you have managed to bear with me this long and also a huge thank you for not nodding off…or if you did, thanks for coming round and plodding on. Please share our blog and keep an eye out for our next one!