SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
JK Rowling has a lot to answer for, I can’t help muttering as I prepare to push my sister’s wheelchair up a steep, gravelly track to the vantage point for the “real-life Hogwarts Express”. Admittedly, the Harry Potter creator probably didn’t anticipate her books and movies would lure busloads of tourists to this remote west Scotland location, eager to see The Jacobite – a locomotive previously adored only in railway-enthusiast circles.
I’m relieved when a staff member from the Glenfinnan visitor centre directs us to a ground-level spot across the jam-packed carpark. We squeeze into the crowd and watch the train pass over the dramatic, 21-arched Glenfinnan Viaduct.
A state of enchantment is par for the course in Scotland. We’re on a 10-day road trip taking in the Highlands and the Hebrides, an adventure that’s teaching me as much about patience as the history of the land my ancestors once roamed.
Alice, my sister, uses a wheelchair due to a severely curved spine that limits her lung capacity, so we’re having to adapt our itinerary when the mountainous terrain of this enigmatic country proves problematic.
Travelling overseas with someone in a wheelchair, I learn quickly, is an exercise in logistics. Even with online and phone research, you can find tourist attractions described as “wheelchair friendly” carry challenges. At home, Alice has (begrudgingly) come to expect doors too heavy to pull open, service counters she can’t reach or aisles too narrow to manoeuvre around, but in a foreign country the list of likely hurdles is an unknown entity.
Read more on Escape’s website.