In April of this year those providers that are on board were published in a new guide Britain’s Accessible Places to Stay yet Tourism

In April of this year those providers that are on board were published in a new guide, Britain’s Accessible Places to Stay, yet Tourism for All’s long-term goal remains for such guides to one day become redundant.Significantly, says Mr Seaman, much progress has been made by the UK’s larger hotel chains, Best Western being a notable example. While improvements are due in part to government legislation such as the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995, many chains have not only improved access but use mystery shoppers to test its effectiveness. Attracting tourists with disabilities is, of course, dependent on the co-operation of local authorities. “Brighton is an example of a city that includes a number of steep hills,” says Mr Seaman, “and the local council there recently carried out an ‘access audit’ to determine how it might improve facilities.”Of the UK’s 10 million registered disabled, Mr Seaman points to the fact that “only around 5 per cent actually use a wheelchair. The remainder comprise a range of disabilities, and improving access information for these groups represents a real challenge for the future.”One country setting something of a benchmark is Denmark. Its Accessibility Labelling Scheme not only ranks facilities by their disability provision, but also the range of impairments they cater for, from asthma to reading difficulties.The scheme operates under the auspices of the Danish Accessibility Association, a non-profit organisation that was formed as recently as 2003. “While the scheme does run nationwide,” says Alan Sorenson of Visit Denmark, “we do have a number of stand-out regions that are being particularly innovative in this area.

West Jutland, for example, has undertaken major works on wooden footpaths to make sure all its beaches now have disabled access.”So are we likely to see a similarly comprehensive scheme in Britain any time soon? Brian Seaman is confident. “Thirty years ago this was an extremely marginal issue,” he says. “We’re realistic enough to know that some hotels will never be accessible to everyone but in terms of information on those that are, a new website appears almost every month.”. Standing at the side of a motorway in baking sunshine while waiting for a tow-truck to arrive isn’t exactly what we had in mind when, over the muesli and toast one Sunday morning, I had brightly suggested, “Why don’t we drive down to the Costa del Sol?” It must have been powerful stuff, that muesli, for wife and son readily agreed, a decision they may have regretted by the afternoon when our car belched black smoke and shuddered to a halt just north of Madrid

The disappointment was, thank heavens, only temporary.

Indeed, a breakdown added to the adventure, we smugly claimed, after the necessity for a hire car. Tip: don’t leave home without full roadside assistance cover.
To make the going easier, we had driven to Plymouth and caught the Brittany Ferries flagship, the £100m Pont-Aven, which really is far too grand to be called a ferry and clips across the Bay of Biscay to Santander in around 20 hours. There’s a pool, a wrap-around promenade, a five-deck high atrium and a twin-screen cinema. On the outward trip we treated ourselves to dinner in the swish French restaurant.The following evening found us, somewhat surprisingly, in Puerto de Somosierra, dining in what we initially took to be a re-creation of the Norman Bates motel in Psycho. This nondescript village, close to where our car misbehaved, has a tiny but beautiful church and not much else, but dinner was good and cheap, the hotel rooms bright and clean and as a pit-stop for reluctant pedestrians, it was fine.Segovia, where we collected the hire car the following morning – 54 miles from Madrid and a considerable detour from our planned route – was even finer. A 16th-century cathedral dominates the skyline of this magnificent Castilian city, where Romanesque churches jostle for position.