NEC - Motorhome & Caravan Show 2018

Last weekend we decided to visit the Motorhome & Caravan Show at the NEC. We went because we’ve been looking at getting a folding camper to enable us to go and visit places that are further than a day trip from home. We had quite a specific wish list of three items:

1. It had to be light as our car will only tow up to 1200kgs;

2. It had to be small enough for us to store at home, so that we’re not paying for storage;

3. It had to be easy to put up.

We did actually find something that met all the requirements of our wish list... but more on that later.

We arrived at the NEC about 20 minutes before the show opened. It was busy at this time but not unbearably so. We got to have a look around a wheelchair accessible motorhome, which we thought was brilliant. It definitely opens up the world of touring and camping to more people. George tried out some of the accessible features of the motorhome, in his chair, and he was quite impressed.

Then we went and looked around some trailer tents and folding campers. I like the idea of trailer tents because the trailer is light and easy to store, but the tent part is not especially easy to put up. We looked at Pennine folding campers - in particular the Pathfinder. The trailer is light enough to be towed by the car but is quite big. I’m not sure that it would be able to be stored at home due to its size. It also made me think of a caravan that’s been chopped in half. We also looked at the Air Opus folding camper. The trailer is light and it’s smaller than the Pathfinder trailer. The really cool feature is that it’s inflatable and comes with an electric pump to inflate the air beams, so you don’t have to!

Unfortunately, by this time the NEC was getting really busy and very crowded. We had our lunch and tried to look at a few more exhibits in the different halls. George was worried about getting lost in the crowds, so held on to my hand. He was getting quite overwhelmed by the number of people there and ran over Sue’s feet a few times (ouch!) trying to get away from people. Sue found it tricky because she was trying to hold on to George’s hand, avoid having her feet run over and guide John, and John had a lot of people falling over his cane. It was quite stressful for all of us, so we decided to leave at this point.

What did we find that met all the requirements of our wish list? It was the Air Opus of course!

Video is below.

Museum of the Moon

We went to see the Museum of the Moon exhibition, when it was touring in our area.

The exhibition was created by artist Luke Jerram and is a 7 metre diameter model of the moon. It is made of 120dpi NASA images of the moon’s surface. It is internally lit and is at an approximate scale of 1:500,000, which means that every centimetre of the model represents approximately 5 kilometres of the lunar surface.

At each place that it travels to, it is displayed in a different way and can be indoors or outdoors. When it was on display in our local area, it was indoors and the area it was in was bathed in a blue light, so it looked as though you were standing close to the moon in the night sky. At various places on the floor beneath the moon there were blankets and pillows, so people could lie on the floor and look up at the moon. There was also seating available for people to sit down and enjoy the exhibition.

It was free to visit and accessible for wheelchair users.  When Sue saw the model of the moon for the first time, she was awestruck by it and the amount of detail in the model. She described it as almost like standing next to the moon, without ever leaving the Earth. John was also able to get a sense of how spectacular the model was from Sue’s description. George enjoyed seeing it too 🙂

The short video below shows the exhibition as it was when it visited our local area. You can visit the Museum of the Moon website here, to find out when it will be in your local area, if you wish to see it for yourself.

Severn Valley Railway

On this trip we went to Severn Valley Railway. This is a steam railway that runs between Kidderminster in Worcestershire and Bridgnorth in Shropshire. We got on the train in Bridgnorth, travelled to Highley (to look at the Engine House), then on to Kidderminster. The return journey was straight through from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth. George loved this trip. In common with quite a few people with autism, he loves trains, so this trip was a birthday treat for him 🙂

The theming of the stations along the railway is brilliant. You could almost imagine yourself being there in the 1950s/60s. The engines and railway carriages are also authentic. There is a carriage that has been altered so that it is wheelchair accessible. The doors are slightly wider, there’s a ramp available to get into the carriage, and some of the seats have been removed so that wheelchair users can remain in their wheelchairs.

If you are travelling on a train that does not have the wheelchair accessible carriage attached and you are able to transfer to the train, the guard will put the wheelchair in the guard’s van and you get to travel in a first class carriage, for no extra charge. This happened to us on the first leg of our journey from Bridgnorth to Highley. The seats in the first class carriage were very comfortable and we could have quite happily ridden first class all day!

We didn’t get as much filming done as we would have liked to do at Kidderminster station, as a small boy kind of latched on to us and we were very wary of having him included in our video.

We had a good day out and we’d definitely go to Severn Valley Railway again 🙂

RAF Museum Cosford

We visited the RAF Museum in Cosford over the school Summer holidays. It’s an interesting place to visit and has a lot of old aircraft that can be viewed.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see everything as one of the aircraft hangars was closed due to a flood.

The museum itself is free to enter, although you do need to pay for parking (this includes blue badge holders). There are plenty of places to sit and eat, if you’ve brought your own food, and there’s a cafe too. There’s also a small gift shop near the entrance to the museum.

This year the RAF is celebrating its centenary and, as part of the celebrations, guided tours of a Nimrod aircraft were being offered for £5 per person. We didn’t take the tour as it would have involved climbing up steps to the aircraft, but it was a fabulous opportunity to see inside a Nimrod.

The museum itself is very accessible to wheelchairs. In the hangar that displays aircraft used during the Cold War, there are lifts available to enable wheelchair users to get to different levels, or there is the option of going outside the hangar and walking down a sloped path to get to the lower levels of the hangar.

For visually impaired people, under normal circumstances you are not allowed to touch the wartime aircraft, due to the age of them. We were very lucky because while we were visiting John was given a touch tour of both a Spitfire and a Hurricane. The man who took John on the tour was very knowledgeable about both aircraft and also gave John the opportunity to touch some of the weapons that were used on these aircraft, including some of the ammunition that was used. This made the visit more meaningful for John.

The video of our visit is below. This was filmed before we got a new microphone, so some of the audio isn’t as good as it could be, particularly in the hangars.