Flight Free part 4: Selfies in Paris

Waking up in Nice on a bright late summer morning, we could hear the pedestrians ambling around on the streets below going about their Saturday morning routine. We had a relatively tight schedule to get to the station for our late-morning train and the most important task on the list was opening birthday presents. It’s …

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Flight Free part 3: The Train of Monte Cinto

Quite often as a holiday gets close to an end and you begin getting your things ready for the trip home, there is that sense of melancholy that tomorrow you will be back home and the holiday will soon be a distant memory. Not this time, as we had our final swim in the rooftop …

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Flight Free part 2: Night boat to Ajaccio

We left off last time reflecting on the trip so far as we settled into our 5 hour high-speed run down from Paris to the Mediterranean port of Toulon. So far, aside from a slight panic in Paris, things were going smoothly. The SNCF train we were on was spacious and comfortable although being on …

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Kath and Chris clinking glasses at Hard Rock Cafe, London

Flight Free part 1: Happy anniversary

Last year my wife of 17 years and I celebrated our anniversary by going out for dinner with the kids at Hard Rock Cafe in Piccadilly Circus. This isn’t our usual choice for a romantic anniversary meal but there was a special reason for being in London on a warm August evening. We were due …

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Musings from a Blind Man: Turn up and Go

Original post from January 2024 I decided to do a little experiment today as Chester and I took a solo trip to visit my eldest at university in Kingston. It’s quite a straightforward trip on South Western Railway from Reading with just a single change at Twickenham. So what’s the experiment? Turn Up And Go …

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A view from the window of a train travelling north to through southern Scotland. In the foreground is a river running through fields with rolling hills in the background

Twelve hours to Glasgow – One blind person’s account on travelling during a heat wave

What a week, after starting it with the hottest temperatures on record, I had the unenviable task of heading north for work. Whilst my colleagues all flew, I opted to catch the train because, although slower, having the choice between travelling by train or air with a visual impairment, I always opt to stay as …

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Chris, a white man in his forties with a greying beard is stood, wearing a tweed flat cap, wraparound sunglasses, green jacket and blue jeans holding a long white cane. he is stood on a viewing platform next to The Iron Bridge at Ironbridge, Shropshire.

The latest member of the Severely Sight Impaired Club

The last of the old articles and a huge milestone for me. Things are continuing to change which is an ongoing adjustment with using new accessibility tools and finding ways to adapt to different environments. First posted: 6 January 2022 Once more, I’m sat with pen in hand on a train, this time waiting at …

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A railway bridge at Goring Gap, England crossing the River Thames

Coach D: How one missing carriage kicked off my long cane journey

This piece marked the start of me accepting the need for aids to make people aware of my limited vision. This talks about an incident on a Cross Country train from Southampton to Reading which, as a result, I decided to get myself a symbol cane (it's called Daisy and is always in my backpack). …

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