Wilderness for the disabled
I was giving an illustrated lecture in Edinburgh the other night and someone in the audience took me to task for suggesting that the Cairn Gorm funicular train should be removed. My argument was that it was a mistake to build it, the various organisations that said it would be a financial disaster have been proven to be absolutely correct and the best thing to do was strip it off the mountain before it costs the taxpayer any more money. (Given that it could cost about £6M to remove it).
My correspondent’s argument wasn’t so much about the financial side of the train but that it gave an opportunity for old people and the disabled to have “a mountain experience.” His words, not mine.
I pointed out that as far as I was concerned sitting in a train being taken up the side of a hill like Cairn Gorm was far removed from any mountain experience I had ever known but he was resolute, and demanded to know how I would offer the disabled a “wilderness experience.”
I seem to recall a television programme recently that featured some disabled people in wheelchairs, or a toughened-up equivalent, with teams of people helping through some wild landscapes, and I know that here in Scotland there is a pretty active Disabled Ramblers Group who meet fairly regularly and even have their own guidebook of routes. I know it well because I wrote the foreword to it! But these routes couldn’t be described as “mountains” or “wilderness”.
I certainly don’t accept that a train up Cairn Gorm, or Snowdon for that matter, offers any kind of mountain experience - all it offers is a train ride to a cold and windy place. A mountain experience takes in all kind of feelings and sensations, including getting there under your own steam. I don’t want to appear insensitive but perhaps there are some experiences that disabled folk, or even unfit able-bodied people, have to forego because they don’t have the capacity to physically carry it through. I’m not convinced that funicular trains, or even chairlifts, were designed for that purpose, and I don’t believe such contrivances offer any kind of mountain experience.
But perhaps I’m wrong? I’d love to hear from anyone with ideas about how the disabled might enjoy a mountain or wilderness experience.
October 19th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Might there be an analogy with the blind person who climbs mountains? He enjoys the sensation of being on a high summit, although he can’t actually see the view.
The wheelchair bound mountaineer is disabled in a different way. Unlike the blind person he can enjoy the sensation of the views from the summit, but he can’t enjoy the physical act of climbing the mountain.
There must be something in this, given the thousands of people who queue up for the cog railways and their ‘mountain experience’. I’ve done it myself when the alternative would be a low-level walk. Could one man’s Jungfrau Railway experience be another man’s Cairn Gorm funicular experience?
Those of us who aren’t disabled are no doubt thankful of that fact, and we should help the disabled enthusiast in any way we can. Eg point them in the direction of the Disabled Ramblers Group.
However, I agree that the Cairn Gorm disaster should be removed from the landscape. Your wheelchair bound friend should instead look forward to the prospect of a journey through fine British countryside to Llanberis and the lovely old railway up Snowdon, adorned by its newly constructed Visitor Centre.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Thanks Martin. I think the difference between Snowdon and Cairn Gorm is that the Welsh railway has been running for a considerable time, and I assume it’s never been totally reliant of hand-outs to keep it going. Having said that, I would hope that such a scheme would never get planning permission today, and I doubt, under modern financial restraints, that any one company could fund it.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I agree, Cameron, I was simply answering the question as to how the disabled might enjoy a mountain experience. Thankfully the classic Snowdon Horseshoe stroll only has a brief skirmish with the railway, and the great benefit of the railway is that it absorbs substantial numbers of people, leaving many other parts of Snowdonia less crowded than they might otherwise be…..(perhaps!)
I don’t know about a wilderness experience for the disabled…can you get to Sandwood Bay in a wheelchair?
October 27th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Kayaking/Canoeing? I read an article years ago about a guy, paralysed from the waist down, who did some fantastic sea-kayaking expeditions.
Scotland has hundreds of miles of coastline and no shortage of lochs and rivers. I’d have thought canoeing could be accessible to folk with a wide range of disablities.