When holidaying on the East Coast of Scotland it is essential to have a beach day for swimming, kite flying or building sandcastles. Having had a great day on the sand in the North of England a couple of years ago thanks to a beach wheelchair we were delighted to see that St Andrews now have them for hire so that we could easily get Quinns onto the sand. The wheelchairs and the newly installed Changing Place toilet adjacent to the beach convinced us that St Andrews was the place for our beach day.

Although we arrived quite late in the day St Andrews Beach wheelchairs were able to provide us with a hippocampe wheelchair for Quinns and off we went onto the sand. Unfortunately, the smallest wheelchair was already being used so the one provided was slightly too big for him.

Despite our ace team working on making him comfortable in the one we had he just wasn’t feeling it. Whether it was size of the chair, the rush to get in or simply that it wasn’t his own custom wheelchair we’ll never know. After a while we decided to abandon the hippocampe and get him out to sit on the sand where he was happy in my arms for the next couple of hours.

Eventually we had to return the hippocampe and get Quinns’ own wheelchair back. Having to use Quinns’ non-beach chair to get him off the beach again made us really appreciate the ease of inclusion the beach wheelchairs provide.

Although it wasn’t Quinns’ day it was amazing to have had the opportunity thanks to St Andrews Beach Wheelchairs. If he had been in a better mood, we would almost certainly have got him down to the sea where his Big Sister spent her entire time swimming.

We will definitely return to St Andrews to try again and also can’t wait to try out the brand new wheelchairs at Nairn beach next summer!