Looking for a life on the open road

The only thing holding Mary Laver back from taking full advantage of her powerchair is a lack of support. So, she tells Sunil Peck, she’s now setting up a club to find like-minded enthusiasts

Mary Laver would love to get out of the house more. She is desperate to go for 20 or 30 mile rides in the countryside in her powerchair or, as she puts it, “burn some rubber”. But, she says, a lack of support is holding her back.

So she has decided to set up a club for like-minded people who use powerchairs, scooters and trikes and want to enjoy the great outdoors, but need back-up to do that.

Ultimately, she wants to try Land’s End to John O’Groats, or even Perth to Sydney.

As she says: “If you break down on your own, how the hell do you get home?”

Mary is convinced there are othes who feel the same way, because she sees people in powerchairs near her home in Newcastle all the time.

“We have something up here called the Wagon Way. I don’t know much about it but it is off-road and wheelchair-friendly. But say I am going down there and I get a flat battery or my tyre bursts. I am stuck! But if a group of us went down there we would have the back-up to get people out if anything went wrong.”

Mary says her ideal outing would consist of around 15 other people.

“Some people would be in powerchairs, some on scooters, someone driving a van ahead. We would have a generator so we could all stop for a beer and a sandwich and charge our batteries up.”

She can reach speeds of around eight miles an hour in her powerchair and says the sensation is exhilarating compared with travelling in her NHS wheelchair.

“It is like comparing an old banger to driving a Formula One racing car,” she says.

She came up with the idea for a club after she was forced to abandon an attempt to travel from Land’s End to John O’Groats in her powerchair on the first day because her support team was too small.

“I ended up with just two carers and they could not do everything because we were living in a tent and they would have had to do the driving, the cooking, the washing-up. I realised that people like me can’t do things like Land’s End to John O’Groats unless they have family as backup.”

Mary has set her sights on future trips to Cuba and Australia, but for now her priority is to get her club off the ground by the spring.

Anyone can join, providing they can operate a powerchair, scooter or trike.

Mary says the only limits to what the club could do would be members’ imaginations. But her own suggestions already include powerchair football, dancing, and trips abroad.

• For more details, email Mary at mary.laver.e2e@googlemail.com