Rolling Traveler

Over the summer, I visited my folks in County Wexford, Ireland, and my mother and I decided to go for a day out. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of what Wexford has to offer, and we wanted to try somewhere new. Both of us have an interest in archaeology and history, so the Irish National Heritage Park in Ferrycarraig sounded like just the thing. It is an open-air museum with reconstructions of stone age, bronze age and Celtic and Viking era homesteads, burial sites and places of ritual; the web site even promises ancient animal breeds. I’d been to an excellent open-air museum in Poland, and was looking forward to a great day out. Unfortunately, I’d reckoned without the possibility of bad design making the park essentially inaccessible.

It wasn’t until after we’d paid and gone into the outdoor area that we discovered the problem. The entrance to the main building had been fine: the ramp was slightly steep, but the doorway was good and wide and there was plenty of room to maneuver within the reception and restaurant. I also saw that the park had a few wheelchairs of its own available for visitors who might need them, which said to me that the park was accessible. However, I don’t think anyone working in the park had ever actually taken one of those chairs out for a spin.

 The ramp down from the back door was basically just concrete piled up into a slope, with no thought about the gradient or smoothness, and the door was on the narrow, so just getting out was tricky. A slightly muddy track led from there to the first exhibit, a Stone Age homestead, which consisted of a hut for sleeping and an enclosure for animals. I don’t remember a lot about the exhibit, because I was more concerned at that point with just moving: the muddy track had given way to paths with a deep gravel surface, and I was getting stuck. My casters were digging in, so I was having to lift them out with a wheelie every time I wanted to move forward.

 The next section didn’t look any more encouraging: an uphill graveled slope is one of the last things you want to see when you’re in a wheelchair. It’s right up there with a snowdrift between you and your car, or broken glass on the pavement. It was going to take a lot of effort to get any farther, but as I’ve pointed out before, I’m a pretty stubborn guy, so I stuck to my guns and kept going.

 We got to the second exhibit, a dolmen, if I recall correctly, and I was already exhausted. Since my chair has no handles, my mother couldn’t really help, and even if it had handles, I doubt she could’ve pushed me around the whole park. Pushing a wheelchair in gravel is very difficult too, as you also keep having to lift the casters; pushing a wheelchair on gravel hills is asking for a hernia.

 We gave up on exhibit three. It had taken about twenty minutes to get there, I was ready to go home, and my mother was finding the whole thing stressful rather than restful. We headed back, which took as long, and I went to see about getting a refund.

 The lady at the desk was very nice about giving us our money back, and very apologetic, but I still don’t see anything on their web site about the park being so wheelchair unfriendly. I think I’ll have to get in touch with them again. The Irish National Heritage Park in Ferrycarraig just isn’t accessible, and that information should be available, so people with wheelchairs don’t waste their time going, or are at least prepared to be pushed around, preferably by more than one person.

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