I arrived quite late at the hotel just outside York, and after throwing my bags on the bed, I quickly got changed and went for a run down by the river. This was my way of unwinding.

Except the river had flooded recently, and both routes were waterlogged so I was back at the hotel in fifteen minutes. And not entirely happy about it.

I turned on the light to my room and noticed that the light-switch was quite a lot lower than I am used to. I got stripped and went into the bathroom.

That is when I saw it.

I can best describe it as a white deckchair style contraption, folded, in the shower. Where a bath should be. I consider myself rather astute when it comes to assessing my surroundings so it only took a few minutes to realise I had been put into a room for the disabled.

Why had they put me in here? I will admit that fifteen minutes is not a long time to spend running, but to say it made me the most disabled person in the hotel was surely pushing it?

I was naked, and sweaty, so going to Reception was out of the question. So I decided to make the most of the situation and have a shower. Sitting down. First though, I had to open the ‘fence’ that kept the you out of the shower (or the disabled person in?). It was not easy. In fact I actually considered climbing over it at one point, but figured that putting a fence for disabled people to climb over is not only cruel, but possible illegal. It would be just my luck to slip whilst climbing in and break my leg and have to spend the rest of the summer explaining that I can not walk because I fell whilst climbing into a shower designed for people who can not walk.

They do say that blind people develop excellent hearing to compensate for a lack of sight, well I think it is possible that disabled people develop excellent problem solving skills, as the locking mechanism had me baffled for several minutes.

Eventually I cracked it, and there I sat, in the shower, enjoying a sit down wash. Only standing to wash those bits that you simply can not wash when you are sat down. It is a strange experience, being sat on a chair in the shower. But not an altogether unpleasant one. I will admit it is perhaps not worth losing a limb for, but definitely worth a try at least once in your life.

I would happily try it again, but I do not want to seem like a weirdo by requesting a disabled room at each hotel I visit. I am not a pervert. It is much better to simply befriend a wheelchair-bound person at the bar and ask to use theirs.

Eventually it was time to get out. So I turned off the water and fought again with the able person-proof fence. It was at this point that I realised the bathroom was entirely flooded, with the water now ankle deep across the room and now flowing into the rest of the hotel room.

I called Reception and demanded to be moved.

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