Zoom-tastic ... mobility scooters?

All I have learned about mobility scooters in the last two years...

That wasn't zippy as a heading goes but this is supposed to be useful rather than just an example of my stunning wit and general comedy nature.

Mobility Scooters...

If you are thinking about one of these, I do have some handy hints for you. Some of them may be rude, but bear with me, most are useful.

•  Consider the terrain you REALLY want to use it on most of the time.
• Consider how far you will go on it.
• Do you want to put it in your car a lot?
• Mainly outdoors use, or mainly indoors (shopping centres, supermarkets etc).

I have a custom offroad mobility scooter, made by Horizon Mobility in Cheltenham  - it is a beast, in more ways than one!

I have the Mayan AC, and I have thrown that scooter around places some of us would fear to walk, let alone ride a scooter.

It does have a couple of drawbacks though - it is wide, and although you will get it through a disabled friendly pedestrian gate, some of the anti-horse/anti-motorbike barriers will prove difficult if not impossible. Some will just lop sticking out parts off your scooter (my ergonomic comfy seat paid the price!)


It is also large and heavy, you will need a trailer, a van or a LARGE people carrier to get it in (plus ramps) - it fits in my Citroen Grand Picasso C4 job JUST (better with the previous seat that would lay back flat, less good with the replacement seat that folds forwards).


There is also basically no scooter out there with much in the way of ground clearance - my Mayan AC has about as much as you can get and even then, I trashed the underside of it in South Wales and caused a braking failure (see pedestrian gate, on a slope, no stopping, whoops there goes the seat adjust lever!) - I would expect (and fervently hope!) that since that incident, Horizon have taken steps to protect the wires and looms and gubbinses on the underneath of their scooters! (Well I DID promise I'd thoroughly road test it!).

If these issues are not going to be issues for you, then I can honestly state that of the available off road scooters in the UK, the Horizon Mayan AC is the best. There is only one other, the Tramper, which is nice... but.. I didn't like it. Narrower, not so stable across a slope, less flexibility on tyres (very thin wheels) and a LOT of plastic faring to bugger in your early days of guesstimating turning circles and gate widths!

Narrow down the scooters you think will do the job you want, and here is the key.. you need to arrange a test ride, and that does involve a salesman. Sorry, but there is no way around that.

I would strongly suggest that you IMMEDIATELY discard any company that will not bring the scooter to the toughest terrain you think you will frequent, and testing it, practically to destruction.

If they won't let you try it anywhere but the pavement or in your own home, then they have something to hide, namely that it won't do the job!

(Note, Tramper and  Horizon were both COMPLETELY happy for me to bazz around a local countryside park, testing their machines on slopes, different surfaces, mud, gravel, grit, puddles, rutted tracks, you name it, I did it!)

Access... or lack of it...

You need to develop a bit of zen here - you are going to discover that the world of footpaths that you COULD access, are actually blighted with stiles, non-accessible kissing gates, single plank footbridges.... and many other crimes against a disabled-friendly countryside!

You CAN raise the issues with the appropriate local footpaths offices/ROW lot - I have done so successfully.

A good rule of thumb when harrassing the ROW officers is to consider whether the path you want to use either, leads somewhere important, or avoids a horrible busy road, or links up to a LOT of path network that is already accessible.

On this latter point, I won - with the changing of just two gates - one to a RADAR key kissing gate (so I can open it the 'wrong' way to allow me through, and lock it behind me to return it to normal kissing gate status) and the other to a normal pedestrian gate rather than a style or kissing gate - I got access to a few miles of paths. It still isn't perfect (one section of path is not useable as it is now so narrow and cut up by the way the land is ploughed, that it forms a miniature cliff edge, single track for walkers, not anywhere near wide enough for the scooter), but its bloody good going!

However, these things take a lot of time, as a clue to this, the 'immediate' change to the gates I wanted changing, took 9 months to actually happen! Don't hold your breath!

Whilst on the whole, the Rights of Way lot ARE trying to get the countryside and public footpaths more accessible, it is going to be a slow process. The current method is to recommend (but not insist!) that stiles are replaced when they need refurbishing, with disabled friendly gates or gaps where practical.  This is going to take some time, as many land owners are not massively keen on repairing stiles in the first place, let alone replacing them with several hundred quids worth of gate, instead of a few quids worth of timber!

Get used to being annoyed at paths you can see, but cannot access. It is a fact of life!

More mundane usage of scooters...

I use mine to whizz to the local supermarket, and thats great - but whizzing BACK with a lot of shopping balanced between my feet is not so great.

Do not underestimate how cold you will get sat on a scooter, even in relatively warm weather. On the other hand, do not mistake that lovely cooling breeze you generate as you hurtle along at 4mph (yes you DO, no faster my friend!) for actual cool temperatures. It's chuffin' easy to get burnt, when you think it isn't that hot!

In winter, particularly if you, like me, own hounds that require the constant and endless walkies, you will FREEZE. Get heated gloves. Do it, do it right now. Get heated socks, do that right now too. These are not mere accessories, they are CRUCIAL or your fingers and toes WILL all drop off. Right off. I am typing this with my nose you know!

On that note... walking the dawg...

Exercising le hounds...

One of the key points for me in picking my scooter, was that I wanted desperately to walk my own dogs again, myself, on my own, and preferable in places other than boring pavements next to horrible stinky roads.

It is generally NOT as easy as hopping on the scooter, grabbing a dog lead and away you go - because unless your hound is a total genius, they won't know HOW to walk beside your scooter, they won't realise that wheels + paws = YELP, they do not know that walking in front of you is dangerous... etc etc.

Get yourself a helper ,and start with one dog at a time (obvious you'd think but apparently it isn't).

Use a HARNESS .. do not use a collar, particularly NEVER use a choke chain (don't use one of those anyway, use it to hold your keys to your pants, not round your dogs neck).

The reason for this is, if you stop suddenly and jerk your dog, a jerk to the neck is at best unpleasant and at worst, dangerous to his health. If you get the lead tangled in the wheels, you could strangle the poor bastard before you know what's going on!

Teach your dog to walk to heel - your dog MAY prefer to keep a light pressure on the leash and I actually don't mind this as long as it is light, it means he and you both know where he is without looking which is a handy thing indeed.

You do NOT want your dog tanking ahead of you, because if you have to turn into him, you are going to run the bloody dog over - he has to walk beside you, ideally in a position where you can look down and see his head, no further back than that.

Training this can be a little awkward - I recommend you  clicker train your dog (you will need a friend to help) to mark and reward walking in the right position. You can use the stop/start method but this can be long winded and confusing for the dog, though combined with clicker training it is pretty good.

I teach my dogs to 'heel' which is walk on a 'soft' lead (not necessarily totally loose) and also to 'hike' which means RUN.

The other key things to teach are left and right (or come by and away, these will make much more sense when you are ON the scooter with the dog on your left. 'Come by' will mean come with me I am turning right, and 'away' means 'move left or I'll run you over I am turning left').

It is important to consider when you first get a scooter that your dog may  not be used to lots of exercise at a fast pace, particularly if you have been bribing/begging/bullying people into walking them.

Take it slowly, particularly pavement work, because lots of pounding the pavements takes it out of a dogs paws. The good thing is that a lot of decent scooters come with a speedometer AND a trip counter so you can see how far you have gone and how fast you are going.

The other nice thing about walking dogs from a scooter is that you can go at a pace that is much more natural for your dog - because dog's do NOT walk at the 2 to 3mph people do - they would prefer to trot at between 4 and 6mph (depending on size of dog!)

You should take care to plan your routes carefully - try to avoid having to use the road (and it is illegal unless you have a scooter equipped to do 8mph) with your dog - if you DO, your dog MUST be on your left hand side, with you between the dog and the traffic.

IT can be very tricky to figure out if you are 'pedestrian' or 'traffic' - If you are a pedestrian then the high way code suggests that you walk FACING the oncoming traffic, but if you ARE traffic then you must go with the flow.

I tend to follow the rule that if I am on the road, because there is no pavement, I am traffic and I move with the traffic, therefore the dog must be on my left hand side between me and the verge.

There are occasional conundrums though - one way streets without pavements - I am a pedestrian therefore I can go the 'wrong' way... but I still need to keep my dog on the verge side rather than in the middle of the road! My best advice here is to avoid like hell one way streets that have no pavement!

One reason to avoid road use with a dog is that you may  need to travel faster, for longer than your dog is capable of. If your dog cannot comfortably trot or canter beside you at 8mph, then do not take your dog on the road at all, it is not fair to road users to hold them up, nor is it fair on your dog to make him run faster than he really can.

Final points - even if you are a disabled scooter user, you STILL have to pick up the shit. Do so or face my wrath.
Dropped kerbs will  NEVER be where you want them to be.
YOu WILL get a flat tyre 5 miles from home across a ploughed field as it is going dark. Oh yes.