Yes I am shamelessly posting here for traffic because I need to find someone who knows Birmingham city centre well enough to tell me about the condition of the pavements. I am going to a conference there next week. I need to get to three different locations, all sort of between Snow Hill Station and Moor Street Station. I need to do this in an electric wheelchair. I have two wheelchairs and can only take one with me.
My wheelchair of choice is my nice nippy folding one that I can get round the conference in without endangering people's toes too much, and is just much easier to maneuver indoors. And generally it's much nicer to be sitting in in a crowd of people as it's more the size of a normal chair. However, it is lightweight and does not have very powerful motors so it can be a bit of a white knuckle ride on dodgy pavements. A bad camber can send me shooting off into the road.
My other wheelchair, that I affectionally refer to as the beast, can handle any terrain short of deep sand. I am completely confident that it can handle any city pavements, provided there's not a flight of stairs (in which case I'm fucked either way). The downside of this chair is that's it's huge. I might as well show up in a tank. It doesn't always fit through internal doorways. It can't turn easily. It basically means everyone has to be getting out of my way every time I want to pop to the loo (which is quite often for me, that's another story!).
On google earth it looks like quite a bit of the area I'm going to be in is pedestrianised, which bodes well. I think I'm probably going to be alright with the small one. Sorry if I sound like I'm making a fuss over nothing. It's just that this whole thing is massively out of my comfort zone. I haven't done anything like this on my own since I became a wheelchair user (17 years ago), my husband normally comes as my carer. I'm worried I'm going to end up three hours from home and unable to look after myself. Any reassuring words would be appreciated.