The Trip That Changed My Life After Paralysis | Sophie Morgan

26:07Our laws in the UK, what we have just to kind of explain it is the Equalities Act or the Disability Discrimination Act as it was previously. We have to make goods and services accessible for disabled people, and we have to make reasonable adjustments to do that. Now, the word reasonable is a loophole. It's, what does it even mean? So it's so hard to enforce our laws. So you might, they're not worth the piece of paper that they're written on, really. We need a new wave of activists to bring forward stronger, more robust legislation. Otherwise, we're just going to continue living this as I said half-life and um it inhibits everything you do and so being in the states where there's a law that you can go ADA you literally it's like a magic wand I feel like I can go up to anywhere and just go ADA and they go this way it's unbelievable it's really hard to leave and I've been there for the last few years and so now that I'm here I'm I'm I'm struggling to adapt again but there's there's pros and cons to everywhere so I'm certainly not going to say that that's the best place to live as a wheelchair user.

27:13There's complications there. But yeah, it was wonderful to have that kind of protection.

27:17Tanya Rose:Tell us about your trip you did from one end of America to another end. When I decided, I was like, right, I think I need to live here for a bit. I just had this feeling something good would happen. And I decided I wanted to move to LA. And I just went, well, if I'm going to go, why don't I ride it ride a motorbike there I don't know why where the idea originally came from it was the 20th anniversary of my injury and I was I've got to do something big for the 20th anniversary what am I going to do I want to go somewhere and I've got my motorbike and I was like I want to ride somewhere I was like why don't I just ride to LA so I'd only got a month off at the time so I couldn't I couldn't ride to the whole like it was basically I couldn't get my bike shipped over quick enough so I flew to DC I didn't ship my bike I flew to DC picked up a bike in Washington and rode all the way across to LA over, over three weeks it was.

28:12Oh my God, it was incredible. Did you see the most amazing sights? I mean, firstly, I think as a Brit, I couldn't, there's a, there's something about the scale of the place. It's so overwhelming. It's like, it keeps going. I've been riding this motorbike every day for like 12 hours for the last five days and it's still going you know we would have we can do the whole of this country this whole island in what a day you know so it's that in itself was overwhelming and wonderfully expansive in in the truest sense like it made me feel like right I'm gonna find a place for myself and I felt it seep in this the scale of America just sort of seeped into my psyche I was like there's room for me here I can make I can make something here for myself I think that's what most people feel when they go to the states it's this it's contagious um what was your favorite part that you drove through or is that too difficult no wyoming oh my we did we got into so we did so i went sturges the bike rally which was mad do you know what sturges it is the largest gathering of motorbikes i think in the world and certainly not in certainly in north america hundreds of thousands of motorbikes all these big carlies yeah and there's me on my little bike like all these men in these leathers it was amazing so we did Sturges I wrote in Sturges and then I basically snaked into Yellowstone which is just beautiful there's no words and then we drove I drove through I say weeks my friend came with me as a support and I drove through the Yellowstone then we got to uh the Tetons the Grand Tetons and I've never seen anything like that in my life I that was massive massive and then yeah drove from there all the way up to Oregon we went a bit of a weird route Oregon and then all the way down the coast down the Pacific Coast Highway how incredible it was incredible how amazing wow you are so brave and so it was again stupid because I went in the height of the summer so I hit heat domes and we were driving at one point it was like 50 degrees and I'm sat on a trike with I have no temperature regulation part of my spinal injury I can't regulate my temperature and I'm sitting on the motorbike on the freeway in the heat and you can't split lanes on the bikes there's no air conditioning on the bike obviously so you're sitting exposed I need I got heat stroke I got

30:30Tanya Rose:exhaustion I mean it was really silly this is what I mean it's brave but it's also really stupid story of my life what's your top travel tip so my top travel tip I'm going to tailor for people who have any kind of disability or access needs is um unfortunately you can't trust the word accessible. So when you travel, the standards of accessibility, they're not universal. So you can go somewhere like America, where you've got standards that are so high, you can depend on them, you can trust in them. And compared to many other destinations, you can pretty much pack your disability in a bag and go and forget about it.

31:14It's really liberating. However, in some countries, that word accessible means something very different, if anything. And I think, unfortunately, the industry is trying desperately to be inclusive by using the term, but often failing to understand the application isn't subjective, isn't objective, it's subjective. So my accessibility needs are not the same as the next person's accessibility needs, nor the next, nor the next. And unfortunately, we've used that word. It's quite kind of an umbrella term. and it sets us up unfortunately for some sort of failure because we might go somewhere expecting or hoping it's going to meet our needs and it doesn't.

31:57So what I say instead is you have to look into the granular. You have to go, so for me, I don't just need access. I just need step free. So for example, if I'm traveling somewhere and I know I need to book a hotel room, if you don't have the information that you need on a website, which often you don't because people don't know what stuff they need to list, unfortunately, which is another piece of work. But for example, for me, I might just ring a hotel and say, do you have a ground floor room? Is it step-free? And does it have a bath? And the reason I know those three things work for me, ground floor typically means there's no steps.

32:32It's not totally guaranteed, but I can usually trust it. Ground floor with no steps. Step-free is more descriptive than wheelchair accessible because step-free for me, as the clue is in the in the description it means that i can go for like i'll ask for example is that is it step free access from the car park into the into the room that means that i somebody can visualize that if somebody doesn't know what wheelchair accessible means if i say is it step free are there any steps between then there no there aren't great then i know that works and if a room has a bath that usually means not always but usually means that the bathroom's a little sort of it's an it's an unfortunate thing to say i think to say that you can't trust this term but i think if you start reframing it as like right just don't take it as a given and find your what is your checklist of stuff that you need if you have certain requirements and ask for those specifically and try and find terms that are more descriptive than um what's the word i'm looking for more kind of collective like does that make sense yeah yeah absolutely i totally understand

33:41Tanya Rose:yeah yeah no that's very good tips on the flying rights for flights yeah tell us a little bit about that because it's an amazing campaign and i don't even think about it which is so shocking as an able-bodied person yeah it's only when i see somebody in a wheelchair that it actually hits home how difficult it must be let's just talk about flying a little bit and and how you found on that and then your campaign? So the process of flying for anyone with a disability is complicated. And I won't go into the detail of all the different ways in which it can be problematic for various disabilities. For me specifically, so I use a manual wheelchair and I'm a paraplegic, which means, and in my disability, I can't walk at all.

34:29So what that means is when I fly, I arrive in my wheelchair and now that's even a problem in itself, sometimes because you have to get doctor's letters you have to i mean it depends on the airline it can be really hard yeah i'm flying with air link in a couple of this thursday actually internally in south africa and i've had to get doctor's letters i've had to get proof that i'm fit to fly i have to get i have to pay there's a whole process it's absolutely hot it's really challenging and they can refuse you travel if they think if they just deem you know you're not you're not safe or whatever it's really hard it's really complicated so before you even get to the airport there's a whole load of hoops to jump through but if you get to the airport and you are okay um to fight they deem you fit to fly basically you arrive in your i arrive in my wheelchair and the process is i go through the airport and my wheelchair um is obviously with me i go through security etc that in itself is really hard i've had i've had security people be incredibly discriminative um i remember one time this woman she just kept poking my legs she didn't believe that I couldn't stand up.

35:33And she just kept poking my legs. And she was like, get up, get up, get up. And I'm like, I can't get up. I can't stand up. And she wouldn't let me through. And it was a whole thing. So there's all sorts of trouble within that space too. Then when you get to the aircraft, you board first. Some people say it's because there's a law around it. And some people say, I don't know, there's protections around your dignity and your privacy. That's why you board first. Some people's skeptics say it's the airline's way of hiding the discrimination that we have to go through because you don't see us you don't see us load and you don't see us disembark and why is that why do we again some people say it's privacy and dignity etc i others say it's because they don't want you to see what we actually have to deal with so basically you get put on a little what's called an aisle chair and the aisle chair is designed to go down the aisle it obviously the aisle is very narrow certainly in some classes of airplane you can barely walk through them let alone get one of these i mean i recently there was an example of a business class uh suite that's just been redone in one aircraft and they've designed out wheelchair access so you can't even on an aisle chair transfer into it what does that tell you so anyway you can see i'm getting started but it's it's hard basically get on the aisle chair somebody an assistance team then moves you on that aisle chair to your seat at that point you are separated from your wheelchair for the rest of the flight and the wheelchair goes down with the luggage in america they sometimes allow you to keep it on board but it's only if they've got space so that's a bit of a kind of it changes where you're going it changes depending on where you're going wheelchairs kept down underneath in with the luggage if done correctly it's it's protected and sometimes put in a case of its own but this is where all hell breaks loose so i've had my wheelchair lost and broken countless times yeah countless times and and and i'm not the only one it's i think the stat the recent stat in america is 29 wheelchairs are in between 25 and 35 wheelchairs are broken every single day by an airline yeah and so imagine your luggage gets lost this is the people understand the the irritation of that don't they yeah it's it's really annoying yeah but this is my legs that's your legs it's so bad so when so typically what will happen is for the duration of the flight some people starve themselves and dehydrate themselves because they don't want to use that little aisle chair to go to the toilet or they can't um that so there's a lot of like it's not healthy for some people on the flight obviously if you can mobilize you can get yourself to the to the to the onboard toilet but it's really undignified it's really hard some people wear nappies and some people everyone manages in different ways it's just really challenging then at the other end you're reunited with your your device um and that's where you have to hope and pray that's not got lost it's not been left behind it's not got broken of course um it does uh and also you get left on board sometimes the assistance doesn't turn up so i was left at heathrow for an hour and a half the other day just sitting on the plane yeah it happens all the time frank gardner the the brilliant bbc disability he's a correspondent for the bbc he often talks of his experiences.

38:43So yeah, that's a long-winded way of saying it's really hard. But it's a necessary evil, and it's possible, and we do it. I do it all the time. So I think I'm unlucky because by the sheer number of flights I take, there's an inevitability things will go wrong. Certainly when you get outside of countries that are a bit more comfortable with it and used to the process. It's really hard. And I set up a campaign called Rights on Flights in response to it to see if I could do something about it. And I made a documentary called Fight to Fly, which is on all four now, which I co-produced with Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon's production company.

39:23Yeah, which was amazing privilege. And she put her weight behind the film. And it was really brilliant and I think did some great work. But there's so much more to do it's an ongoing battle it's exhausting bravo and fantastic that you're doing it and just keep going because it's so important i wish i didn't have to i do i honestly i sometimes i just like want to curl up in a ball and just cry because it is so tiring and the frustration that the airlines know what they're doing the airlines in america this is an example of what i'm dealing with we're dealing with the biden administration did some amazing work they brought in some protections that would look after wheelchair users, specifically wheelchair users.

40:06For example, if your wheelchair gets damaged, you'll get, you know, it paid for. I mean, we're talking about basics, not like really special treatment. We're talking the basics, getting it right. If you lose someone's wheelchair, you damage it, you'll pay for it. The airlines will pay for it. And a number of other protections were brought into place. The Airlines for America, I think, is a lobbying group. It's a group of the major airlines in America just sued to have it removed, have these protections removed so now in america what we had put in place by the biden administration is just removed so we don't all those protections that were put in place have just been taken away the airlines got rid of them the airlines got rid of them so we're fighting all the time against an industry that does not care about people it just cares about profit and i'll say it to the cows come home it just i'm i'm i know i'm pain in their ass i know that they hate me i've been told by captains they'd come out and spoken to me oh you're that girl oh you're trouble oh i have been given so much shit from the airlines and i'll take it because somebody has to hold them to account the government won't the government won't do it we've been begging them to give the government give the regulators more power fine the airlines when they fail us that's all we're asking for but it's just it's like you'd think we were asking for the moon it's just so hard what is your most poignant travel experience?

41:27It's a hard one to answer, but I'm going to whittle it down to going on safari a few years ago in what I described as the world's first luxury accessible safari, private safari lodge. It was really incredible for many reasons, but mostly because the man behind this place called Shamuwu, he had had an experience with disability, so he'd had a bad back. And it was his private reserve. And he basically was like, hold on. How do people, he had to use a wheelchair for a time. How do people in wheelchairs do this? How do they do safari? How do they do it? And he asked this question. That was his leading question.

42:12And over the next, I guess, I don't know, year or so, he started adapting his space and working out ways to overcome some of the barriers that he experienced. And so he, from lived experience, he redesigned his space and he created an environment that all of us like could now really enjoy. And say us, I mean wheelchair users. From manual chair users, but also to power chair users. He's thought through so many things. For example, he created this one. I've never seen anything like it. He cut out the door of the Safari Jeep because you know they're high, deliberately so. He cut out the door so that you could open the door.

42:51He put one of the front seats on a tracker. The tracker can then come out. That seat is then extended and can be moved around. And then he's built a little ramp so that I can roll up this ramp anywhere in the bush, next to the lodge, anywhere he built this ramp. The ramp is totally collapsible and reassemblable, reassemblable, if that makes sense, anywhere. And you just roll up the ramp. Your seat comes out, you get on it, and the seat closes and then the door shuts. So you can get into this vehicle independently, effectively, and comfortably. He's also got, you know, straps for people if you want to, if you need to be held into the seat.

43:28He just thought of everything. Obviously, then, of course, the built environment in the lodge itself, totally step free,

43:35Tanya Rose:ramps everywhere, hoists into the pool, hoists into the bath. I mean, he thought of everything. And where is that in South Africa? Shamuwu is in a reserve called Plasiri Reserve, I think it's called. And it's in South Africa. It's just south of the Kruger. it's amazing it's incredible yeah and we saw everything you might want to see did you see the big five we saw the big five it was absolutely unforgettable and because um it's a private reserve you get that experience of sort of slightly off the beaten track so obviously there's the tracks and you do go off them because it's their reserve they can kind of make up their own did you write about that i did for condonast yes did you yeah yeah it was brilliant sounds fantastic that's incredible what are the poignant trips because you said you have so many and i think we've talked about so many but is there anything else that comes to mind oh gosh uh the first thing i mean there's a there's i suppose two really significant poignant trips one um i was doing a piece of work with a um resort in the maldives and now typically obviously sand island you know in the middle of the indian ocean you wouldn't think of a more inaccessible space really but they had done some amazing work to make the the environment more accessible they'd bought some beach wheelchairs and they'd like honestly really thought of the things that you need for someone with a mobility impairment but beyond that they did the resorts called a miller done loads of work in accessibility training inclusivity training and just disability awareness training all the stuff that you might need so all the staff there are just lovely human beings and make you feel so welcome and I've been a few times now writing about them I learned to scuba dive there and um had the best most wonderful time I just it was incredible it was a bucket list experience and a luxury experience and I think again I wrote about it for the Telegraph and for Condé Nast and the reason I love writing about these places is for me the privilege of positioning disability and luxury and disability and adventure they're often not put side by side and I really want to reframe that so that narrative is something i'm working on all the time is and and the pictures obviously showing pictures of what you know of wheelchair users in a luxury space because i remember somebody once saying to me a wheelchair user friend of mine she was like we want to go on honeymoons too you know we want to have beautiful amazing like amazing experiences in beautiful places we want to have those places why why don't they why don't you ever see us in their marketing materials why don't you ever see us in their brochures why don't you and i remember just thinking it's so true we don't you know you see that typical poster of a beautiful luxury space of the Maldives yeah when have you ever seen a wheelchair user in it I don't think I've ever I'd never seen that so have they used a picture of you in it now I hope so I'll show it to you it's a good picture actually that takes us beautifully on to the last question which is I asked you to bring a photo I did I bought two um I and you brought two can you show us the photographs and just tell us how they sum up travel to you okay so I bought two I know that's cheating no you can have as many as you want somebody bought a whole album so I could have done that it was it was a hard thing because so I bought a picture this first one is of me I'm 18 I'm standing I have a backpack on and I just look like a traveler and I remember being her and I remember the feeling she had.

47:04She was just about to go to India. It was the summer before her injury. She had no idea what was about to happen, obviously. And I just, I think that's who I've always been trying to get back to, that kind of, that version of myself. But I just had to find a different looking version of myself, you know? I can still have the spirit of this individual just in a different body. And I didn't really know that at the time. I thought only these types. This is what a traveler looks like. I'd never seen a traveler like me. So I really had trouble reconciling with this person for some time. I don't anymore.

47:40So I bring her along because she still exists. And even though it's sort of black and white and looks like the past and everything like that, she still exists. This is a picture of my dad and I on the snowmobile in Canada. So he's got me all wrapped up and he's just helped there. I'm sitting on the front seat he doesn't travel with me on the on the actual skidoo um as i explained i'll go on my own but that was the first trip and uh it was just yeah amazing experience what amazing photographs little picture they are fantastic so young but so full of excitement i mean and it's wild that these two people are probably only you know a few months apart but could not be different more different um and yet at the same time paradoxically the same same person and I also love the fact that

48:30Tanya Rose:you said your first half of your life was 18 years and then your next half of your life as this person in a wheelchair has been 18 years and you really have found yourself again yeah I think it's taken a taken time um yeah I was injured at 18 I've celebrated my now 22nd anniversary I think it was this summer so I've lived longer as a wheelchair user than not so I'm but I'm at peace with it now you know it's a sort of it's a part of who I am I don't know what life would be like without it and as hard as it is I still wouldn't change it. What's next for you? Where are you going next and what's next for Sophie Morgan?

49:11Okay so I'm excited to say this out loud basically two massive things. One is I just turned 40. And for my 40th birthday to myself, I thought, what am I going to do? I can't believe I'm still alive. Like I'm here. I just feel so blessed to be this age and to be, I've made it here. And so I said to myself, right, what would I do for my 40th? And I decided I wanted to just go and have 40 of the greatest travel experiences I could find for my 40th so I'm calling it my 40 for 40 and I have a list so I have 40 of the most amazing experiences all lined up I'm beyond excited I'm taking it's kind of like a midlife gap year if you want to call it that because I was injured around that time when typically some people if you're lucky can take a gap year and whatever I haven't had that privilege since and I just thought I'm not getting any younger.

50:08My body needs a break from the work that I've been doing. I just, I don't know. I just really want to do it. And let's be honest, I'm not going to be able to travel the way I like to travel forever. My disability will get in the way at some point. I feel like I'm on borrowed time. I feel like I've got a clock ticking. We all do, of course, but I really feel it. So I'm like, right, I'm just going to go and do it. So I've got 40 of the greatest travel experiences. And are you doing that in one year? I'm doing it over two years.

50:31Tanya Rose:Two years. So I'm going to do it over two years. I'm going to write about certain stories and share it on social media, etc. I'm just putting all those pieces together, but I'm going to do that. And I'm also slightly hellbent on going to space. Yeah, I know that sounds absolutely wild, but I have this driving force in me that wants to prove there should be no limit to what we can do and I'm trying to make air travel accessible that's my mission in life many missions but air travel needs to be made accessible and the future of travel is space travel and that's becoming increasingly commercial obviously it's not there yet but if we make the same mistakes in space travel that we made in air travel we will be designed out of the future and it's a metaphor for me more than anything that we have to make sure that that future is accessible and inclusive.

51:29And so I'm just setting it as a goal. I have some meetings lined up with various things.

51:34Tanya Rose:Have you spoken to Richard Branson about that? I have. I have. I'm speaking to anyone who will listen, and I'm making some inroads. So we'll see. But that's on the list too. I know it's completely mad, but I just – you are, so I'll tell you the truth. Nicaragua after six months of an injury, bonkers, all those things. bonkers and brave and fabulous. Bonkers, bonkers. Absolutely. I can't wait to follow your 40 at 40. Thanks. That sounds so exciting. I'm so excited. I'm not even going to ask you what they are because I'm sure they're all secret. But we will follow them on Instagram and on your writing.

52:06Tanya Rose:Thank you. And we will see you in space. I have absolutely no doubt. We'll see. We'll see. It's been such a joy and delight and what an inspiration. I knew you would be. Thank you so much. Honestly, thank you for having me and listening and letting me share it all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.