Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson forced to crawl up 12 flights of stairs due to broken lift
BARONESS Tanni Grey-Thompson has revealed that she was forced to crawl up 12 flights of stairs and drag her wheelchair behind her after the lift in her block of flats had broken down.
The 43-year-old Paralympic Champion was left with no other choice but to do so when she arrived back at her Southwark home at 11pm last night.
It seems that Grey-Thompson has decided to speak out as this is the sixth time that the lift has broken since she moved in last July, and has received no response from the company who manage the block of flats.
"People assume that Britain is much more accessible than it is. The battle is not won. It's really frustrating and it's stuff like this that other people take for granted," she told The Times.
People assume that Britain is much more accessible than it is. The battle is not won. It's really frustrating and it's stuff like this that other people take for granted.
"If you can walk up the stairs it would take you five minutes, but it took me 25 minutes as I had to balance my chair on each step and then haul it up. It's pretty unpleasant."
The former wheelchair racer added that she had "two lovely bruises" on her leg due to the incident and said not many people would be able to have dragged the wheelchair, which weighs one stone, up that many steps.
"Most people wouldn't be able to do it. If I couldn't have crawled up the stairs then what would I have done? Slept the night in the foyer?"
During an appearance on 'Daybreak' last year, Grey-Thompson also revealed that she once had to crawl off of a train due to there being no available staff to help her.