In 2021 Bamburgh Parish Council teamed up with a charity called Beach Access North East, to provide a free loan service of specialist wheelchairs, in order to make Bamburgh Beach accessible to wheelchair users and their families. Over the past 18 months we have built a specialist shed to house our wheelchairs and we now have 2 electric wheelchairs and 2 manual wheelchairs, that can manage the uneven and sandy route to the beach. Our group of enthusiastic volunteers from Bamburgh, give up their time willingly to meet the families and show them how to get to get down to the beach and even more importantly, how to get back up, which can be challenging given the bumpy uphill path and the soft sand!
We are very grateful to our local co-op in Seahouses who chose our project to be one of their local causes. Karen Armstrong went out of her way to promote Beach Access North East, organising a promotion day in-store during the summer. Co-op members needed to chose their charity online and then 2p of every £1 spent on Co-op products went towards our wheelchair project. Our tenure has come to an end and we are delighted that with the support of all our community we have raised over £2000!
Many thanks to Karen and all the team at Seahouses. We can now paint the shed to protect it for the winter and purchase a spare battery for the Trekinetic electric wheelchair, meaning people can now get from Bamburgh to Seahouses along the beach (and back) without worrying they might run out of power.
Thank you to all our volunteers, supporters and everyone involved with the project.