A visit to Beamish Museum

Last week, I went on a day trip to Beamish Museum with my daughter, Sharon and her four children. Beamish Museum is an open air museum that shows what life was really like in the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian years. There were some steep slopes and there was a variety of different ground surfaces and houses, shops and other buildings that had exhibits, they all had had stepped access. All these buildings tended to be dark inside, not ideal for someone who has usher syndrome where nightblindness is one of the symptoms. One of my grandsons kept asking me when we were going to the museum but he found it difficult to understand that it was an open air museum and that we were in it! We had a marvellous time and the children want to go again and I enjoyed it too.

We know that the purpose of the long white cane is to prevent the person who has a loss of sight from falling or bumping into obstacles due to a change in ground surfaces especially in unfamiliar places. Beamish is an unfamiliar place to me as the last time I visited Beamish must be about thirty years ago and many changes have been done to the museum since then. I found that I needed the help of a sighted guide and this role was adequately provided by my daughter and eldest granddaughter who took it in turns to guide me. They would just offer me their arm and I would hold it close to the elbow then I would be just that short distant away from them and would be able to follow them with ease.   The reason being is that even though my long white cane has a roller tip which keeps contact with the ground when I sweep the long white cane from right to left and then left to right it indicated too many changes in the ground surface for me though some areas were satisfactory.  This shows that there may be times when we need help from others and so we must not be afraid or embarrassed to ask for it. Inside the shops and other buildings it was too dark for me and after a visit to the bank I decided to go outside where I sat on a bench and enjoy sitting in the sun; thankgoodness that I had my dark red glasses on!

 Here are some photos taken at Beamish:

A hint, if you want to enlarge the photo just click on the photo.