From pushchairs to drug lists - a guide to travelling with ageing parents

Multi-generational holidays need not be stressful if you cover these bases.

- Sumiko Tan

My sister and I locked eyes. This wasn't going to work, was it?

Ahead of us stretched narrow cobbled pavements and swarms of tourists.

There was no way we were going to be able to push our mother in a wheelchair to the Arashiyama bamboo forest 1km away.

We had barely gone 100m when we admitted defeat.

"Sorry, Mum, you'll have to walk," we said.

She struggled to her feet. "It's okay," she said. "I can walk."

My sister returned the wheelchair to the information counter at the train station where we had borrowed it. When she came back, we walked with our mum, slowly, to the forest.

It was December 2023 and we were on our first family holiday to Iapan since before the Covid-19 pandemic.

I'd planned an ambitious 11-day itinerary spanning Tokyo and Kyoto that involved train journeys, four changes of hotels and a fair amount of walking.

Pre-Covid-19, my mother, who is now 89, had always been game for travel, and we had gone on family trips to Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Britain and Spain.

But four years of being stuck at home had made her nervous about travelling. Her legs had grown weaker and she fretted about bathroom access.

In the months leading up to the holiday, I scrambled for solutions.

My mother had a walking cane which she rarely used. She would need to use a cane on our trip, and a sturdier one at that, I decided.

A search online opened up a world of options - collapsible canes, folding seat canes, canes with crook handles.

We went to Rainbow Care, a homecare equipment store in Kampong Ubi Industrial Estate which I had chanced upon on Google. It is a treasure trove of ageing care essentials, from hospital beds to bathroom aids.