FOUR of us went to Royal Ascot At York. When I rang about parking, I explained I was bringing someone who had recently had a knee replacement, but was told we would have to go in the normal parking area.

When we parked up and got the wheelchair out, one of the stewards said they would ring and see if we could go into the disabled area, which they let us do.

It was a struggle to get the wheelchair off the grass and on to the hard path. We managed this and then got a ride to the ticket turnstiles on a golf buggy.

At the turnstiles we were dropped right on the temporary plastic path, we went through the police check area to find there was nowhere to get a wheelchair, or my granddaughter's pushchair, through. The stewards had to remove a fence to let us through.

Then we were expected to push the chair on wet grass for about a quarter of a mile to get to the grandstand. This was impossible.

Eventually someone removed another fence so we could get on to the temporary path in front of the hospitality rooms.

We reached a glass entrance which only had a ramp on the other side, which was not helpful, so we had to back out of the fenced area and on to the grass again and drag the wheelchair backwards until we could get on to the hard surface of the grandstand.

We eventually got into one of the grandstands where there was room for five wheelchairs. This was packed and you could not move. We thought a designated area would have been provided.

We thought it would be a really memorable day, which it was but, sadly, for all the wrong reasons.

Mrs Dorothy Ellison,

Long Pasture,

Carlton Husthwaite,

Thirsk.

Updated: 11:15 Tuesday, June 28, 2005