Myriam and Pierre travel the world and convey a positive message about adventure for all. Through Wheeled World, they tell you about their most beautiful adventures and give you advice on wheelchair travel!
Who are you? How did your adventure as disabled travelers begin?
We are Myriam and Pierre Cabon, a couple of disabled adventurers. Pierre is paraplegic since 2015, so he is in a wheelchair. In 2018 we created Wheeled World, the media of adventure for all, and since then we travel around France and the world to experience and highlight accessible destinations and activities. In 2021 we create our company and we associate with Nicolas Sebag, long time friend and photographer, to continue to develop this project.
What is your job?
We are content creators: we work with brands or destinations that want to promote inclusive initiatives they have implemented and we offer them photos, videos and blog posts to illustrate the experience we have lived with them. They are then broadcasted on our media and our networks and/or on theirs. In parallel, we are also lecturers on the themes of surpassing oneself, teamwork and accessibility and consultants in PMR (Person with Reduced Mobility) customer experience.
How do you organize a typical trip?
When it comes to choosing a destination, we have learned over time and with experience not to limit ourselves. At the beginning, we aimed for very accessible destinations, mostly in cities, so as not to get into too much trouble. Then we learned to manage and we started to reconnect with our true passion: nature and wide open spaces.
It is still very difficult today to find information on the accessibility of a destination, that is why we decided to create Wheeled World. Before leaving, we spend a lot of time looking for accommodations, sites and activities that are accessible. It's very long because the information is not very available but above all not very harmonized (very variable levels of details and reliability) and absolutely not centralized. It is often necessary to complete the online research by direct exchanges with the owners and places of reception, to cross the sources... It is energy consuming and time consuming, and not always conclusive. Now that we are confronted with many different environments, we secure the minimum before leaving (for us, it consists in booking the most accessible accommodations possible to be able to rest between two days of adventure), and we advise on the spot for the rest. We explore, we test, and we write articles to allow others to save time in the organization of their trips.
Each step of the journey raises questions when you travel in a wheelchair: beyond accommodation and activities, you have to ask yourself the question of the accessibility of transportation, restaurants... We are lucky to travel together and to have light equipment that takes up little space (manual wheelchair for Pierre who has the use of his arms), but it can quickly become a real hassle for others who do not have these "facilities".
How to find your addresses and accessible destinations?
We write about all our trips and experiences on the website www.wheeledworld.org. We have both "itinerary" articles that describe complete trips, more practical articles, targeted on specific experiences, and general practical advice articles. The former are aimed at everyone, whether or not they have a disability. But we detail the way we experienced the destination, with a maximum of information so that people with disabilities can project themselves with their own constraints (each disability is different).
In parallel to the articles, we have a collaborative Mapstr map on which we inform the places we have tested (accommodations, restaurants, activities and sites of interest). We voluntarily chose to put relatively simple accessibility tags to facilitate the search. And everyone can contribute to enrich it if they want!
What was your craziest project?
We like to set ourselves crazy challenges! We had the chance to explore Machu Picchu in Peru, to cross New Zealand in tandem... But I think our craziest challenge is Kilimanjaro, which we climbed in July 2022. We spent seven days struggling through sand and rocks with the goal of reaching the top of the roof of Africa, at 5,895 m altitude. With a team of friends, guides and porters (there were 20 of us in all), we had to redouble our efforts and creativity in order to reach the summit one step at a time... An incredible collective adventure! We had to follow an intensive physical preparation of 6 months before the departure to have the necessary physical shape, but also to work on a whole logistic organization: the choice of the chair (solidity, lightness, ergonomics...), the conception of the equipments to help Pierre to push, as a team... It is really the most intense adventure that we lived (we are preparing a documentary on the subject)
What is your best advice?
To each his own adventure, small or big, all deserve to be lived. If we had to give only one piece of advice, it would be to dare to start. Of course, the idea is not to get into trouble from the very first trips, you have to go step by step. But we put a lot of limits on ourselves at the beginning, and if we had stuck to that, we would not have been able to live our passion for the great outdoors again. It's the fact that we tried things that allowed us to learn and to see bigger and bigger. So go for it!
To follow Wheeled World's adventures:
The blog: www.wheeledworld.org
Instagram: @wheeled_world
Facebook : Wheeled World
YouTube : WheeledWorld
Mapstr : Map with accessible addresses
Spotify : Myriam and Pierre's favorite playlists
