WHEN YOU ARE disabled, your relationship with nature can be fractured and when I started using a wheelchair, my connection to the outdoors weakened.
On a recent trip to the Beyond the Trees experience at Avondale House in Wicklow, their implementation of Universal Design (UD) — making it truly inclusive and accessible for all regardless of age, ability, etc — into their practice reassured me that these fractures can be mended.
Located in Coillte’s Avondale Forest Park in the Garden County, Beyond the Trees was opened in 2022 and offers an elevated treetop walk, along with a 90-metre silver slide for the more adventurous visitors.
The term 360 view is bandied around a lot, but lording 38 metres above the forest floor, I got a true sense of a panorama as I took in 500 acres of forest land, the Wicklow Mountains and the Vale of Avoca all from the top of Avondale’s Viewing Tower. The boardwalk, which spirals up, up and up through the fir, eucalyptus, oak and gargantuan American Redwood trees, has a gentle gradient, meaning that anyone pushing wheelchairs or buggies won’t break (much of) a sweat.
Setting their own pace, visitors can take a break, a breather or a selfie at one of the many benches on the upward path, and they can stroll back down the way they came, or whoosh down the spiral slide, like something straight out of a Lotto ad.
No matter what your ability, this really could be you; and it was me, zipping down a slide for the first time in I don’t know how long. I was hesitant when David Ballesty, the Avondale Treetop Assistant Operations Manager and my personal tour guide for the day, asked if I’d like to have a go, but before my confidence buckled, he told me that another wheelchair would be waiting at the bottom of the slide for me to sit in it while another staff member brought mine down.
I’m often disappointed with the compensations that I have to make at historical, cultural or ecological sites as a wheelchair user. Visiting Pompeii recently, I was thrilled to find out that they have “inclusive for all” steel pathways laid out across the Roman roads, allowing me to see a portion of the town that was buried under volcanic ash in 79 AD.
As a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it has every right not to be accessible, especially when the Roman roads are paved with the largest cobblestones known to mankind, but they did it. However, these pathways stop abruptly, and the route on the map drops off with no clear exit. It was inclusive to a point, and I was lucky to have a quick-thinking friend there to run and find a member of staff to help me escape minutes after the site closed for the day.
But that wasn’t the case in Wicklow at the Avondale walkway. Here, I was reminded of the incredible walkway at Iguaçu Falls at the border of Brazil and Argentina. While both have accessible walkways, the Brazilian side is more compact, and everybody can explore the coursing Iguaçu River before it thunders down at the very ominously named waterfall Devil’s Throat.
Access is often treated as a luxury and not a necessity, but with Universal Design you don’t need to cut back on one to make room for the other, and it is incorporated into every aspect of Beyond the Trees. From the reception area, café and gift shop to the sensory garden, the 1.4 km walkway, the viewing tower and the slide, as well as their bathrooms and their Changing Places Room, everything is as accessible as possible. This also extends to serving counters and staff areas, meaning that disabled people can work with ease there. Ireland has a disability employment rate of 32.6%, almost 20% below the EU average, and a huge factor behind this is that many workplaces are simply not suitable to employ disabled people.
UD should be embraced by all architects, designers and developers as it ensures that a site can be fully accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. Unfortunately, it’s only taken up by some, and EAK, the original creators of Treetop Walk, put UD at the forefront of their attractions.
The reason for this, explains Ballesty, is that EAK’s original product — ziplining and high rope courses — couldn’t cater to everybody. When wheelchair users came in to use their high ropes courses, EAK felt that a compromise was being made on their safety and comfort. “So,” Ballesty says of the company running 13 Treetop Walks across Europe and North America, with more on the way, “they had to think; what could give people the feeling of ziplining, without needing to be strapped in?” And lo! The concept of the Treetop Walk was born, an experience that allows everyone to get a bird’s eye view of the sprawling spruces below.
The educational factor behind Beyond the Trees is enhanced by UD too. Tactile and interactive information boards line the walkway, teaching people about the resident wildlife and the importance of preserving woodlands, and audio stations play the calls of the various birds found there, giving everyone a chance to put names to the songs that soundtrack our day. These information points are visible at two levels, so people of every stature can read and play with them.
Visitors will notice that there is a blank space at every information board, leaving room for the Irish and English Braille descriptions that are expected to arrive sometime next year.
The childhood home of Charles Stewart Parnell, Avondale was built in 1777 by barrister Samuel Hayes. The estate was bought by the state in 1904 and was opened up to the public as a recreational park in 1991. It was further protected in 2019 when Fáilte Ireland announced a major restoration project for Avondale House and Forest Park in partnership with Coillte. This pairing eventually led to the opening of Beyond the Trees in July 2022.
When I usually experience the outdoors from the distance of a parked car, Beyond the Trees literally built a bridge so that I and other disabled people could reconnect with nature. Inspired by the work that they’ve done in the space of two years, my mind whirred with possibilities on my drive home; cave diving, bog snorkelling, mountain hiking, forest foraging, bird spotting, cliff climbing, beach bumming, river cruising, island hopping… all there to be reimagined and rejigged by Universal Design.
Louise Bruton is a freelance journalist, specialising in the arts, pop culture and disability rights.
If you want to find out more about building stronger and more inclusive workplaces, check out Fáilte Ireland’s Recruitment Toolkit.
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