Chairs for disabled beach users

Three beaches in Cornwall are to have specially designed wheelchairs which can be pushed on sand from next summer.

The sand chairs have been bought by the Cornwall Disability Forum with money from the Local Network Fund of the Cornwall Community Foundation.

The chairs, costing £2,500 each, have four wide wheels, enabling them to move across beaches and not get bogged down.

They will be at Porthminster Beach at St Ives, Gyllingvase in Falmouth and Summerleaze at Bude.

The forum hopes to get three more chairs in the future.

Wheelchair users have welcomed the purchases, saying it is virtually impossible to push traditional wheelchairs across beaches because their narrow wheels get stuck in the sand.