A JOURNEY from France turned into a 23-hour ordeal for a disabled Maidstone woman after the Eurostar broke down.

Ann Culham, 56, of West Park Road, who has multiple sclerosis, was one of 365 people whose holidays were disrupted when their train from Avignon broke down.

They were put up at a hotel at Disneyland, Paris, until morning when most passengers were transferred by coach and train to Le Shuttle and on to the UK.

But throughout the journey Mrs Culham, who uses a wheelchair, had to struggle aboard coaches and even climb steps to her hotel room with no assistance from Eurostar staff.

The ordeal began when the Eurostar made an emergency stop in Valence, in southern France, and passengers were told to transfer to a French TGV train. They were not told where the TGV was going.

While battling through the “scrum” to get on the train, Mrs Culham was separated from her husband, Terry, and their two friends and forced to journey alone.

She said: “I don’t expect preferential treatment because of my disability but I do expect consideration. They could have done a lot more to accommodate me.

“We were literally dumped at Disneyland. No-one from Eurostar was there to help me at the hotel.

“I need a single bed to sleep in so I can grip the corners to roll over but they didn’t have one.

“They said they had an invalid room. To get there I had to go up some steps. I had to get out of my chair, anchor myself with a stick and hang on to a pole. It took a long time to do it.

“The next day I found a map of the hotel. Nobody had told me there was a disabled access at the back.”

In the morning, after a night of not knowing how they would get home, most passengers were put back onto a TGV and taken to Le Shuttle.

Mrs Culham said: “I was bundled on to a coach that had no disabled facilities to go on Le Shuttle. It was very distressing.

“They put me at the front because that had the most legroom but it still wasn’t enough. We were on the coach for two hours. You have to be disabled to understand the trauma it caused.

“They ruined our holiday. The irony is we travelled first class by Eurostar for simplicity.”

The passengers would have gone home on another Eurostar on Sunday but all services had been cancelled to allow maintenance work on the tracks.

All of the passengers have been offered a refund.

A Eurostar spokesman said: “We have coach companies we can call on in an emergency, but as far as we know a long-distance coach does not exist that will take wheelchairs.

“If she had been completely incapable of getting on the coach then the alternative would have been a taxi.” He added: “Eurostar apologises for her discomfort. We appreciate that what happened wasn’t ideal but in the circumstances it was the most convenient way of getting everyone home.”