Pensioner survives 30ft plunge
AN 89-year-old woman escaped uninjured after the car she was sitting in rolled off the road down a 30ft banking in the Ettrick Valley last week.
The Blackpool woman’s son had stepped out to take a photograph at a scenic spot. But when he did the car in which his mother was a passenger rolled away, down the road and over the embankment before coming to rest in a bog.
The incident happened last Tuesday evening on the B709 between the Gordon Arms and Tushielaw Hotels, near Berrybush.
Police, ambulance and fire services went to the scene where ambulance crews and Innerleithen fire officers rescued the elderly woman from the car unharmed. Earlier farmer’s wife Dorothy Stewart, of nearby Tushielaw Farm, had brought sleeping bags to keep the pair warm as they waited for help.
The mother and son were staying in a cottage at Cossarshill Farm, further up Ettrick Valley, where Daphne Jackson told us last week: “They were badly shaken, but they are so grateful to Mrs Stewart for waiting with them and they kept telling me how kind everybody was to them.”
Her husband, Ogilvie Jackson, said: “They were lucky. This highlights the need for mobile coverage here: if the man had been able to use his phone he could have summoned help sooner.”
The couple left at the weekend but plan to return to the area despite their ordeal.
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Weather for Galashiels
Thursday 23 May 2013
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 5 C to 9 C
Wind Speed: 24 mph
Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 4 C to 11 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North east
