A Worfield mother has spoken of her ordeal when she was badly injured in a sledging accident in a field near Bridgnorth. Shirley Hale lay injured on the snow-covered ground for two hours before she could be rescued.
The 41-year-old, who is recovering in the Royal Worcestershire Hospital, hopes to be reunited with her family by the weekend. Mrs Hale was sledging down a field at Oldbury off the B4176 Cleobury Mortimer road on Saturday when the accident happened.
She said: “I was coming down the hill with my nine-year-old daughter Rebecca on the sledge with me when we hit a bump and we both got thrown off. I heard a crack and immediately knew that I had broken my leg. I wasn’t able to move my upper body either because it turned out I had dislocated my shoulder.
“My husband Richard ran home to call for an ambulance but we were told one would not be able to reach me because of where I was in the field.
“My sister Julie took the kids into a car to keep them warm and look after them and then Richard came back down with paramedics. They tried to find a vein to put me on a drip but it was so cold they had a great deal of difficulty.
“Eventually, the West Midlands Air Ambulance was called out to reach me and I was flown to hospital. I had spent two hours in those freezing conditions.”
Mrs Hale said weather conditions were so atrocious that the helicopter was not able to land at either the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford or the Royal Shrewsbury but was forced instead to take her to Worcestershire Royal Hospital.
She said: “They put my shoulder back in and on Monday I underwent an operation on my broken right leg. I won’t be going sledging again, that’s for sure.”
A van driver was taken to hospital after a crash on a narrow country lane near Bridgnorth on Wednesday. Ambulance crews were called out after the van was in collision with a car between the Six Ashes pub and Bobbington off the A458 just before 11.30am.
West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman Chris Kowalik said the van driver, a man in his 40s, was taken to Princess Royal Hospital. The car driver was uninjured.