Powys woman has miraculous escape after veering off cliff

Patsy Oxley, 62, from Rhayader was riding to her favourite café, the Owls Nest in Llandovery when she encountered a car going at high speed near Llanwrtyd Wells.

“I was just going out for a nice little bimble,” said Patsy. “I was out on my adventure bike a big BMW 1200 – quite large, you can’t miss it.

“Then round the bend coming at very high speed was a 4x4. My first inklings of it being there was the offside front headlight being directly in front of me about 10ft away.

“It happened so fast that your accustomed instincts make your body do things and they were ‘get the hell out of the way’ – otherwise I would have been a hood ornament.”

ALSO READ:

• Powys man chased ex-girlfriend in her car after fish and chip shop row
• More brilliant photos from the National Urdd Eisteddfod in Powys
• Powys border farm on sale for the first time in decades for over £1 million

The road was narrow with a hazardous edge - “There’s about a foot of grass and then essentially a cliff,” added Patsy. “The police think I was only doing about 10 mph when I went over the edge.

“My bike must have gone straight on over the edge but then fell left.

"I then got thrown and it bounced over itself. I kept going for another 10-15 metres until I hit this tree.

“I went into branches five to six inches in diameter and smashed through them.”

Patsy doesn’t doubt that without her high-grade safety equipment she would have died on impact.

“One of my gloves, which have carbon fibre reinforcement, broke in two because I must have punched a rock,” said Patsy.

“All I had was a skinned knee. I must have been severely concussed. I was talking all sorts of things- “don’t lose my wallet” or “don’t lose my phone.”

“I was lying down in the broken bits of this tree, there was about another 50 metres to fall to the bottom and there were loads of rocks at the bottom.”

The car did not stop after the crash.

She was eventually spotted by two passing farmers who called for help and a woman named Paula who was passing stayed to keep her company.

“A couple of lads in the first engine came down without any ropes or anything, just to make sure I didn’t fall,” said Patsy.

“They brought wedges and were digging the toes of their boots into the slope – these two chaps were on the spot until the rope rescue team came for me.”

“They had to cut half the tree to get me out.

"They did ask for the air ambulance but they couldn’t land there as there was no flat.

“The rope team were fantastic, they deserve an awful lot of praise. I got to the top and didn’t remember a single bump up a 15 metre a 80 degree slope.”

Patsy was taken to Bronglais hospital but this ran into a complication.

“Funny thing was we were going along, we got to the telephone box that isn’t used anymore on the devil’s staircase,” said Patsy. “The driver got to there and his sat nav went weird.

“He said ‘just a minute ago it was saying 30 miles to go, now its saying 140.’

“I then shouted form the back off the ambulance ‘have you seen a phone box?’

“‘We’re sat next to one’.

“So I told him to follow the zig zag bends up the hill and we’ll be in Tregaron in 10 miles.

“The poor driver did a fabulous job to get an ambulance ups those twisty bends - it must have been a nightmare for him.”

Patsy managed to escape with soft tissue damage and is hoping to be back on a bike again at some point but is very grateful to all who came to help her.

“I am very glad we have our emergency services. They deserve to be paid properly and to be looked after,” she added. “I am immensely grateful.

“I just want to say thank you to Paula, who was there for so long with me and all the emergency guys who were on that slope.”