Published at 09:06, Tuesday, 03 July 2012

A couple cheated death when their car was swept into a raging river.

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A surge of water spun their small car round and carried it 20ft into the swollen waterway during a torrential downpour that hit Cumbria.

Simon Ruggles and his wife Annlouise, who live at Uldale, near Wigton, fought to free themselves as water flooded in up to their chests.

The electric windows jammed and Simon tried to kick out the windscreen as water from the River Ellen filled the inside of the Suzuki Swift.

The couple eventually forced open a door and squeezed out into the rapids.

They were carried downstream and managed to cling onto a small bridge the river had flooded over before hauling themselves, exhausted, out of the flood waters.

“I knew if we were swept under the bridge that would have been it,” said Simon, a builder.

“We were hanging on with most of our bodies under the bridge. To be honest I thought that was more serious than being trapped in the car.

“I don’t think we would have survived it. Annlouise was pulled under and I managed to grab her with one hand and pull her back."

“He saved my life,” said Annlouise. “My hands were holding onto the bridge, but my head was under the water, I was fully submerged.”

Battered and bruised, the couple who have two children, Lucy, 23, and Will, 18, are coming to terms with their dramatic escape.

“There were lots of elements of luck that night, we were very lucky,” Simon added.

The couple were returning to their home, just over a mile away up the back road, late on June 22 after visiting a friend in Ireby.

Water from the flooded River Ellen was pouring into the garden of a nearby home and was held back by a four foot wall, but was channelling out onto the country lane through the gateway. It was a surge of this water which caught the car and washed it into the river.

The car was eventually carried hundreds of yards down river and wrecked.

Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk