Wife plunges 80ft and nearly drowns after popping out to tidy the garden

A WOMAN who plunged 80ft (24m) down a cliff face after she slipped while gardening only survived because her fall was broken by tree branches.

Kate Nicoll, 66, slipped and fell as she tried to throw some garden refuse over the edge while tidying her clifftop garden overlooking Wormit Bay in Fife, close to the Tay rail bridge.

The branches of trees, growing out of the steep face of the high cliffs, helped cushion the pensioner's fall as she hurtled towards the rocky foreshore below.

She was found, bleeding badly and in considerable pain, as the incoming tide began lapping close to where she was lying, unable to move.

And last night, as Mrs Nicoll recovered from serious back, head and arm injuries in hospital, her husband Findlay told The Scotsman that his wife was very lucky to be alive.

Mr Nicoll, a boat builder, said: "She has got a broken arm and she has a scalp wound which needed stitching, and two damaged vertebrae. She has been very, very fortunate."

He said the accident happened as his wife was tidying the garden of their home in Riverside Road in Wormit: "There is a hedge at the bottom of the garden and a path along behind the hedge and it's steep after that.

"She had been in the garden and gone down the steps on to the path. She was throwing stuff over the bank when she slipped and had gone over the side.

"She remembers catching on to something about half way down which kind of the broke her speed and her fall. And then the branch broke and away she went again."

Mr Nicoll praised the emergency services: "They are all very professional, they all did an excellent job."

Earlier, rescuers described how they faced a race against time and tide to save the pensioner after she landed on the rocky foreshore of the Tay.

Mrs Nicoll was plucked to safety before the waters could reach her in an operation involving a Coastguard rescue team, an NHS trauma team, an RNLI lifeboat and the crew of an RAF search and rescue helicopter.

The drama began on Thursday night when two local teenagers, Ian Anderson and Calum Scrymgeour, both 17, raised the alarm when they spotted the badly injured pensioner lying at the foot of the cliff.

Mr Scrymgeour said: "We saw the woman waving her arm and shouting for help. Her head was covered in blood and she looked badly hurt.

"The tide was coming in and I phoned the ambulance and we made sure she was OK and got her husband.

"I wouldn't say we were heroes. It's what anybody would have done."

Members of the trauma team from Dundee's Ninewells Hospital and paramedics were the first to reach the scene, quickly joined by the St Andrews Coastguard rescue team.

Craig Tough, the station officer at St Andrews, said: "The woman had fallen on to the rocks and she had suspected serious spinal and neck injuries so we couldn't move her from that position.

"She had been working in her garden when she fell. There was a brush, stuck in a tree in the cliff face 40ft (12m) above us, where she had fallen through. She had come through two or three trees on the way down and that probably helped cushion her fall. She had landed in amongst the rocks and pebbles. She seems to have been extremely fortunate."

Mrs Nicoll was last night said to be "stable" in Ninewells.