Last two protesters climb down from Millennium wheel

Two Spanish eco-protesters were this afternoon safely back at ground level after a day and a night 450ft above London at the top of the Millennium Wheel.

Two Spanish eco-protesters were this afternoon safely back at ground level after a day and a night 450ft above London at the top of the Millennium Wheel.

The pair, who scaled the rim of the wheel with colleagues yesterday morning to demonstrate about dam projects in Spain and India, spent around 30 hours on their lofty perch.

At around 12.45pm the first of the pair began abseiling from the top of the wheel some 200ft to its central rim, using a rope system installed by police climbers last night.

Some 40 minutes afterwards his colleague followed, abseiling in tandem with a police climbing expert who had been sent up to ensure a safe descent.

From the hub of the wheel, the pair's final return to earth was a more sedate one, in a construction lift inside one of the wheel's support struts and into the arms of a welcoming committee of police officers.

There had been fears that with almost two days in an already tight schedule lost through the protest, the Wheel - officially the British Airways London Eye - would not open in time for Millennium Eve.

But Jamie Bowden of British Airways said: "We are glad it has come to a safe conclusion and pleased it did not last longer, and we are still confident about opening on time."

Despite the perilous position in which the two men spent their morning, the atmosphere around the wheel, which is on the South Bank of the River Thames almost directly across from the Houses of Parliament, took on something of a carnival atmosphere as they returned to earth.

Fellow demonstrators, many of them also Spanish, cheered and clapped wildly as the men waved from the wheel.

A crowd several hundred strong, mainly office workers and passing tourists, also gathered to watch the excitement.

Both men were understood to be Spanish nationals in their twenties, with their names given only as Dany (correct) and Bibi.

Their supporters said Dany came from the village of Itoitz, near Pamplona in the Basque region of northern Spain, which would be one of the first settlements to be flooded if a proposed dam against which they were protesting is built.

Dany, whose long hair was in a ponytail and who wore jeans and a fluorescent climbing bib, was the first to descend. Within minutes he had been driven away from the site in a police van.