RAF rescues man stuck in gorse bush for two days

Dean Bowen, 32, was walking along a cliff beside Primrose Valley caravan park in Filey, North Yorkshire, on Saturday night, but his memory of how he came to be trapped in the dense undergrowth is hazy.

"I wouldn't advise anybody to go into it [gorse bushes], you know what I mean? At first it seems fun but, before you know it, you're like stuck," Mr Bowen, from Hunmanby, North Yorkshire, told the BBC after his rescue. "Whichever way I turned it seemed to be the wrong one that day."

Mr Bowen eventually attracted the attention of a passer-by in the early hours of yesterday by flaming his cigarette lighter. When the emergency services were unable to rescue him from the thick undergrowth, a helicopter was scrambled from RAF Leconfield to winch him to safety.

Last night he was recovering from mild hypothermia and dehydration in Scarborough hospital.

Colin Yorke, who winched him to safety, said: "The man was in a patch of gorse bush 10ft deep.

"We've no idea how he got there. He was right in the middle of the gorse. It was like he had been dropped there by a spaceship... It was certainly one of our stranger rescues."