Paramedic Trish Reeves-Long leaped on a horse to help a rider who had fallen and hurt her back.

She and her colleagues had trudged nearly a mile through thick mud to reach the injured woman after abandoning their ambulance. When they got there, they realised they needed the police helicopter to airlift her to hospital.

So Trish - herself a keen rider - got on a horse and rode back to the ambulance to radio for help. She then rode back to the scene twice with equipment.

The woman fell on a muddy bridlepath at Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, near Wallingford, on Saturday. A spokesman for Oxfordshire Ambulance Service said: "There were two horses there so Trish got on one to get back to the vehicle. "The woman had to be put on a spinal board. I think to transport that for three quarters of a mile down a muddy bridlepath back to the ambulance was not the desired thing.

"Having the horse there was an invaluable help. There was no way the ambulance was going to get down the track in the condition it was in."

The helicopter airlifted the 41-year-old woman, who has not been named, to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. She suffered spinal injuries described as "potentially serious".

In a separate incident, another woman rider was flown to the JR with spinal injuries after falling in a field between Chipping Warden and Byfield, near Banbury.

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