By Daniel Cattanach

Last updated at 18:43, Friday, 16 May 2008

A WHITEHAVEN man is back in Britain after trekking down a mountain for five hours following the Chinese quake.

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Brian Proctor, owner of the Chase Hotel, on Inkerman Terrace, landed back in the UK yesterday morning following his ordeal, which saw him having to trek to safety down a Chinese mountain in the dark.

Brian was on a coach trip with a UK holiday group when Monday’s earthquake hit. At first he thought the driver had just hit a bumpy road.

“Then suddenly everything went quiet and they said it had been an earthquake. We were about 50 miles away from the epicentre but it was too close for comfort,” said Brian.

The passengers were escorted off the coach where they saw a car about 20 yards ahead had been flattened by one of the many giant boulders which had smashed to the ground.

Brian walked down the road to take photographs of the devastation but when more after tremors struck he was escorted away by members of the Chinese Army who had come to rescue the survivors.

“Apart from an upturned hand in the pile of rocks we were scrambling over, we didn’t see any casualties.

“We slipped and slid our way down a small gravel track for an hour,” he said.

They then marched for another four hours in the dark to the nearest habitation where another coach eventually arrived to take them back to their hotel in Chengdou.

Brian said: “The whole town had been evacuated – there were people in tents on the side of the road.”

He said he slept through a further after shock at 3am, such was his relief to be safe.

He managed to text friends to say: “In middle of quake. OK ...just...Brian”

More than 50,000 people may have died in the disaster. Official figures put the death toll at nearly 15,000 with 26,000 still buried in rubble and 14,000 missing.

DCattanach@cngroup.co.uk

First published at 11:39, Friday, 16 May 2008
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk