Helicopter Rescue at Portmeirion 25.09.2007

A French tourist goes for a walk across the sands near Portmeirion, Wales as the tide is coming in. The tide covers him but luckily washes him upriver onto a sand bank. He almost loses his life but is saved by the Criccieth lifeboat and an helicopter from RAF Valley. Luckily he went for his walk within sight of the (excellent!) Portmeirion hotel allowing the alarm to be raised. The excellent work of the lifeboat and helicopter crews can clearly be seen. You can donate to the RNLI Here : http://www.rnli.org.uk/ or visit the Criccieth Lifeboat website Here : http://www.cricciethlifeboat.org.uk

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Portmeirion
• Coastguard
• Helicopter
• Lifeboat
• Rescue
• Trapped
• Tide
• French
• Sand

[opticalsound]

Hello I'm Franck The man who was in the sea, so I see the video and it was terrific !

But no problem I'm alive and I didn't spend the night at Bangor Hospital because my health wasn't critical.

My friends were on the beach and helped me.

If you want to write me you can send a message to Pierre who send this message for me.

And don't forget it's not possible to escape from the village.

Franck new N°2

[gregvideo07]

Hi !

Great to hear you are ok ! I wondered if you would find the video ! You can show it to all your friends !

of course.. the question is.. why did you go for that walk ???!!!!

(Or were you running from Rover?!)

[markgwyddfor]

@mowriter Not easy! There are gullys, so waist deep one minute, then over your head. Swimming is nearly impossible as currents there are so strong, (they can knock you off your feet) taking you up the estuary. Add to that eddylines where water of different speeds meet, you can get sucked down too. Not nice!

[mowriter]

@opticalsound : OK, umm....why didn't you swim back to shore?

[thesixtiesguy]

Was it cold? It's always cold on the coast.

[granskare]

nice rescue! my son is a member of a vol. fire/rescue dept in Colorado so yeah, support the local folks where ever you are...the vols work free but the equipment, fuel, etc, are not free...:)

[Strawberrycream69]

wow!! did you see the speed at which the seaking arrived..visible by way the tail droped as the pilot pulls back on the joystick to bleed of some speed.

[kornofulgur]

that's the reason why you always have to know hours of high/low tides before going for a walk...

while you're looking at the landcape, the sea can treacherously outflank and surround you easily in bays like that, with an unsuspectable speed!

[Horseylover118]

i was here the other day. on the beach i mean. theres quicksand to. hes lucky to be alive.

[ed13579]

I'd love to be an RNLI volunteer but am colour blind :(

Great work guys! Our local (well.. to our boat) RNLI station! Nice one chaps :D

[opticalsound]

As I'm a friend of Franck he said to me that he was walking like this to got a far away point of vue of "the village" (the one from the Prisonner tv series).