Barry caravan park landslip: Couple 'glad to be alive'

A couple who had to be rescued from their caravan during a clifftop landslide in south Wales say they are glad to be alive.

Angela and Peter Evans were woken from their sleep at Porthkerry, Vale of Glamorgan, after rock crumbled, leaving caravans teetering on the cliff edge.

Coastguards were alerted to the rockfall at about 20:00 GMT on Monday. No-one was injured.

Mrs Evans said: "I had reason to be scared. It was bad, very bad."

The pair were asleep in their caravan home when the landslip, about 10ft (3m) wide and 200 yards (180m) long, struck.

It left 15 caravans teetering on the edge of the cliff.

Work to move caravans away from the edge to another part of the site, which has 300 pitches in total, began immediately.

The Evans' told BBC Wales Today they had retired early after a long day out.

Mrs Evans has taken some sleeping pills after working a series of night shifts.

Mr Evans said he heard a "commotion" outside the caravan and when he looked out he saw an empty space where there used to grass leading to the cliff edge.

This photo shows the position of the caravans after the landslip on Monday

He said: "I could see light, and was looking down at empty space where the gas [canisters] used to be. I thought 'there must be something wrong here'.

"The cliff had gone. They were scanning with big torches along the front to see how bad it was and I realised there was no grass, there was just a sheer drop at the side of our caravan.

"Where I would normally see a fence, I saw nothing.

"I had a job to wake Angela, she'd worked all the night shifts and [had taken sleeping tablets] to adjust, so when we finally woke her up, we ran for it. We just left everything.

"It could have cut right through the middle of our caravan and we could have been in the sea. Some of them were hanging precariously over the cliff edge."

Mrs Evans said: "At first I thought it was some sort of a joke until I looked out of the window and realised then that it was serious.

"I think I was in total shock because this was my home and I really didn't expect to see what I saw when I got outside. It was really frightening, really frightening."

A security guard at the leisure park called Mumbles coastguards at about 20:00 to report the incident. The Barry Coastguard team went to the scene and found that nobody was injured or in imminent danger.

Another caravan owner, Edward Nicholls, has previously said the caravans were about 4m (13ft) away from the cliff edge before the landslip, with a small path running between them and the edge.

Vale of Glamorgan council said its officers would assess the current site risks and advise landowners of any remedial work needed.