A PHOTOGRAPHER last night told of his family's lucky escape after they were caught up in the Boscastle floods.

Nigel Whitfield, who works for The Northern Echo's sister paper, The Darlington and Stockton Times, was on holiday in Cornwall with his wife Alison and stepdaughter Jennifer, 12, when disaster struck.

They had decided to drive to Boscastle on a day trip, but found themselves stranded in their car when floods tore through the streets.

Mr Whitfield said: "It started to rain and I can only describe it as being of Biblical proportions - I have never seen anything like it.

"I got a really bad feeling about what was going to happen, so we decided to turn the car around and go back.

"We somehow managed to turn around in what was a very narrow road when the water was pouring down and turning the surroundings into a river."

He added: "We were very, very lucky. Had we been at the bottom end of the village in the main car park we would have been swept into the sea."