POSSIBLY the last thing you expect to encounter on a quiet country road is a 12-stone wild boar making a desperate bid for freedom.

So when the driver of a Ford Orion hit his brakes in the early hours of Monday morning near Consett, County Durham, as a boar dashed out in front of him, he could be forgiven for thinking he was crackling up.

But it appears the long-extinct animals may be making a return to our woodlands, with experts reckoning there could be as many as 25 on the loose in the North-East.

Wild Bill made a run for it to escape the slaughterman's knife, and almost got away with it.

The 12-month-old fugitive escaped as he was being loaded into a van at Chopwell in Northumberland and took to his trotters.

The runaway hog managed to travel 10 miles before his luck ran out on the A692, between Consett and Lanchester.

Bill suffered head injuries and died when he was hit by the Orion.

The car was badly damaged although its 40-year-old driver was unharmed, if a little surprised.

But many of Wild Bill's cousins, some of which grow to more than six feet long, weigh more than 20st and run at 30mph, are roaming the North-East.

No official statistics exist, but there have been numerous sightings of boar in North Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear and County Durham.

Police wildlife officer, Sergeant Eddie Bell reckons there are about 25 in County Durham alone.

Occasionally they can be dangerous. A 10-year-old boy hiker was charged near Richmond, North Yorkshire, in 1992, and a boar rampaged around an estate at Felling, near Gateshead, in 1998 before it was shot.

In 1994, up to 30 boars escaped from a farm at Easby, near Richmond, causing £3,500 worth of damage before most were caught.

Despite their five-inch tusks and incredible bulk, boars are shy creatures which, if left alone, are mainly a danger only to tubers, nuts, fruit, worms, and the occasional mouse or rabbit.

North-Easterners who are still worried about these bruisers from the history of the British woodlands should be thankful they do not live down South where a Ministry of Agriculture report records that two breeding populations exist in Sussex and Dorset - the largest at Paul McCartney's estate in East Sussex.

It is thought there could be as many as 700 of the beasts on the loose in the area.

A report suggests that numbers could reach almost 3,500 by 2012 and, after more than 300 years of extinction in Britain, boars like Wild Bill will become a common sight once again.