A 70-year-old man with some mobility problems had a fall and ended up in a dry riverbed in the middle of nowhere; fortunately, somebody heard his calls for help.

The accident took place around Wednesday midday in a barranco (Arroyo del Charcón) near Íllora in the Poniente de Granada.

He lost his footing whilst walking along the boundary of an olive grove, slid some 25 metres down a steep bank before falling vertically another five metres onto the floor of a dry gully.

And there he lay for nearly six hours until somebody out for a walk near the top of the barranco heard his weak pleas for assistance. The passerby immediately phoned the Policía Local.

The officers managed to work their way down to the bottom and found him snagged on bramble and wedged between boulders. He had cuts on this head, arms and legs.

The police contacted the emergency, call centre, 112 and requested medical assistance, as well as a fire-service team to extract the victim and get him to where an ambulance would be waiting. The word soon got around and locals also turned up to assist.

Once in the ambulance, he was taken to the city of Granada to be hospitalised in one of the main hospitals there.

There is no doubt that the victim was  extremely lucky to have been discovered by somebody who took the time to investigate the enfeebled voice coming from the bottom of a nearby barranco, otherwise he probably would not have survived the experience.

(News: Illora, Poniente de Granada, Andalucia)