IAN CLARKE A horse and two people spent last night stranded on an island off Wells after being cut off by the tide.

IAN CLARKE

A horse and two people spent last night stranded on an island off Wells after being cut off by the tide.

Lifeboat crewmen were due to have helped the horse, and its 14-year-old owner's mother and her friend from the land known as East Hills back across to Wells at first light and low tide this morning.

Budd - a 13.2 hands high gelding - was being ridden on the beach for the first time yesterday afternoon when it unseated its young rider and bolted more than a mile along Holkham and Wells beaches, where holidaymakers were enjoying the afternoon sun.

It crossed the channel and became cut off on East Hills by the incoming tide.

Attempts, first by a person in a kayak and then the crew of the newly commissioned inshore lifeboat Jane Ann III, to rescue it were unsuccessful.

The decision was then made to take the young owner's mother and her friend to stay with the horse on East Hills overnight until low water as the animal was becoming increasingly stressed when attempts were made to try to swim him back to safety.

No one on the beach was injured.

The horse's owner, from Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, said: "Budd had been okay until he was spooked by some other horses which came up behind him on Holkham Beach."