A man was rescued this morning after he fell out of his mobility scooter and down the side of a cliff in Gorleston.

The man, a holidaymaker in his seventies, had been travelling up one of the sloped paths which weave their way up Gorleston Cliffs, near to the Yacht Pond on Marine Parade.

But at around 11.30am he slipped out of his scooter and down the grass verge before slipping further toward the esplanade.

Rod Wells, from Suffolk Accident Rescue Service (SARS), said he wasn't sure how the man had fallen, but the path there was narrow so one of the wheels of his scooter may have gone off the path.

He said: 'He had fallen around 30ft and could have fallen another 20ft, so it was just a case of pinning him there and giving him pain relief until the Coastguard arrived with their specialist equipment.'

Paramedics from the East of England Ambulance Service were also on the scene, and gave the man pain relief until the Coastguard arrived.

A Coastguard spokesman said when they got there the man was around two-thirds of the way down the cliff.

They used a special extraction stretcher to lower him down to where paramedics were waiting to take him to James Paget University Hospital with a suspected fractured left shoulder.