‘It could have been worse’ - Meet the courier whose van rolled through a city wall

A courier whose van rolled down a car park hill and through a wall has spoken of his relief after it suffered limited damage in the incident.

Michael Worden was blissfully unaware of his van’s fate when his mother called him in a panic to the car park of his home on Bracondale, which backs onto Southgate Lane in Norwich.

And he was then shocked to learn that the January 2016 Citroen had rolled down a slope in the car park, smashing a gaping hole through the wall - which he believes to be more than 300 years old.

But remarkably, while the wall itself is in a bad state, leaving rubble and stone strewn across the pavement, his van has been left with barely a scratch.

Mr Worden, 35, said: “I won’t tell you exactly what I said when I saw what had happened - let’s say it was a four-letter French word. But the van is fine, you have to look really close at the bumper to even see the damage. “I have left the handbrake off in the past but I checked that and it wasn’t that, but sometimes they can give way when brakes go from hot to cold. That must be what happened.”

The rubble has now been cordoned off by the county council, but Mr Worden said he was thankful it hadn’t happened at a peak time for pedestrians.

He said: “People often walk down there on their way to football matches, so if it had happened before a game on a Saturday pre-Covid it could have been really disastrous. And the van seems to be fine, so it definitely could have been a lot worse.

“Sometimes with these things there’s not much else you can do but laugh. I didn’t report it to the police because I just felt it would have been a bit of a waste of their time. After all, nobody was murdered.”

He added: “In a way I’m thankful the wall was there - the exact same thing happened to my uncle and his van ended up in a river. It could definitely have been worse.”