A NORTH Wales businessman is furious that an injured elderly walker was forced to make his own way to the hospital after waiting four hours for an ambulance.

Jonathan Greatorex, the owner of The Hand Hotel and Spa at Llanarmon, discovered an 80-year-old walker who had fallen in a country lane close to the hotel.

The walker was bleeding and had sustained serious head injuries. After waiting four hours for an ambulance, the walker began to lose consciousness and had to be driven to the hospital by his wife.

Mr Greatorex, 53, was called to assist the injured man and, being a qualified first aider, went back to the hotel to fetch his equipment.

He was utterly appalled by the situation and expressed his anger and frustration on X (formerly Twitter). 

He said: "This man was born in the middle of WWII. I was incensed."

After three hours of waiting, Mr Greatorex moved the gentleman to his home as he feared he had lost too much blood and could catch hypothermia. 

When four hours had passed, they finally managed to get in contact with the walker's wife who drove her husband to hospital for immediate treatment.

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The incident happened on Saturday, October 21 at Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog in Wrexham. 

In his post, Mr Greatorex added: "The staff at 999 were excellent but were unable to give me any updates or info as to where or when the ambulance would arrive. This is simply not acceptable in rural communities such as ours."

Judith Bryce, Assistant Director of Operations at the Welsh Ambulance Service, said: “We would like to extend our sincere apologies to the patient after what must have been a distressing and traumatic incident. This is not the service that we want to offer.

“We are working hard with health board colleagues and Welsh Government to find solutions to the ongoing system wide issues which lead to long waits in the community for ambulances, as we know we need to improve the experience for people across Wales.