A PENSIONER who fell over in the street has praised the 'kindness of strangers' who came to his rescue.

Roy Newcombe was walking across Island Road on Barrow Island on Tuesday towards the Co-op.

As he stepped down from the central reservation he tripped over the kerb while looking for traffic and ended up falling onto the road.

The response from members of the public has prompted Mr Newcombe to speak out.

"Immediately after I fell over around 12 people rushed over to me, one stopped the traffic, others came running out of the flats, one man raced into the Co-Op to get some tissues to wipe the blood; none of them would leave me until I insisted I was ok," the 79-year-old said.

"My glasses got bent, fortunately they didn't break, but I cut my nose."

Mr Newcombe, who served in the British Army and later worked at the shipyard, said the 'kindness of strangers' had blown him away.

"Barrow Island gets such a bad reputation but all those people who ran over to help me were so kind and I wanted to highlight what they did for me and to thank them for helping me," he said.

Mr Newcombe, a dad-of-two and granddad to four, worked on the traffic department at what later became Global Combat Systems in the yard.

"I was living in Formby after leaving the army and didn't know what I was going to do," the retired army major recalled.

"I went over to work in Oman for a while then my wife said we needed to settle down.

"I saw an article in the Sunday Express financial supplement and there was a piece about the AS90, a self-propelled gun which was made by VSEL in Barrow.

"So I sent in my CV and we then ended up moving to Barrow.

"We live on Walney now and Barrow has become our home.

"What happened to me in the street just serves as a reminder that there are such kind people here in Barrow and I wanted to let the people who helped me know that I appreciated it."