Argyll welcomes Paws & Pedal pair

Leigh Taylor, 45, and his dog Taco got a warm welcome as they passed through Oban, staying with kind-hearted strangers in Kimelford and Lochgilphead  while raising funds to say thank you to the teams who saved his life two years ago.

So far Leigh is 1,300 miles into his Paws & Pedal mission that he said is "self-prescribed medication" for the post traumatic stress he was left with after the incident that put him in a coma for five weeks while medics fought to stabalise his condition.

Leigh had been helping a brewery in Cumbria test out gin making equipment as part of a diversification plan when it went horribly wrong. He was the only person to get hurt but suffered 40 percent burns to his hands, legs and face.

He was put into an induced coma "as soon as the first emergency responders arrived" he said and was given "just a slim chance of survival,"  airlifted by the Great Northern Air Ambulance to hospital in Newcastle fighting for his life. Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary was where part of his burns recovery happened, but funds will go to The Newcastle Hospital Trust as well as the air ambulance.

While in the coma, he had a cardiac arrest and they lost him for eight minutes before two rounds of ’shock treatment’ brought him back, he told The Oban Times and Argyllshire Advertiser.

Miraculously four weeks after he was woken from the coma, he was off the ward and out although he had a long road in front of him and numerous skin draft operations followed and he had to learn to walk, talk and eat again.

"After all of that, I was just stagnating with the stress of what I’d been through, so last July I handed in the keys of my rented home, got a trike and Taco and I set off on this journey which was my self-medicated prescribed medicine for the psychological impact that had taken its toll.