JO: I’M ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED
ACTRESS Joanna Lumley said she was heartbroken after a motorised paragliding accident left her friend seriously injured and another flyer dead.
Sacha Dench, 43, was taken to hospital and cameraman, Dan Burton, 54, died on Saturday after they collided while trying to fly around the UK.
Miss Lumley, 75, is a supporter of Miss Dench’s Round Britain Climate Challenge and was due to appear in an ITV documentary with her about the journey.
She said yesterday: ‘Please say how heartbroken I am and that Dan was the best company, brave as a lion and an expert in his field.
‘All thoughts and prayers are with his family and with Sacha, who is the best of the best and has become a darling friend.’
The Absolutely Fabulous star became aware of climate activist Miss Dench – a distant relative of Dame Judi Dench – after spotting her fundraising campaign.
Miss Dench, chief executive of Conservation Without Borders, was attempting a 3,000-mile circumnavigation of the UK to raise awareness of climate change ahead of the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
She has already been nicknamed the ‘human swan’ for highlighting the plight of Bewick’s swans by flying from the Russian Arctic to the UK. In 2016, she became the first woman to fly across the Channel using a motorised paraglider.
Miss Lumley said previously: ‘Sacha Dench’s adventures are stories you can only dream of – facing down all barriers and blessed with the courage of a lioness she literally soars into history books, and inspires everyone... Sacha is clawing attention towards the greatest crisis mankind has faced in recorded time.’
Miss Dench, who is originally from Australia but lives in Bristol, was in the final stages of completing the challenge near Loch na Gainmhich, Sutherland, when tragedy struck. A hillwalker raised the alarm after witnessing the accident.
Emergency services raced to the crash site at around 4.45pm but could not save Mr Burton. Rescuers found Miss Dench conscious and ‘in remarkably good spirits given the circumstances’ said Tim Hamlet, leader of Assynt Mountain Rescue Team. She was taken to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness with ‘serious but not life-threatening’ injuries. Yesterday, NHS Highland confirmed she had been discharged.
Tributes flooded in for Mr Burton, described by one friend as ‘an adventurer and pioneer at heart’.