A KITESURFER has battled back from the brink after a bizarre accident nearly killed him – and now he can’t wait to take up his hobby again.

Mark Warren, 45, of Whitefriars Crescent, Westcliff, told the Echo about the day a freak gust of wind smashed him into a wall on Chalkwell beach.

He was left in a coma with multiple broken bones and needed emergency heart surgery.

A year on, recalling that fateful day, the experienced kitesurfer said: “I was just setting off and I remember the wind changed direction and it blew me straight into the wall.

“I was conscious the whole time until they put me in the back of an ambulance.

“I remember there were a lot of people around me, looking at me.

"I didn’t feel any pain at all. I don’t think I felt scared either. It was all a bit surreal.”

Among his many injuries, Mr Warren suffered a rupture to his aorta, the largest artery in the body, which carries blood away from the heart.

Mr Warren, whose wife, Suzanne, was three months pregnant at the time, also suffered five fractured ribs, broke every bone and ligament in his left foot and snapped his right ankle.

The commercial photographer’s life was saved by a specialist team at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge, where he was flown by air ambulance.

He spent five weeks in different hospitals, the first two-and-ahalf in a medically induced coma. He had to follow it up with six months of visits to a lower limb physiotherapy clinic.

But he had been focusing on a return to his hobby all year.

He said: “I’ve been really missing it. I started thinking about it from when I first came round.

“My wife is happy for me to go back. She thinks it’s something I’ve got to do for myself because it was such a major part of my social life – going out with my mates.

“There’s a really good kitesurfing community in Southend. I’ve had really big support from my family during what’s been a very hard time.”

Mr Warren plans to take up the hobby again next month, when weather conditions allow.

His daughter, Orla, was born in February. His son, Isaac, is now two-and-a-half years old.

He said: “When I came round from the coma, my wife didn’t let Isaac see me for a few weeks for obvious reasons – I had tubes in my nose and everything. I missed him like crazy.

“But it wasn’t until Orla was born this year that I thought to myself: ‘My God, how close did I come to losing all this?’”