A motorist got rather more than they bargained for when their car broke down on Dartmouth's Lower Ferry, leaving them making six crossings between Dartmouth and Kingswear while waiting to be rescued.

Lea Brown posted on their Facebook page: “Big thanks to the Lower Ferry gems tonight for helping a damsel in distress.

“Think I had to do a back and forth six times.

“AA came to the rescue and Jake Lomas (an electrician at Dart Group Ltd).”

Ferryman Cliff Taylor said: “Lea broke down and was panicking.

“It's not the first time it's happened.

“We know how to deal with these things and we're generally very patient.

“The car was immobile because it was stuck in park.

“It was an automatic so we couldn’t bump start it and had to wait for the AA to turn up.”

The AA got the vehicle started in around 10 minutes but not before Lea had travelled six times between Dartmouth and Kingswear.

Luckily Lea’s car didn’t block anyone in and they were able to get all the other cars off.

The Lower Ferry is currently operating with one of its two boats as the other is being service..

This happens once a year as Cliff explained: “They have to go for refit every year by law.

“There's a licence that they need to renew so it goes off generally at the end of October, early November, for about four to six weeks.

“She has to be inspected and then any work that needs doing has to be done and then it has to be re-inspected when it goes back on the water and there are two floats so they generally do one before Christmas.

“They'll do one probably after the Higher Ferry refit.”

The time of the service has to be carefully planned as Cliff explained: “It’s not obvious but it's governed by the size of the tide.

“You take the vessel up at certain states of the tide and if you miss one you've got to wait probably two three weeks for the next one.”