A COUPLE who were caught up in Hurricane Matthew have thanked a Radcliffe travel firm for saving their dream holiday.

Robert and Sarah-Jane Cox embarked on a trip across America to celebrate her 50th birthday, but were left stranded in Las Vegas when thousands of flights to Florida were cancelled because of the disaster earlier this month.

The Ainsworth couple were due to fly out to Miami the next morning to meet up with their family for a Caribbean cruise, and urgently contacted PR World Travel for help in reaching their destination.

With thousands of people fleeing areas that were being evacuated, the Water Street firm desperately struggled to find available accommodation and hire cars and eventually managed to book two seats on a flight to Tampa.

After a two-day drive down to Miami as the storm surged over the Atlantic, the pair managed to meet the cruise ship as planned and returned home last week.

Mrs Cox said: “We were out watching a show when I got a text saying that out flight was cancelled because of the hurricane.

“If we hadn’t had PR World Travel there to help us then I don’t know what we would have done. They went to extraordinary lengths to help us, and I doubt we would have been able to make it if we had to organise things on our own.

“Our family were waiting for us on the cruise, but we didn’t even know when that would be allowed to sail out.

“It was quite scary trying to drive to Miami. It was very windy on the roads and there was a lot of debris around too.

“You could see that all of the accommodation was full of families who were trying to flee the area and come inland where it was safer.

“Obviously the situation was far worse for them than it was for us, but it was still a scary experience.”

Tania Lowe, of PR World Travel, said: “It was very difficult to reorganise everything, we really struggled.

“We found one hotel and heard back from them later in the day to say that they had over-booked, so we had to start from scratch.

“With all of the people who were fleeing the area, it was really tough to find any accommodation or hire cars.

“Fortunately, we managed to get everything sorted in the end.”