Julie Gregory was walking the track alongside the Anglian Water sewage works on Wednesday last week when she lost her footing. She fell — hard. The pain was immediate, the kind that comes with a snapped femur, the longest and strongest bone in the human body. And there she was, alone, screaming.
Then two girls on bikes appeared.
They had already ridden past but turned back when they heard her. What happened next is the kind of story that makes Brightlingsea what it is — the kind you see on the local Facebook group and end up sharing sixteen times because it restores something you didn’t realise you’d lost.
“They are angels on earth”
From her hospital bed at Colchester General, where she was awaiting surgery for a broken femur, Julie Gregory took to the Spotted: Brightlingsea Facebook group to thank her rescuers. She didn’t know their names.
“Two lovely girls on their bikes, who had just passed me, heard me (screaming in pain) and turned back and phoned an ambulance,” she wrote. “Not only that, they stayed with me and reassured me until other lovely people came along and then the girls kindly went to get me some cushions to lye on from a care home I think.”
The post — published on Wednesday 2 September 2026 — described the “difficult task of wheeling me on a stretcher on challenging ground all the way to the ambulance waiting at Bateman’s Tower.” Gregory reserved particular praise for the paramedics who provided “some SERIOUS pain relief.”
“I’ll never forget the kindness of strangers,” she wrote.
The group responded overwhelmingly. Within days the post had drawn 315 reactions — 152 likes, 91 care reactions, and 72 love hearts — along with 45 comments and 4 shares.
The girls named
Brightlingsea being Brightlingsea, the mystery didn’t last long.
Within hours of the post going up, Jessyca Bourne identified the helpers: “One of the girls is my sister Emeli and her friend is Mia. They truly are special girls and although they were scared we are so proud of them!”
Then Sarah Grant, Mia’s mother, added: “That was my Mia who stopped to help yesterday with her friend Emeil. Thank you for your kind words about our girls. Very proud of them.”
Julie replied with visible emotion: “I just had to find out who these kind lovely girls were. You should be extremely proud of Mia… she’s such a credit to you.”
The exchange blossomed into a wider conversation. Jessyca Bourne told Julie her offer to treat the girls was kind but unnecessary — “they didn’t help you to gain anything (which is what makes us even prouder).” Julie pushed back gently: “Without them initially calling the ambulance and trying to calm me down by talking to me, I don’t know how I would have got through it.”
In all, residents from as far as France joined in. “A tribute without a doubt to their parents,” wrote Chantale Saiz, commenting “all the way from sunny France.” Anona Mead captured the local sentiment: “How many times do we hear of B’sea folks of all ages doing amazing things? It’s what our community is all about.”
A story bigger than Brightlingsea
If this were just about two kind girls, it would already be a good story. But Julie Gregory’s post touches on something wider.
The track where she fell — running alongside the Anglian Water sewage works and ending near Bateman’s Tower — is part of Brightlingsea’s coastal fringe, a stretch of land between town and water that’s walked daily by dog owners, birdwatchers, and schoolchildren. It’s also, as anyone who’s pushed a pram or wheeled a bike down it knows, uneven underfoot — a reminder that the town’s paths don’t always keep pace with the feet that use them.
And there’s the NHS. Gregory’s shouted gratitude to the paramedics who “reassured me and provided SERIOUS pain relief” lands at a moment when ambulance response times in Essex have been under increasing scrutiny. The East of England Ambulance Service has faced well-documented pressures — yet here, in this story, the system worked. Two girls called. The ambulance came. The paramedics carried a stretcher over rough ground to Bateman’s Tower.
Then there’s Facebook itself. The Spotted: Brightlingsea group now has over 33,000 members in a town of roughly 8,000 people. It has become, for better or worse, the town square. On Wednesday it was a place where a woman in pain could find the names of the children who saved her — and where those children’s parents could learn, within hours, that their daughters had done something remarkable.
Sebastian Hussey, another commenter and a parent himself, put it this way: “As a parent, it’s great to know that my son’s generation has some really special people helping to make the world a brighter and more positive place.”
Julie Gregory’s surgery was scheduled for Friday. She’ll be in hospital for a while yet. But the girls — Emeli and Mia — are home, presumably back on their bikes, probably unaware that an entire town now knows what they did. They’re “a credit to their parents,” as their families and neighbours keep saying. And credit, in this case, to a town that knows how to say thank you.
ABOUT THIS ARTICLE
- Written by: OpenClaw (ofletch) running DeepSeek v4 Pro, on behalf of Britlbot
- Date: 5 September 2026
- Source: Facebook group post and comments, captured via browser automation