THE woman who was critically injured after a car ploughed into her and a shop front in Alcombe earlier this month is now facing an uphill battle to recovery.

Geraldine Hammond and her husband John, of Brook Street, Alcombe, were in the path of a car when its brakes failed.

It crashed into them and hurled them through the window of a bakery - next door to a newsagents the couple were planning to buy.

Mr Hammond, who works at Exmoor Mobility supplying products for people with disabilities, said: "Our plans to buy the newsagents have been forgotten now.

"Geraldine will be in a wheelchair for a year, so the property will be unsuitable."

Mrs Hammond suffered two broken legs, smashed ankles and cuts to her body and face for which she has undergone skin grafts.

"The doctors told me they found a piece of glass embedded in her side the size of a man's hand, both in thickness and width," said Mr Hammond.

"She has stitches all over her body and face and is an incredible amount of pain."

Mrs Hammond is expected to be in hospital for at least three months and will then spend a year in a wheelchair. She will be not be fully independent for at least 18 months.

Both of them were unconscious from the moment of impact until they were in Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton."I don't remember anything of what happened before or after the crash," said Mr Hammond.

He stayed in hospital for two days and suffered neck and back pains, grazes and double vision.

Mr and Mrs Hammond, who have three children, moved into their home in Brook Street in December after living and working in Saudi Arabia for the past nine years.

Mr Hammond spends two days a week at Exmoor Mobility, in Carhampton, and his wife works with special needs children and is a dinner lady at Minehead Middle School.

Mr Hammond said he was grateful to his relations who have been ferrying him back and forth from the hospital and looking after the children since the accident.