A DRIVER is recovering in hospital after lying injured in his smashed up 4x4 vehicle for two days following a 100ft plunge down a rocky cliff.

The 50-year-old man from Beaufort, Ebbw Vale, who is not yet being named, suffered minor injuries, suspected dehydration and hypothermia following his ordeal in the abandoned Ystrad quarry in Trefil near Tredegar, part of the Brecon Beacons Natio-nal Park.

Police and local people say he is lucky to be alive. The man was pulled from the wreckage of his overturned Daihatsu Fourtrak, and airlifted to Abergavenny's Nevill Hall Hospital after the alarm was raised by a passerby just before 1.30pm yesterday.

The passerby called police to say a vehicle was at the bottom of the quarry, and a rescue operation was immediately launched.

Five officers from Trede-gar police station in a van, car and 4x4 vehicle also attended the scene to assist with the rescue operation.

The air ambulance was summoned from its Swan-sea base because a normal ambulance could not negotiate potholes in the road leading to the accident site.

Paramedics at the scene found the man was unable to move but was conscious.

It took rescuers about 90 minutes to bring him up from the quarry. The cause of the crash is being investigated.

A spokesman for the Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust said the man is in a stable condition at hospital.

The rescue team told the Argus that had the vehicle rolled only another ten yards off the quarry track, it would have dropped down a sheer 150-foot drop.

Gwent Police Inspector Ruth Price said the man was "very fortunate" to have picked up minor injuries falling the accident.

She added: "We really don't know how his vehicle came to come off the road up there. He didn't have a mobile phone and it is very remote up there. You normally have people going to the quarry, but with the weather being so bad he wasn't seen until yesterday."

Colin James, a passing cyclist from Penybont, Tynewydd, said: "He is very lucky to be alive. It is just as well it didn't happen in winter with the cold temperatures we have here."

And Terry Ham, the landlord at the nearby Tafarn-Ty-Uchaf pub at the village of Trefil, said: "I could see activity from the police and apparently the vehicle fell down a slope as high as a house. There is a good drop. "The guy had been there since Monday so it's amazing to think he is still alive.

"He was spotted by a motorist and a helicopter took him away." He said the limestone quarry where the man fell was disused for seven or eight years.