A couple who ‘collect’ Wetherspoon pubs had to be rescued from quicksand after straying into a live Army firing range.

Alan and Agnieszka Forbes were out walking on a beach near Formby in Merseyside when they heard a ‘wooshing’ sound.

The keen hikers had decided to walk along the sand while the tide had receded a far distance from land, rather than follow an inland diversion around a large military facility by the coastal route.

The couple, from Woldingham, Surrey, ended up having to be rescued after Alan sank up to his knees while trying to find a way out of the area as live firing took place a few hundred metres away.

While an undoubted jewel for walking and sightseeing, the region is also used by the British military at Altcar Training Camp, south of Formby.

After a ‘ceasefire’, th

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