DAVID Rose was riding his motorbike home on a small country road after a day at work when a car came at him head on.

On holiday from France, the driver was used to driving on the right hand side and accidentally travelled onto the wrong side of the road at a corner.

With a split second to avoid a potentially fatal collision, David turned his bike into the kerb.

The action saved his life, but not his right leg.

David, 63, of Wivenhoe, said: “The car slammed into it and the lower half of my right leg was torn off by the impact.

“I was big and strong. I didn’t smoke or do drugs and I lived a very active life. That strength saved my life.

“I was conscious throughout, lying in the road and dying through blood loss. No doubt the driver was in shock.

“By some miracle, a Metropolitan Police car just happened to drive down this road. Two police officers were inside and one, when he wasn’t wearing his police uniform wore a St John’s Ambulance uniform.”

The officer applied a tourniquet while his colleague phoned an ambulance.

David said: “He undoubtedly saved my life.”

David was just 23 when he lost his limb. While the injury initially affected the part of his leg below the knee, gangrene set in and in a second operation he had to have the joint removed.

It was to be the start of a long journey for the Thames Water worker, who had enjoyed motorbike racing and cricket before the accident.

Now faced with an uncertain future, David was determined to find a way back to normality.

He said: “I had two legs. I had a normal one and one that’s much shorter. My surgeon created a very muscular residual limb and I had a prosthetic leg from 1980.

“I got back to playing cricket that year too. Thames Water even kept my job open for me. So I went about rebuilding my life.

“There was no disability sport in those days, nothing like there is now. I had to make it up as I went along.

“I wasn’t going to sit still and feel sorry for myself. I made the best of my opportunities and if I couldn’t find them I created them.”

A keen cyclist even before he bought a motorbike, in the mid 1980s David returned to cycling.

He and his wife Susan, who he married on August 1, 1981, three days after Charles and Diana, took up cycling together.

David, who together with Susan has two boys and three grandchildren, said: “I was 23 when I lost my leg and I’m 63 next month and I don’t feel it.

“I enjoy riding and swimming. I met my wife before my accident and she’s an incredible person. She stuck with me and helped me through all the dark times when I was trying to work out how I was going to live the life I wanted to live.”

But getting back to his life wasn’t all David wanted to achieve.

Living with the reality of losing a limb every day meant he was in a unique position of being able to help others like him.

He quickly joined the Limbless Association and helped to launch the charity’s volunteer visitor scheme, which brings together recent amputees with one who has been living with the condition for longer.

The scheme was a huge success and David, who is also an Essex magistrate, was made an honorary vice chairman of the charity.

It is a scheme he continues with to this day, just this week speaking to a lower-leg amputee in Devon.

But learning to live with limb loss isn’t a one-time recovery. Every day is part of David’s rehabilitation, even 40 years after the accident.

He said: “Recently, riding up some of the hills around Wivenhoe and Alresford was taking more effort and energy. I thought ‘what’s wrong? Why am I not enjoying this?’.

“The truth is you meet challenges everyday and you go through this process so you can live a normal life.”

David was determined to keep riding and he visited Stanway bike shop Thomas’s, where he was advised to try an electric bike.

Thanks to the NHS, which had made a commitment in 2017 to bring improved prosthetics veterans were using to limbless civilians, he also gained a new prosthetic, an Ottobock C-Leg 4 microprocessor knee.

David said: “As long as I can keep wearing my prosthetic I can continue to ride. It’s incredible.

“The outcomes are so positive for people.”

David’s experiences mean he can go on to encourage and help others who find themselves in the same situation. Next month he begins a series of conferences across the UK designed at helping those with limb loss.

And he knows just the message he wants to get across.

David added: “There’s never a good time to lose a limb. It’s not what nature wants us to do.

“However, if by some misfortune you do experience a limb loss the services are now the best they have ever been.

“The technology coming forward is incredible.

“It has taken its toll. But I have lived an active life and I haven’t let it hold me back, 40 years on from limb loss.

“There is life after limb loss. And it’s real.”