When Amelia Peckham came off a quad bike and broke her spine aged just 19, her life changed in an instant. Becoming a mother seemed a distant and impossible dream. Now mum to two sons and the founder of a thriving company, she tells Helen Coffey why ‘concerned’ onlookers need to mind their own business Amelia Peckham founded her own business, Cool Crutches.
Photo: Coolcrutches.com In October 2005, I was 19 years old and studying at university in Edinburgh. I went away for the weekend to this place in the middle of nowhere in rural Scotland for a friend’s birthday.
We weren’t allowed to drive a car because the dirt tracks were too rough, but they offered us a quad bike instead. On the way back, my friend, who’d grown up using quad bikes, asked if I wanted to drive. I was a bit scared, but she told me to just go really slowly.
There was a pothole, and she told me to slightly turn into the hill, which I did — and then one of the back wheels slid off the edge of the track. We went into this huge drop that eventually landed in a river at the bottom. I was thrown off first.
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