Girl of three and father die in light aircraft crash

A woman in the plane was said to have crawled from the wreckage and survived with head and facial injuries which were not life-threatening.

None of the victims had been named last night but witnesses said they were a local family who had taken off seconds earlier from a private airstrip.

The crash beside the M25 near Brentwood, Essex, was one of a string of tragedies which claimed more than a dozen lives over the holiday weekend.

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On the Norfolk Broads a 30-year-old mother was swept to her death after a family boat trip turned to horror. Amie-Rae Drennan, from Lowestoft, was with her partner Kris, son Tor, eight, and two other men when their dinghy capsized.

Teenagers sunbathing on the bank of the Waveney near Bungay jumped in to help the group but could not reach Miss Drennan, whose body was found 200 yards downstream.

Off the Scilly Isles, Margaret Yeats, who was in her 70s, died when a fishing boat capsized in rough seas.

Her husband William and their friend Brian Richards were rescued by a ferry which spotted them clinging to the upturned boat. Coastguards said none of the three had been wearing lifejackets.

In Northamptonshire, a 16-year-old boy was feared drowned after going for a swim in a quarry lake near the village of Tiffield and two men from Luton and Bedford died when their microlight crashed into a field near Rushden.

Dutchman Jan Van Alphen, 58, was killed in front of his wife Thea, their three children and more than 6,000 spectators when his giant tractor overturned at the British National Tractor Pulling Championships near Blackpool.

On the roads, a 42-year-old woman was killed when a BMW crashed into trees near her home in Headley, Hampshire, and a lorry driver died in a crash involving three articulated lorries on the M25 in Essex.