'My unbelievable luck', by hotel sleepwalker who fell five storeys

Dale Beckett, 23, shattered his left foot, broke both legs, cracked a hip joint and two ribs, punctured both lungs and damaged his spleen and kidneys.

But, miraculously, he survived – partly by landing on the only patch of grass below his balcony, growing where a flagstone had been removed from a paved area.

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Dale said: "The doctors couldn't believe it. They said I survived because I was asleep and my body was really relaxed."

The accident happened during a holiday with friends and family in Malaga last month. Dale, from Stanley, County Durham, recalled: "We'd been out for a couple of drinks and then gone to bed. My cousin said I just got up in the night and walked off the balcony."

Dale was taken to a local hospital on the Costa del Sol.

He said: "I woke up four days later. I was really worried I wasn't going to be able to walk again. They had to snap all of me back into position – it was awful."

Dale was discharged after three weeks. But – with punctured lungs – he was unable to fly home and had to endure a four-day train trip across Europe instead, escorted by his father Thomas, 51, and brother Paul, 29.

Dale said: "It was dreadful. I had to sit up for hours when all I wanted to do was lie down. I didn't think we were ever going to make it home."

The ex-window cleaner is having more treatment at the University Hospital of North Durham and expects to be released this week – though his recovery is likely to take up to six months.