A NORTH Wales couple last night told how they were nearly thrown off the edge of a cliff by an earthquake in Greece which injured 50 people. Chris Fairclough, 29, was backpacking with his 23-year-old girl-friend Natasha Thomas in Cephalonia last week when one of the biggest quakes in decades struck, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale. The couple, of Llanfairfechan, had hired a white Fiat Seicento which they parked for the night on the roadside. At that time it was about eight feet from a cliff edge overlooking the sea. They hung wet clothes in the trees and slept in the car but were awoken by the noise of the quake at about 8am. Mr Fairclough, a trainee theatre technician at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Bodelwyddan, explained: "The first thing we knew about it was that the car and trees were shaking. "I thought it was someone trying to wake us up. "It was a strange feeling." In fact, the tremor had shunted the car dangerously close to the precipice of a 50ft drop. "We found that it had shifted us three or four feet towards the cliff's edge," he said. Later on they were struck again, when an aftershock shook the ground, but the couple did not find out much more about it until they returned home on Tuesday. Chris said: "We did not hear much official news about it apart from the fact that locals told us it had put a village out of action." It came as Greece held memorials for the 50th anniversary of the quakes which devastated Cephalonia - killing 476 people and leaving 90pc of the population homeless - as featured in Louis de Bernières' novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Another couple from Lanark in Scotland told of their horror after their own frightening experience. Sylvia Steen, 40, was walking beside cliffs on Lefkada with her husband Tom, 46, when one of the quakes sent rocks raining down on them. The Athens Geodynamic Institute said the quake's epicentre was about six miles under the sea-bed and about 19 miles west of Lefkada. Rescue officials said at least 50 people were treated for injuries, including broken limbs caused by falling rocks and roof tiles. The quake turned a peak summer holiday week into a frightened exodus as tourists streamed from the island. The only bridge linking it with the mainland was jammed with cars trying to get away. | 
