A WOMAN was airlifted to a North Wales hospital after she fell ill during a sailing lesson off the North Wales coast. The 57-year-old was rushed to Bangor's Ysbyty Gwynedd on Saturday by an RAF Valley rescue helicopter and was released yesterday following treatment. The Shropshire woman, who has not been named, was aboard the Island Rose training yacht skippered by Stan Roberts of the Island Sea School at Y Felinheli. The training vessel, which carries up to five pupils, was north west of Puffin Island on Saturday when the woman fell ill. Mr Roberts rang Holyhead coastguard for advice. A coastguard spokesman said the woman was believed to have had a recent operation and was haemorrhaging badly. Mr Roberts added: "The coastguard put me through to a doctor and he advised the person should be taken off and taken to a hospital. "We had a lady pharmacist on board and she concurred that it was serious and the lady should go to hospital." The Sea King rescue helicopter at RAF Valley was scrambled along with the Beaumaris inshore lifeboat. Rescuers initially planned to transfer the woman onto the lifeboat amid fears the yacht's masts may impede the operation. "But when the helicopter came they advised us to drop our sails and steam into the wind and they lowered a man down and took her off," said Mr Roberts. Yesterday Mr Roberts went to visit his pupil and found she was due to be discharged. He said the was having a first trial lesson to see if she liked sailing when she fell ill. * ON Friday RAF Valley was called to airlift a 55-year-old man, from Newry, Northern Ireland, who collapsed while travelling to Liverpool from Dublin on the ferry Sea Express One. Ferry crew alerted Holyhead coastguard when the man complained he was suffering pins and needles in his fingers and chest pains. The man was winched from the ferry and flown to Ysbyty Gwynedd where an emergency team was waiting. But the hospital reported the man dead on arrival. ANTI-war campaigners staged a protest on a mid Wales army training ground on Saturday invading a firing range. They walked across the army training ground in Eppynt Mountain, near Sennybridge, Powys. They then held a service on the site of Babell Chapel. Troops on exercise near to the chapel at the time did not try to stop the demonstration, Organisers said the service, held in the chapel ruins, was held in memory of 50 families removed from their homes when the armed forces began using the land in 1940. It was led by Reverend Pryderi Llwyd Jones and Rev Guto Prys ap Gwynfor who described how the War Office forced 400 people who farmed the mountain to leave within a few weeks in 1940. He said: "This pushed the line where the Welsh language is spoken by the majority of people 10 miles to the west as these Welsh-speaking communities were cleared from the mountain." Rev Pryderi Llwyd Jones paid tribute to the work of the late Gwynfor Evans in defending the area from the War Office. He told how the great Plaid politician held protest meetings on the mountain in 1940. He said: "Gwynfor had worked tirelessly for the peace movement during the difficult war years. But Gwynfor had not tired of testifying as a Christian for peace and managed to convince many of the truth of his campaign against the sin of war." After the service a tree was planted in the cemetery by Guto Prys ap Gwynfor in memory of the work of his father Gwynfor Evans. | 
