An Otley teacher and her family who went to Greece to get away from it all were forced to flee at dawn from their apartment because of a nearby blaze.

Sian Ellis, 37, an English teacher at Prince Henry's Grammar School, had travelled to the Greek island of Cephalonia, one of the Ionian Islands, south of Corfu.

Mrs Ellis, who is pregnant with twins, spent a fortnight on holiday with her husband and their son Douglas, who is 20 months old.

Mrs Ellis said: "There had been lots of fires in Greece and all the islands because it was a really hot summer out there. It was 40 degrees, which is hot, even for Greece.

"It was a very windy night, a Mistral-type wind and we saw there were fires on the neighbouring islands.

"We went to bed, thinking it was very exciting, but at 5am we were awoken by something behind our apartment block."

Mrs Ellis described seeing a big red glow in the sky, with sparks flying through the air, that came from an olive grove burning nearby.

She said: "The Greeks woke us up. They got a couple of cars and blew the horns to wake everybody up. They were watering down the area behind the apartment and they were obviously quite well prepared.

"As the sparks started to fly past our noses, we thought we had better get out and we gathered by the pool. Some people brought all their luggage and were staggering down with these huge bags. We just took passports and things like nappies for Douglas.

"That night there were fires all over the coast of the island. Because we were in the middle of a village and the apartment blocks are people's livelihoods, the fire brigade came out really quickly and managed to get it under control."

She added: "We sat by the pool, thinking 'will we have to jump in?'."

Luckily, the youngest member of the group took the incident in his stride.

Mrs Ellis said: "Douglas was completely unconcerned about it. He slept until we woke him to take him outside and he just thought it was completely normal. We were sat around the pool for about an hour."

"It wasn't really life-threatening, it was just a bit of a worry when it happened."

Some of the blazes in Greece this summer had been set by arsonists.

Mrs Ellis said: "There had been lots of fires in Greece and some of them were arson. It is to do with the olive groves.

"There is a special law that says you are not allowed to build on established olive groves, so when they burn down, people can build on them.

"The fire probably covered a couple of acres, but we did see other sites that covered whole mountain sides.

"The Greek airforce were putting out fires with aeroplanes dropping water. It was fascinating to watch. They were really brave because they were flying right into the flames."

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