THEY wake up to stunning views, a prime seafront location and a nature reserve as a front garden.

But today a family is facing eviction from the Hampshire beauty spot they call home - after spending nine months living in an ambulance.

Paul and Tracy Hanna bought the 23-year-old B-registration Ford from an Internet auction site and have been living on the waterfront in Hythe since last July.

However, council bosses could today succeed in throwing them off the site, at the junction of Shore Road and Frost Lane.

Neighbours will not be sorry to see the back of them.

One man, who lives in nearby Cormorant Road and asked to remain anonymous, said: "Every time I drive by, I am incensed by it. A lot of people round here are.

"They are encroaching on a site of special scientific interest and it has been going on for nearly a year. I think it is a disgrace."

The couple, who live in the ambulance with their 15-year-old daughter, use a camping stove to cook and boil water and have an oil generator to power a television.

They say they have suffered months of verbal abuse from passers-by and are desperate to find a permanent place to live.

Tracy, 35, told the Daily Echo: "We are not travellers - we are homeless. We are just trying to make the best out of a bad deal.

"It looks like a nice view but I would swap it in an instant for a two-bedroom flat or house. It really is not nice.

"We get eggs thrown at the van and cars hoot at us from the road."

Tracy and motorbike courier Paul, 37, were caught in a vicious circle after running up arrears on their rented Fawley home due to ill health.

They were evicted last April and classed as voluntarily homeless by New Forest District Council due to the arrears. They did not have money to put down a deposit to rent and could not claim housing benefit because they had no address.

Last year the Daily Echo reported that the pair were living in a Nissan estate car at Boltons Bench, Lyndhurst.

It prompted the Waterside-based Dibden Allotments charity to step in to provide the family with £1,000 for a fresh start but that has failed to end their plight.

A fast track hearing at Southampton County Court today was due to determine who owns the land they are staying on and whether the family should be evicted.

Tracy denied their current home was an eyesore in the area and said they had collected eight bin liners of litter from the fringes of the marshland nature reserve since they arrived last summer.

She added: "I have absolutely no idea what we will do or where we will go if we are evicted. The whole thing has been putting us under enormous stress."

A spokesman from New Forest District Council said she was unable to comment on the matter before the case was heard.