A CYCLING campaigner is back home with her children after being seriously injured in a freak bike accident just days after her helmet was stolen.

Lindsi Bluemel was left|fighting for her life in |intensive care after suffering a fractured eye socket and bruising to her brain when she came off her bicycle as it clipped a 16ft piece of plastic in the cycling lane of a dual carriageway.

She struck her head on the concrete and was rushed to hospital.

But surrounded by her five children, she is on the road to recovery – and desperate to get back on her bike.

Speaking from their Southampton home, the 56-year-old’s only daughter Rhiannon told the Daily Echo she was relieved her mother is home and okay.

The 21-year-old student nurse, said: “We are lucky she is okay. It could have been so much worse. It was scary. She was really sick when she first went into hospital and it could have gone either way. We have been told she will make a |complete recovery.

“Her balance is still quite bad, she is really really tired and she has got double vision but she is really glad to be at home and grateful to everyone for their support and kindness. It is a long road ahead but mum is doing really well.”

The five children – Rhiannon, Chris, James, Alex and Robin – were devastated when their mum, who is the chairman of Southampton Cycling Campaign and a vocal advocate of safer cycling as well as a campaigner to get more people on their bikes was rushed to hospital. The |accident happened days after her helmet was stolen and she had not yet replaced it.

As reported in the Daily Echo, the family visited around the clock while she was treated in intensive care for six days and on a ward for five days suffering from |life-threatening injuries.

Outpatient But she has now been released as an outpatient of Southampton's brain injury rehabilitation team, and medics have assured her she will make a recovery and is unlikely to need surgery.

Despite the accident, Mrs Bluemel has already said she is keen to get back on her bike.

Rhiannon, said: “She has already started talking about cycling again but doctors say she won’t be able to until the new year."

She told how her best friend and fellow campaigner, Dilys Gartside, has been over and the pair have been discussing changes being made to Southampton cycle lanes.

Police are investigating the accident which happened on the cycle lane of Wessex Way, Bournemouth.