A FAMILY from Bridgwater had a nightmare trip to hospital for the birth of a child – all because of a comic book ‘superhero’.

A protester dressed as Spiderman from Fathers4Justice caused delays on the roads after climbing onto a footbridge over a main road in Taunton to display banners last Tuesday.

Mark and Jo Edgington, who were trying to get to Musgrove Park Hospital, were among those caught up in the traffic chaos caused by the closure of Toneway.

Jo, 31, was asked to go into hospital after her contractions became more regular last Tuesday morning.

Husband Mark, 34, told the Mercury: “It was a dramatic start to the day. I’d been deciding whether to get onto the motorway or take the back way out towards Wellington, but I went for the motorway.

“When we hit the traffic, and saw the slip road was shut, we started to wonder what on earth we were going to do. The baby wasn’t actually born until the evening but Jo was panicking at the time because we didn’t know how quick the labour was going to be.

“I was trying to calm her down by saying, ‘don’t worry about it, you just concentrate on your breathing and I’ll get us there one way or another.’ At the time we didn’t know if it was an incident on the motorway and all three lanes were blocked – all we knew is, we didn’t want to have a baby in the back of a Honda.”

After hitting the traffic, Mark dialled 999 and emergency services instructed the couple to drive along the hard shoulder where a police escort would help them past the protest to carry on their journey on to Musgrove.

Baby William was eventually born on Tuesday evening, weighing 7lb 9oz.

Mark said: “The emergency services were absolutely brilliant and managed to get us through but cars were beeping at us, wondering what on earth we were doing taking the hard shoulder. We can safely say it was an emergency.”

  • Michael Waldron, 30, of Wellington, appeared in Taunton Magistrates’ Court last week charged with causing a public nuisance in connection to the incident. He was remanded in custody to appear at Taunton Crown Crown later this month.