TWO schoolchildren have been hailed heroes after rescuing a woman they found unconscious in a ditch.

Connor Fowles, 12, and Chloe Ellis, 11 were cycling through Steventon, near Didcot, last Thursday night when they spotted Rebecca Lake lying face down by a stream next to her bike.

The pair, who live in the village, had been delivering a fish and chip supper to Chloe’s grandparents.

Chloe ran and knocked on the nearest house to get help while Connor called for an ambulance from his mobile phone.

Both said they knew exactly what to do from having police officers come in to talk at their schools.

Connor, an Oxford United fan who goes to St Birinus School in Didcot, called 999 and said: “They said I was speaking really fast and told me to calm down.

“They asked my and Chloe’s age and when I told them they said ‘you’ve done a really good job for your age – most people would just have left it’. “I was a bit traumatised and Chloe was shaking. Loads of people have been calling me and Chloe ‘hero one and hero two’.”

Yesterday, Amanda Edwards, emergency call taker for South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), said staff wanted to “thank and commend” the pair.

She said: “Their quick actions in noticing her, stopping to help and calling 999 meant that help could be arranged and as soon as our ambulance crew arrived on scene they could start that vital immediate treatment. They did a great job.”

Chloe, who will be starting at John Mason School in Abingdon in September, said: “We didn’t really look very closely, we just saw her bright yellow reflective jacket and I ran around the corner and knocked on someone’s door.

“We knew we needed to get help.”

The people from the house lifted the woman out of the ditch and she regained consciousness before an ambulance arrived.

None of the people who helped the woman knew her, and she did not know who she had to thank for potentially saving her life.

But the Oxford Mail tracked her down and discovered she was Rebecca Lake – a 25-year-old paediatric nurse at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

On Wednesday, we reunited her with her rescuers.

Miss Lake, who has worked at the JR for the past three years, said: “I hadn’t realised how young they were but they were lovely kids. If they hadn’t found me I certainly could have got quite cold, but no one is really sure what happened.

“I was just on my bike, I went for a ride and the next thing I knew I was on the grass bank with people on top of me.”

Miss Lake said doctors were investigating to see if she might be epileptic. Chloe’s mum Nickii Ellis said: “For their age, they did the right thing at the right time.”

Villager Tracey Symm added: “It was so brave of them to do that; kids don’t know how to do things like that these days.”

The rescue has raised concerns among residents, who say the ambulance – which arrived at the scene less than nine minutes after the 999 call – had to wait at the level crossing on the Causeway for trains to pass.

Until a few years ago, the crossing was permanently manned, but Network Rail installed a barrier.

Villagers claim the rail firm always promised that in the case of an emergency there was a procedure in place to stop trains.

However, SCAS spokeswoman Catherine Morrow said this week there was no such arrangement in place and Network Rail spokeswoman Victoria Bradley said it did not receive a request for access.

Steventon Parish Council said it would investigate what procedures were in place.