A primary school teacher has lost her £60,000 compensation fight with Go Ape after shattering her leg on a slide "aimed at children" as young as three.

Rosemary Mountain suffered a "severe" fracture when her trainer get caught and her leg was "dragged round behind her" whilst coming down a 10 to 12m long "Big Bounce" netted fabric tube slide at Go Ape’s Black Park adventure site near Slough in February 2019.

The 50-year-old was left with a leg broken in so many places it was "floppy" and a shin "bent in half at 45 degrees" after the accident on the slide in the site’s Nets Kingdom area, which Central London County Court heard was designed for three to 12-year-olds.

Mrs Mountain, who teaches year one and two children, sued Adventure Forest Ltd, trading as Go Ape, for about £60,000 over her injuries, claiming the slide - which was later replaced - was “too dangerous” and "not reasonably safe for operation."

But Judge Luke Ashby has now thrown out her case leaving her empty-handed, telling her injuries are always a risk in adventure playgrounds.

"There are inherent risks in undertaking adventure activities in adventure parks even when following instructions," he said, dismissing the claim.

The court heard that Mrs Mountain was on a half term visit to the Black Park Go Ape with her husband and her young children in February 2019 when the accident happened.

Rosemary Mountain outside court (Champion News)

In the witness box, she described the accident, telling the court that the family had decided to leave the area and go home, using the slide as the most convenient exit, with her husband and children going first.

"My trainers caught in the fabric of the slide about three quarters of the way down. You are not really sliding on it, you are just dropping.

"Somehow it got snagged on the side. I kept moving and it broke horribly.

“My foot and leg were dragged underneath me as I fell and I knew I had badly broken my leg because I could feel intense pain and see that half of my shin was bent at about 45 degrees.

"I could see that it was broken because it was in a flexible curve round behind me. It was just wobbly. When I came to a rest, I just thought ‘my kids can’t see my leg like this’."

"I’ve seen Go Ape a lot of times before. We signed to say there’s a risk of bumps and scrapes, but not this sort of injury.

"It says on the description that it’s suitable for three-year-olds, so I didn’t expect to break my leg in the way that I did.

"I know it says it’s risky, but it didn’t look risky and it said it was for young children."

After the horrific break, she had to be cut out of the netting at the bottom of the slide before being taken to hospital.

She told the court she had previously been an "outdoorsy adventurous person," but after the leg break had to undergo extensive surgery, remains plagued by chronic pain and is unlikely to ever return to running or her previous “active lifestyle”.

Lawters for Go Ape denied all blame and insisted there was nothing unsafe about the Nets Kingdom, which was “installed by industry specialists” and regularly inspected for potential hazards.

Lawyers for the company also said that Mrs Mountain signed a disclaimer accepting that she was at risk of injury before she went into the Nets Kingdom.

Dismissing the claim, the judge said: "There are inherent risks in undertaking adventure activities in adventure parks even when following instructions.

"The defendant operates many well-known adventure parks around the UK...it is not an amateur outfit, it is a household name and the installation reflected that.

"It is clear that injuries do occur. It is clear that people caught their feet on this slide probably eight or nine times before the accident," he went on, saying that after what had probably been around 100,000 uses of the slide there were eight or nine reported incidents.

"The reality is you have a handful of minor incidents on this slide before the accident," he said.

"It is socially desirable for adventure parks to be able to operate...There is a social utility to these types of activities.

"Of course that doesn’t mean that the defendant can throw caution to the wind and must take such measures to assure that its users are reasonably safe.

"[But] it was a course that was put together with professional advice to professional standards.

"It was a nasty injury and it was a very unpleasant accident, but that is what it was. This claim is dismissed.”