Patient’s taxi was sent from Cambridge

Mrs Dickens, 76, who lives with her husband Dennis in St Andrew’s Close, has had increasingly severe nosebleeds over the past ten years. Her doctor referred her to a consultant at Hammersmith Hospital.

It was too long a journey for her husband to drive, so Mrs Dickens asked for hospital transport, which the London hospital said had to be arranged through her local hospital.

Mrs Dickens said: “I phoned Great Western Hospital and explained I had an appointment at Hammersmith Hospital. I was asked to hold and the woman came back and said they did not provide the transport either.

“I called the London hospital again and was told that as I would be going there for the first time I had to arrange transport at my end. That was in July and my appointment was on Septem-ber 11 but I heard no more.

“Four days before my appointment I still had no transport and out of the blue I had a phone call to say transport was arranged.

“The car turned up and as we headed off towards London I noticed the driver had a very strong Cockney accent.

“When I asked him how long he had lived in Wiltshire he laughed and said he had come all the way from Cambridge and had left at half past four that morning.”

The driver said he would not be taking Mrs Dickens back to Wootton Rivers because after his statutory break he had to go to Glasgow to pick up a patient who had to be taken to a hospital in Birmingham.

Mrs Dickens was taken home by a London ambulance.

Mrs Dickens, once dubbed the Battling Grannie for her part in a campaign to prevent the maternity unit at Savernake Hospital from closing, said: “I think people don’t believe me when I tell them that a taxi came all the way from Cambridge to take me to hospital in London.”

The mystery over who provided the taxi deepened when a Great Western Hospital spokeswoman said the transport was not supplied by them and Hammersmith Hospital confirmed they had not provided it because Mrs Dickens was a new patient.