A TEACHER from St Laurence School is taking to the slopes with the Back-Up Trust at Winter Park, Colorado, in February.

PE teacher Talan Skeels-Piggins, 33, was paralysed from the chest down after a motorbike accident on the A363 outside Bradford in March.

He broke his neck and two vertebrae in his back and spent months in rehabilitation in the spinal unit at Salisbury Hospital before moving into a flat in Bath.

He is now back at St Laurence one day a week teaching PE. Last month he was told he had been accepted for a Back-Up Trust course in America, and flies out with eight other course members and a medical team on February 9, for 12 days.

Mr Skeels-Piggins said: "I am very excited about going skiing as it is something I have done since I was a child and this year will be very different from anything I did before."

Mr Skeels-Piggins is also competing in the Bath Half Marathon in March and is waiting for a specialist racing wheelchair to arrive so he can start training.