IT WAS supposed to be the holiday of a lifetime - but a foreign jaunt turned into a life-or-death year-long dash for freedom.

Barbara Wayward, the County Durham woman whose remarkable wartime adventure was as exciting as anything Hollywood could dream up, has died at the age of 92.

Barbara was only 26 and on holiday in Norway when Britain declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939.

She could have stayed in Norway and hidden from the German troops, but she was determined to get home to join the Wrens and fight the enemy.

Later, she would joke about it at her home in Raby Park, Staindrop, near Barnard Castle, but at the time the flight to freedom was no laughing matter.

She sat on the Norwegian prime minister's knee in a crowded car as he and other top politicians fled to Sweden in a convoy, pursued by German Panzer tanks.

She moved through Sweden, Finland and Lapland, and was even arrested by British soldiers as a suspected spy in Iceland, before eventually getting on a Royal Navy ship back to England.

Barbara immediately joined the Wrens, and later made many return voyages across the Atlantic in the liner Queen Elizabeth, which was used to ferry 15,000 US troops at a time to Europe.

Her son, David, who lives in Darlington, said yesterday: "She went to Norway for a two-week holiday but was trapped there for a few months, as it was impossible to leave.

"But when the Germans invaded she managed to get into the prime minister's escape convoy.

"She sat on his knee for two days in a packed car during a high-speed journey to Sweden, with the enemy tanks only about 15 minutes behind, until they got over the border."

He added: "When she got to Iceland, the British thought she was a spy and kept her in custody for two days. But as soon as she was cleared she hitched a lift home on a warship."

She became one of the first Wrens allowed to go to sea. When she was on the Queen Elizabeth, it had to constantly dodge German U boats and destroyers in the Atlantic.

She was single at the time, as Barbara Tetlow, but met her husband, Commander John Hayward, in a convoy operations room and they were married in 1946.

The couple ran an old people's home in Durham for 19 years before she became comptroller of Raby Castle for ten years. She helped to establish it as a tourist attraction and lived in her home in the grounds after she retired.

The funeral service will be at St Mary's Parish Church, Staindrop, at noon on Friday.