A 78-year-old French woman who survived a week injured in a forest was quoted Monday as saying she did a lot of sleeping while waiting to be rescued, DPA reported.
"I lost my way, I tumbled down a slope... and I fell asleep. I slept, slept, slept," Michelle Riotton said in an interview published in the daily Le Parisien.
Riotton spent seven days and six nights at the bottom of a ravine about 700 metres from her home in the Alpine village of Armoy. She was found Saturday by rescuers.
Riotton said she survived by eating the two cookies she had with her and by drinking rainwater.
"I wiped my face with my hand to get the water and then licked my hand," she said.
Asked how she managed to survive the cold for such a long time, Riotton replied, "You know, we mountain people have solid nerves and bodies."
However, she will no longer go walking in the forest.
"The woods are over for me," she said. "I can't look at them any more."