A woman dying from cancer, who faced threats of arrest over a hotel bill after the collapse of travel firm XL, was reunited with her family at home yesterday.

Cherry Dodgson, 49, was taking a final holiday but said she was told by the manager of the hotel in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, that she would have to pay an extra £1400 or face arrest if she tried to leave.

Mrs Dodgson, from Wells, in Somerset, is in the last stages of lung cancer and had cashed in her life savings for the holiday with eight of her family and friends.

However, after XL went bust last Friday, she was not sure how she would get home and was forced to scrape together the extra money following demands from the hotel.

She arrived at Bristol International Airport in the early hours of yesterday morning to be greeted by her daughter, Shani Winfield, and son, Alan Collins.

Speaking from her home later, she said: "It feels wonderful to be home, I am absolutely delighted. We got back at 2am, but there was so much to do I didn't get home until 5am, so I've only had a few hours sleep and I'm exhausted.

"I'm not very well at all and it is just so sad that everything went so wrong because it was my final family holiday."

Mrs Dodgson has had five rounds of chemotherapy, which has not worked and is now due to have radiotherapy to stop the cancer spreading to her brain.

"People say that we will get our money back, but that's not the point," she said. "I will not get the last holiday I could have with my family back.

"Even if I was well enough to go away, there is no way we could afford it because we spent everything we had on that holiday. That is the sad part and we are so angry that it was ruined, because it meant so much to us."