A teacher left paralysed after breaking his neck in a freak welly-wanging accident on a school trip is suing an adventure centre for more than £5 million in damages.

Glennroy Blair-Ford had survived a week of outdoor activities with his secondary school charges on Dartmoor in April 2007 when he took part in a "Mini Olympics" event on the final night.

One of the games involved children and adults throwing Wellington boots as far as they could, with the teachers handicapped by having to throw backwards through their legs.

But tragedy struck when the 45-year-old former head of design and technology at Wilmington Enterprise College, Dartford, swung his boot and was propelled head first to the ground.

Mr Blair-Ford, then of Bromley, was catastrophically injured, fracturing his neck, and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

He is unable to move his body below the neck and now lives in a residential nursing facility several miles away from his family’s home on a leafy private estate in Bromley.

The devoted Christian, who has published many articles and delivered lectures on his faith, is now suing the CRS Adventures Limited centre where he was injured.

His legal team say the River Dart Country Park-based company, run by couple Clare and Roger Sell, breached a duty it owed to the teacher.

In court documents at the High Court, his lawyers say he was simply told by instructors at the centre to throw the welly backwards through his legs and was not warned of the risks.

“The method of throwing the claimant was required to adopt, namely hurling the boot backwards between his legs, was unsafe,” said barrister, Nathan Tavares, in particulars of claim.

“The method produced rotation of the body of the thrower, which resulted in the weight of the body acting outside the base of support provided by the feet.

“At the same time, the thrower’s hands were between his legs and behind him releasing the welly, so that he overbalanced forwards and could not break his fall.

“The greater the effort employed in this method of throw, the greater the risk of falling forwards unprotected.”

The teacher, who was only 40 at the time, had treatment at hospitals in Torbay, Plymouth and Sheffield before he was able to settle at the nursing home in south London.

He requires ventilator support 23 hours per day and is dependant on others for all aspects of day-to-day life, although he continued after the accident to participate in Bible classes by means of special software.

His lawyers are asking for a compensation package worth more than £5 million to fund the full-time care he will need for the rest of his life.

Mr Tavares says the teachers could have been handicapped in safer ways, perhaps by throwing from further back or by using a heavier boot. Mr Blair-Ford should have been warned of the risks, he says.

CRS Adventures Ltd denies liability to pay damages, arguing that the throwing method was not unsafe and that the risk of serious injury was “not foreseeable”.