A 68-YEAR-OLD Liphook man died in a collision with a car in the Longmoor Road, close to the Deers Hut pub, on Monday.

Peter Kelly, of Triggs Cottages, Midhurst Road, left home around 11-40 am, telling his wife Annette that he was going to catch the bus to the Deers Hut pub.

Thirty-five minutes later, said a police spokesman, "he basically crossed the road and walked into the path of a Saab car travelling from the Liphook direction towards the A3."

The Saab was driven by Sandra Heward (39) of Alton.

Mr Kelly was taken by ambulance to Queen Alexandra Hospital at Portsmouth, but was dead on arrival.

Longmoor Road was closed for around three hours while police examined the scene.

The police spokesman said it was still unclear why Mr Kelly was crossing the road from the woodland area opposite the Deers Hut pub, when the bus would have dropped him on the Deers Hut side of the road.

Mr Kelly, who retired in l986, was a steward in the sergeants' mess at Bordon.

Police investigating the accident are appealing for witnesses. Anyone who has any information about the accident should contact Wpc Leana Warwick at Whitehill police station.

It is the third fatal accident on the Griggs Green stretch of the Longmoor Road in the last eight years.

In April l993 policeman's wife Emma Robinson (22) died when her car left the road and ploughed down a bank and into a tree as she travelled from Liphook towards the A3 on a Sunday evening.

More recently, a Liphook man who was driving to Portsmouth early in the morning to catch the Isle of Wight ferry to work, died when his car hit a tree on the other side of the road.