Three exhausted businessmen are back in the arms of their loved ones after escaping bomb blasts in Bali.

Hugh Sugden, 38, Neil Cullen, 47, and Philip Jarman, 43, thanked their lucky stars when they arrived home to Steeton and Silsden unscathed, after being just 200 yards from where a bomb exploded in the heart of the south east Asian island's tourist area on Saturday night.

The first thing Mr Sugden did when he got back to his home in Dale View Road, Steeton, was buy a lottery scratch card.

"I thought I'd ride my luck. I scratched off the three panels and I got three matching chests -- when I looked to see what I had won I saw that it was £1. I just laughed my head off ," he said.

The three men, who were on a five-day business trip to the island, were being driven towards Kuta Square when the suicide bombers struck.

Mr Cullen, president of Silsden Park Rangers rugby club, said: "We were heading for the square and were stuck in traffic on the street that runs parallel when it went off.

"There was a massive bang that had the effect of an earthquake. The ground trembled and everything seemed to shake around us.

"There was pandemonium after it happened. People were panicking and running away. It was terrifying."

Mr Sugden, who captains Silsden's first cricket team, added: "We had only just been talking about the 2002 bombs with our driver as we'd been to visit the memorial.

"As soon as he heard the bang he just started praying."

Mr Sugden spoke of the harrowing aftermath of the explosion, which claimed 19 lives, where they witnessed bodies, piled three deep, being driven away from the carnage.

"At that time of night the roads are grid-locked. The ambulances couldn't get through so bodies were being brought out on the back of trucks. It was grim," he said.

Mr Cullen added: "If we hadn't been stuck in traffic we might have been there when the bombs went off.

"We feel lucky and relieved."

It was 12 hours before the men could get through to their families because mobile phone systems crashed.

Mr Cullen, from Silsden, said: "We got through on Sunday morning. They had seen the bombings on the television and were frantic with worry."

The men spent the next few days in their hotel rooms.

Mr Sugden added: "We went out the following night but the place was like a ghost town. Everyone was just in utter shock."

The friends have travelled to Bali on numerous occasions because of their land and property business interests, but had not been since the terrorist attack three years ago.

They returned to Bali to look at some property to develop into holiday homes.

Mr Cullen said: "We gave it time to settle down and we thought it was safe to go back. Tourism had revived and that gave us the confidence to go."

But Mr Sugden said he had not been phased by the attack.

"It's certainly put a few things into perspective, but being in the place when something like that happens is like lottery odds, but if it happens it happens. It certainly hasn't put me off going back to Bali. We have to go back because if we don't, if tourism stops, it will decimate the economy," he said.

At least 26 people died and more than 100 were injured when three suicide bombers targeted restaurants in Jimbayan Beach and Kuta, to the south of the island, on Saturday night.

Indonesian officials named Malaysian Azahari Bin Husin -- known as "Demolition Man" -- and Noordin Mohamed Top as two of the culprits. Both men are thought to have been behind the 2002 attacks, which left 202 people dead, including 26 Britons.