When 10-year-old Anna Turner found a ‘message in a bottle’ on a Pembrokeshire beach she was astonished to find how far it had travelled.
The well-worn plastic bottle had been thrown into the sea from a boat in 2006 and contained Titanic-themed drawings by three youngsters.
Had it been carried by the tide from far-flung shores, or tossed around the sea-bed of countless oceans in the 17 intervening years?
No! Amazingly, the bottle had just come from round the coast in Carmarthen Bay and the young artists – now aged 23 – have all been identified.
Anna, from New Hedges, was on nearby Monkstone Beach with her dad Dave and brother Marcus, 11, on Sunday, October 9, when she found the bottle.
“I was looking for a bottle to put some sea water in and this was caught up in some brambles at the back of the beach,” she said.
“I could see a rolled-up piece of paper inside and when I pulled it out I saw the drawings.
“I thought it was pretty cool they had been in the bottle all that time, and we were all very excited.”
Her mum Kate posted a picture of the drawings on Facebook with the names of the children – Dylan Bolton, Jade Rowell and Gabriella Fecci - and they were quickly spotted by Dylan’s mum, Anna, from Tenby.
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The three pals from the town's St Teilo’s School were all around six years old at the time and filled a bottle with their drawings on a Titanic theme.
“I remember them asking my mum, Suzanne, to throw it in the sea when she went home to Caldey Island, where she lives,” said Anna. “Of course, she wouldn’t dream of dropping a bottle in the sea nowadays!”
Anna Turner has shown the drawings to her classmates at Saundersfoot School and also took them to show her namesake in Tenby.
“I just can’t get over it,” said Anna Bolton. “The drawings look like they were done yesterday.
“Little Anna was just so excited and happy to find the pictures, which I said she must keep.”
One theory for the bottle being so close to home is that it may have been washed up on Monkstone beach and into the brambles in a storm years ago and then uncovered – maybe after the fire on the cliffs earlier this year.
Suggested Anna: “Maybe it was floating around in the sea off Tenby and Dylan, who now works on the Caldey boats, even sailed past it?
"Or it could have gone all around the world and come back – who knows?
"The mystery and coincidence of it all makes it such a lovely story.”
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