Message in a bottle travels less than 300 miles in 23 years

A man who threw a message in a bottle into the sea when he was a child has been reunited with it 23 years on.

Donald Wylie, then aged 11, tossed the bottle into the water at Sandside beach, Deerness, on Orkney in 1985.

It was found during a summer beach clean-up on West Sands, St Andrews, Fife, and a search was launched to try to track down the sender.



He was eventually traced back to Orkney and was invited to St Andrews to see where the bottle ended up.

Roddy Yarr, from University of St Andrews said: "The message in a bottle was really quite a find and surprised us all and we're delighted to be able to reunite the owner with this piece of history.

"It really is quite remarkable that the bottle should be found after all this time - who knows where it has travelled to in the last quarter of a century."