From UK to Australia: message in a bottle
27 Sep 2012 1:57 AM GMT
Nature’s amazing courier service this! Message in a bottle thrown by a four-year-old into the English Channel travelled over 16,000 kilometres and reached Australia in just five months.
Jasmine Hudson threw her message in a bottle into the sea off the edge of Bournemouth Pier in the vain hope it might drift slowly to her aunt in Guernsey, a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.
And when four-year-old Hudson heard nothing from across the Channel she imagined it had been swallowed by a shark.
But incredibly, five months later, her precious note hit land in Largs Bay Beach near Adelaide, southern Australia, 16,093 kilimetres away from where it plopped in the water in Dorset, where she was on holiday with her family, the Daily Mail reported.
On the other side of the world Barbara Richards was strolling along the beach when she saw the bottle, read the note and wrote back to her new young penpal in Tamworth, near Birmingham.
To travel that distance her message must have travelled at an astonishing three miles an hour, or 2.6 knots, as it bobbed its way to the other side of the globe from Dorset.
Jasmine’s mother, Louise, had warned her daughter not to get her hopes up when she wrote the message back in April, at the family home before heading to Bournemouth for their summer break. ‘Jasmine’s grandparents had bought her a message in a bottle kit when they went on holiday as a present,’ Louise said.
‘It’s supposed to be a bit of a novelty, but we were going on holiday to Bournemouth, so we thought we’d fill it in and take it along. Jasmine’s aunt lives in Guernsey, so we said we’d see if we could get the bottle to float a few miles across the channel,’ she said.
‘Never in our wildest dreams did we ever think it would get all the way to Australia,’ she added.
Richards found the little girl’s note and wrote a reply straight back to her.
Her tender letter read: ‘Dear Jasmine, As fate would have it we have been introduced to each other by your message in a bottle, Bournemouth Pier looks very interesting. I searched online on the computer to find out what I could, yes the pier exists and yes your address was there too.’ ‘Your message in a bottle took five months to float up on Largs Bay Beach in South Australia,’ she wrote.
Jasmine Hudson threw her message in a bottle into the sea off the edge of Bournemouth Pier in the vain hope it might drift slowly to her aunt in Guernsey, a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.
And when four-year-old Hudson heard nothing from across the Channel she imagined it had been swallowed by a shark.
But incredibly, five months later, her precious note hit land in Largs Bay Beach near Adelaide, southern Australia, 16,093 kilimetres away from where it plopped in the water in Dorset, where she was on holiday with her family, the Daily Mail reported.
On the other side of the world Barbara Richards was strolling along the beach when she saw the bottle, read the note and wrote back to her new young penpal in Tamworth, near Birmingham.
To travel that distance her message must have travelled at an astonishing three miles an hour, or 2.6 knots, as it bobbed its way to the other side of the globe from Dorset.
Jasmine’s mother, Louise, had warned her daughter not to get her hopes up when she wrote the message back in April, at the family home before heading to Bournemouth for their summer break. ‘Jasmine’s grandparents had bought her a message in a bottle kit when they went on holiday as a present,’ Louise said.
‘It’s supposed to be a bit of a novelty, but we were going on holiday to Bournemouth, so we thought we’d fill it in and take it along. Jasmine’s aunt lives in Guernsey, so we said we’d see if we could get the bottle to float a few miles across the channel,’ she said.
‘Never in our wildest dreams did we ever think it would get all the way to Australia,’ she added.
Richards found the little girl’s note and wrote a reply straight back to her.
Her tender letter read: ‘Dear Jasmine, As fate would have it we have been introduced to each other by your message in a bottle, Bournemouth Pier looks very interesting. I searched online on the computer to find out what I could, yes the pier exists and yes your address was there too.’ ‘Your message in a bottle took five months to float up on Largs Bay Beach in South Australia,’ she wrote.
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