A message in a bottle dropped in the sea in Canada has washed up in the Western Isles.
The far-travelled bottle was found in a puddle on the small island of Pabbay off Harris – having been blown some distance inland.
The bottle was discovered by the Campbell family – Kathryn and husband Raymond, and their children Sarah, 17, Rachael, 14, and Angus, 11, – as they went for a walk during their holidays.
Remarkably it’s not the first time it’s happened either – in 2015, youngster Angus found a message in a bottle on Pabbay which had been thrown into the sea off the Faroe Islands.
The Campbell family, from Strond in Harris, regularly holiday on Pabbay, taking advantage of the isolation as Mr Campbell tends to sheep on the uninhabited island.
Mrs Campbell said: “We found the bottle in a puddle about a quarter of a mile up from the shore.
“The wind must have blown it up there.
“When we opened it there was a message inside from a man called Craig Drover.”
The message read: “This bottle was tossed over the side of the fishing vessel ‘Arctic Eagle’ on the grand banks of Newfoundland, Canada, while fishing for snow crab.”
The bottle had been thrown into the sea 2,000 miles away on July 4, 2016, and Craig left GPS co-ordinates, as well as his postal and email addresses.
But Mrs Campbell has opted to try and contact him via social media.
She said: “I looked him up online and he sends about 10 messages in bottles every year.
“One of his more recent bottles came ashore in Wales.”
Mr Drover has requested that whoever finds his bottle return it to him – something the family is happy to do once she establishes contact with him.
Mrs Campbell said: “It’s amazing to think that both these messages in bottles have turned up in Pabbay.”
The previous message found by the Campbells on Pabbay was from a young boy in the Faroes.
Soon after it was found a Faroese lifeboat crew visited the Western Isles.
Remarkably one of the crew lived on the same street as the boy who had sent it.