Message in a bottle from a Long Eatonian found in Norway

A message in a bottle has washed up on a stretch of shoreline in Scandinavia having been flung into the sea last year by a young Erewash resident.

On behalf of a woman who found the bottle and made an inital post on-line, Harald Christiansen took to social media this week to try and help to find the sender and said that that the bottle had been picked up on a rocky beach outside the city of Kragerø in Norway.

The town is around two and a half hours drive south of Oslo and hidden behind many small islands.

Upon opening the bottle following its discovery, a message was unrolled and found to have been written in July 2020 and signed by 10 year old Lilly Carter.

The message read: 'Dear whoever you are, please, if you find this, please post on-line. I'm from Long Eaton, 10 years old and my name is Lilly Carter.'

Upon being posted on the Long Eaton Community Group page, a flurry of responses were then submitted and within a reported 15 minutes, the sender had been found.

One of them was from Claire Pentecost who expressed thanks to Harald for posting the item on-line and added that Lilly was her daughter.  She said that Lilly's sister had also sent out a message at the same time and wondered where that would be found but, in this instance, expressed surprise that the message had remained in tact having been written on a piece of kitchen roll. 

She added that it had taken several attempts to get the tide to take it out to sea from Chapel-St-Leonards on the Lincolnshire coast, but that they had a lot of fun and even took some photographs to mark the occasion.

As part of the continuing flurry of messages, Harald said: "It shows the power of the internet and social media.  This was really amazing, and the best way I have started a week in a long, long time. Thank you all."