A FAMILY from Morwenstow has found a new friend in a Canadian girl, after finding her message in a bottle washed up on Stanbury Mouth beach.

Noah Crooks, eight, from Morwenstow, had been helping his dad, Nick, and brother, Josh, clean their local beach at Stanbury Mouth when he came across a bottle with a note hidden inside.

The family had been moved by the footage seen on the BBC’s Blue Planet 2, which aired a short time before Christmas, and decided to take it upon themselves to pick up litter from Stanbury Mouth beach, just a 20-minute travel from home.

Nick told the Post: “Stanbury Mouth, which is our local beach, is inaccessible by road, so we have to walk down there. We watched a lot of Blue Planet, which really made us want to do something about the plastic pollution in our area. Josh, my eldest, said, ‘Dad, can we go down to the beach and pick up some of the rubbish?’ So we went down to clean the beach.

“We were just picking stuff up from the waste that had been collating there and Noah suddenly said that he had found a message in a bottle. We didn’t think much of it at first — it was just in an old Sprite bottle, which I had to cut open on a rock. The letter was just wedged in there.”

On reading the letter, it said: “Hi, my name is Jacquie Chmilar, I am ten-years-old and I live in Fort McMurray, AB. I’m visiting my grandparents who live in Musgrave Harbour, NFLD. If found call or email please.”

Jacquie had been paying an annual visit to her grandparents in Newfoundland, Canada, when she thought it would be interesting to write some notes and send them off along the water to see if they would be found elsewhere in the world.

The family have since heard that Jacquie had sent three messages in bottles away from Canada, and that another had washed up at Widemouth Bay.

Nick said: “On the way home, my boys were speculating about how long it would take for the bottle to travel from Canada to where we found it, and I told them it would have probably been in the sea for about six or seven years.

“When we got home I emailed the girl on the email address written on the note, and it turns out she only put the bottle in the sea last July. We had an almost instant response and we’ve been keeping in touch ever since, not through the little girl as such, but via her mum on email.

“We’ve had daily contact with them and the story has been picked up all over the place. It’s gone a bit mad!”

Nick and his sons have been having interviews with local and national news outlets, but last week also had a Skype interview with Global Canada News.

Nick continued: “It all highlights the issue involving plastic pollution, so that’s good as well.

“Stanbury Mouth is a beach you can claim as your own, because it’s inaccessible by road and you have to walk to get down there. We spend a lot of time down there with the dog, and so whenever we are there we try and pick up as much as possible.

“We had the people from Spotlight (BBC) come down to pick up some litter from the beach with us, and said they didn’t have suitable shoes on to get down to Stanbury Mouth, so suggested going to Duckpool beach instead. I told them that they basically wouldn’t be able to find anything there because it’s accessible by road and is also a National Trust beach, so there just wouldn’t be anything there. Everything tends to wash up at Stanbury Mouth, which is the next beach along.”

Realising Noah had found a message in a bottle, Nick said he was both surprised and very excited.

He added: “When he said he had found a message, I just thought someone had shoved a piece of paper in, and didn’t think much of it. But when we opened it and realised it was a message and that it had travelled so far, it brought out the inner child in me — I was quite excited about it. It’s not something you find every day.”