25-year-old message in a bottle mystery solved – strange coincidence as note found at Occumster is from news group employee
A barely legible message found in a plastic bottle at Occumster during a beach clean has been traced to an employee of Highland News and Media – the newspaper group which publishes the Northern Times.
Retired Wick High School teacher David Shand was joined by members of Pentland Canoe Club on a beach cleaning exercise at a coastal inlet by Occumster near Lybster when he discovered the plastic bottle amongst other debris.
"It was found in a small plastic bottle which was the first thing I saw among a pile of other plastic bottles on the shore near Occumster," recalled Mr Shand.
"The message was originally written on orange paper and is extremely fragile. The orange has faded to white." Mr Shand could make out the name "Lynn" on the faded note along with what appeared to be part of an address in Rothes. Some of the legible words read "If you find is...My name is Lynn Migh...and my postcode is AB38 ...and my telephone is...I live in PCD Rothes Scotland."
Mr Shand took the initiative and thought the note may have originated from a former pupil of Rothes Primary School and had probably travelled around 70km across the Moray Firth to land on the Caithness coastline. He added: "If this message was put in the river [at Rothes] it shows how pollution travels into the sea and ends up on a beach. It has probably been in the environment for about 30 years and maybe on this inaccessible beach for most of this time."
The information was shared with the headteacher at Rothes Primary School, Faith Sargeant, who did some collective "brainstorming" with staff members to come up with a name. Mrs Sargeant said that they believed that Lynn was in her 30s and her children had attended the same school but initially found it difficult to find the right person. The postcode and initials PCD led to a street in Rothes called Provost Christie Drive which is commonly abbreviated locally and eventually they came up with a likely name – Lynn Mighten.
"I can't hide from it [her surname] because it's so unusual," said Lynn Gardner whose maiden name was Mighten and who lived at Provost Christie Drive (PCD) in Rothes. "I remember putting it in a wee burn behind the school, right beside PCD where I used to stay. It's made its way down the burn and into the River Spey." The bottle with Lynn's message had travelled miles along the meandering river and into the Moray Firth on its journey to Caithness – making a total journey of close to 100km. She recalled being with a couple of friends but could not recall who they were.
"I'm 34 and I reckon I was 8 or 9 when I did it so that's probably about 25 years ago. We just thought it would be fun if someone got back in touch with us. I never thought it would happen. It just felt like something cool to do at the time."
Lynn had been contacted by her sister-in-law, who has the surname Mighten, after she had heard about the primary school's search for the elusive message author. Lynn said she could not remember anything about the matter at first but details gradually came back to her.
Speaking to the John O'Groat Journal on Tuesday morning, Lynn had another major revelation, however. It turns out she is the events development manager with Highland News and Media, the company which publishes various Highland titles including the Northern Times and her local paper the Northern Scot. "I do features about events in the papers but am very much behind the scenes and don't make the news myself. Trust this to happen to me. I don't put my face out there and when I heard this was going to be a news story I thought 'oh no'," she laughed.
Lynn thought the story would be great for teaching her daughters, aged seven and nine, about the dangers of plastic pollution and how her bottle had travelled all those miles and was still intact after 25 years of being battered around the north Highland coastline.
The headteacher at Rothes agreed with that sentiment and hopes to invite Lynn to talk to the pupils about the journey of the bottle from the burn at the back to her old primary school. "Our children care deeply about our planet and the environment and this would be a fabulous opportunity to link with Lynn and the story of her ‘Message in a Bottle’ to highlight the continuing issue with plastic pollution in our seas and link it to our Global Goal education."
Mr Shand said he had an enjoyable conversation with Lynn on the telephone and was more than happy to mail her the piece of paper. "It was a real privilege to find a 'Message in a Bottle' and be able to return the original message to Lynn (by Royal Mail). [It will bring] back fond memories of the day she wrote the letter and launched it from the Burn of Rothes, not knowing if it would ever be found, or how far it would travel!"
Mr Shand and his canoe club colleagues were conducting the beach cleaning exercise as part of the Big Paddle Cleanup – part of British Canoeing's Clear Access, Clear Waters campaign.
