The message encased in a plastic bottle which was tossed into the sea at Morecambe Bay, Lancs by four-year-old Alesha Johnson has found her a 10-year-old penpal……….nine thousand miles away.

The youngster, from Perth, Western Australia, has written to Alesha six months after she sent the missive off.

Penny Hollliday of the National Institute of Oceanography, in Southampton said she had never heard of a bottled message travelling so far so quickly.