Message in a bottle travels 1,624 miles in just under four years

Sept. 3 (UPI) -- A Welsh family taking a walk on a beach found a message in a bottle thrown into the ocean by a German couple 1,624 miles away and nearly four years earlier.

Emma Rees said she was walking on Cefn Sidan beach in Pembry with her husband, Steven, and daughter, Abbie, when they spotted a wine bottle washed up in the sand.

"The tide had gone out and we saw a pale little wine bottle, it was very intricate and was really hard to open as it had been properly sealed shut so we had to wait to open it when we got back because it had loads of tape sealing it," Rees told WalesOnline.

The bottle turned out to contain a letter written by a German couple who dropped the bottle into the ocean during a cruise. The couple included the ship's coordinates, which were about 1,624 miles west of the beach.

"The couple gave their contact details and names and everything so we emailed them straight away," Rees said.

The letter's authors, Marcus and Tanja, said the bottle was dropped into the ocean Oct. 22, 2015.

"When we read where it had come from we just thought it was amazing and couldn't believe it," Rees said. "It's crazy to think that this tiny thing had been bobbing around the Atlantic Ocean and had traveled thousands of miles and washed ashore on the beach and that we were able to spot it."

Rees said she is returning the bottle to the couple as a keepsake.

"I'm sending the bottle back to the couple, by mail not sea," she wrote on Facebook.