Children's messages in a bottle wash up on Scottish beach 40 years later

Imagine writing a message in a bottle only for it to be found 40 years later.

Well, that's exactly what's happened when three schoolchildren in Scotland had their letters discovered by a woman who was taking part in a beach clean.

Jenny Smith was clearing up the seafront in Angus when she found three notes and a map from the Wormit Primary School pupils written by eight-year-old pupils back in 1984.

In the note they complain about their mean teachers giving them too many sums!

X marks the spot where the message was sent from in 1984

Jenny, who found the treasure, said: "I picked up three bin bags of rubbish and found this bottle, and I thought there was something like a felt-tip pen inside it.

"I got it out and it was rolled up with an elastic band around it.

"The girl who drew the map had cleverly used wax crayon as the outside wrapping so it had protected it from some of the water that had managed to seep in."

One of the notes that came with the bottle said they have been held captive by the "terrible Miss Elder" and makes them do "awful work like sums"!

The girls joke in the messages that they have been kidnapped by a pirate teacher

Jenny dried the messages at home and found they were still readable and she even managed to track down the three girls who wrote it - they are now adults!

"I could see it said 'help' on it, and I thought, 'oh my goodness', and then realised it was from children, Jenny said.

"It said they'd been taken captive on this HMS WPS, and it explained that this stood for Wormit Primary School."

Friends Kelly (left) and Linda (right) who wrote the note when they were children, met Jenny (centre) on the beach where i was found

The school friends think they wrote the notes as part of a project when the topic of pirates was being studied.

Jenny says the messages will now be returned to the school four decades after they set sail on their journey.