A man who lost his wedding ring while he was swimming was stunned when a man returned the band on his anniversary, after finding it with a metal detector.
Ahead of Daryll and Carey Leslie’s wedding in September of 2019, the couple spent a day hand making each other's rings.
But the gold band, which Daryll, 31, had treasured, slipped off when he went for a dip with a pal on a beach at the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, early last month.
He only spent 20 minutes in the water but due to a condition, Raynaud's, which restricts blood flow in cold water, the ring slipped off.
Carey, 37, who works as a life skills coordinator, was away on a spa weekend with friends when the ring went missing - so Daryll initially pretended nothing had happened.
He eventually told her when he realised the likelihood of getting the band back was low, he said.
Daryll used social media to try to track down the ring - which was found by Stephen MacLeod, 31, who lives on the island.
Stephen arranged for it to be delivered in person in Edinburgh to the couple, with the special parcel coincidentally arriving back in Daryll’s hands on their second wedding anniversary.
Daryll, an interior designer, said he and his pal had been swimming in a “beautiful” little cove on the island when the tragedy struck.
"As we were walking back to the car, I realised I didn't have my wedding ring,” he recalled.
"My fingers shrink in the cold. I looked at my hand and I was gutted.”
While he said it was “kind of a material thing”, it was important to him because he and Carey had made the bands for one another.
"It's not easily replaceable,” he said.
"It's not like I could go into H. Samuel to pick another one out.
"Carey messaged me asking how are things and I said 'Great, couldn't be better."
The search was aided by the relatively small area in which Daryll and his mate had been swimming - the dip had been limited to a part of the bay hemmed in by rocks at high tide.
Daryll said the pair had “a rectangle” they knew they didn’t venture out of.
"We knew we didn't go past those rocks on either side so we could narrow it down slightly,” he said.
"If it had just been on the beach there would be no way we could have found it."
Painter and decorator Stephen thought it was unlikely he would manage to find the lost ring when he went out with a friend.
He typically stuck to fields when searching for treasure, he said, digging up items like old coins.
Stephen said: "We were looking for over an hour and there was nothing happening.I thought it was long gone, even while we were looking, we didn't really expect to find it.
"Once I got the signal, it came up on my machine saying it had found gold and I knew straight away before I started digging that was it.”
Stephen was shocked, as he said he’d thought the tide would have taken the band out to sea.
Locating the treasured item was an “amazing feeling”, he said.
Daryll now planned to send the ring to a jeweller, to be resized to avoid it slipping off again.
Daryll said: "It was a nice surprise and we hadn't even planned it."
Carey said she had “obviously” been disappointed upon hearing the wedding band had been lost, but said she “knew there was no point in me giving him a hard time”.
"I didn't think there was any chance we would get it back,” she said.
"I was really over the moon when it was found because I knew Daryll would be so happy.
"What a lovely thing to do, to go out and look for someone you don't know."
