WITH today's modern communications, it only takes the press of a button to send a note which arrives in an instant.But two children playing on Felixstowe's beach were thrilled to find an old-fashioned way of getting in touch where nature delivers it at her whim and in her own time - a message in a bottle.

WITH today's modern communications, it only takes the press of a button to send a note which arrives in an instant.

But two children playing on Felixstowe's beach were thrilled to find an old-fashioned way of getting in touch where nature delivers it at her whim and in her own time - a message in a bottle.

Seven-year-old Tazmin Girling and her brother Charlie, 11, discovered the litre plastic fizzy drinks bottle with its message inside on the shore near the pier in Undercliff Road West.

The message from a 12-year-old Dutch girl was written on paper, rolled up and tied with string.

“The children were playing on the beach when they saw the bottle being washed up,” said their mum, Melissa Girling, of Grove Lane, Ipswich.

“They were saying there was something in it and one of them picked it up and came up the beach to me and there was a real message inside - they were dead chuffed.

“I thought it was going to just another thing to take home along with all the shells and other things they like to collect from the beach.

“It was quite exciting - the kind of thing which happens in story books.”

The message was from a girl called Melissa Conijn, of Brandenburg, Anna Paulowna, not far from Den Helder, Holland, and was popped into the North Sea on May 20 and took nine days to get across the water to Suffolk.

It simply asked for the finder to write back to her, telling her the time and place where it was found.

“Charlie is going to write back to the girl and we will see what happens,” said Ms Girling, who also has a daughter Leah, three.

“It is such a lovely thing to have happened - we have never found anything like that on the beach before.”

The children, who go to Clifford Road Primary School, Ipswich, are planning to take the bottle in to show their classmates.

It is the latest in a series of unusual finds on Felixstowe's beaches this year.

Workmen building new sea defences found a 1,000lb German World War Two bomb which led to the evacuation of part of the town. After being lost and then found again, the bomb was detonated off the coast, causing a huge bang.

Walker Christopher Barber recently found a sheep's horn on the shore, and nine-year-old John Hornsby found a horse's head.

Have you made on exciting find on Suffolk's shore? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN, or e-mail EveningStarLetters@eveningstar.co.uk