London - When Matt Walker’s engraved wedding ring sank to the bottom of a murky lake he thought he had lost it forever.
The father-of-two had been swimming with his children when the white gold band slipped off his finger.
He desperately tried to retrieve the ring, but soon realised it was lost in the seaside lake, which is 800ft long and 300ft wide, and holds 8 million gallons of water.
But as a last resort, he contacted the committee that looks after the lake in Clevedon, Somerset, and was told it was soon set to be drained for maintenance.
He then recruited a team of metal detecting enthusiasts to search for it in the thick mud once the water had been cleared two months later.
After two hours of painstaking searching, the £250 ring was eventually found buried a foot deep.
The 47-year-old said he had lost the ring just a few days before his 13th wedding anniversary with wife Rachel, 46.
Walker said: ‘I was swimming with the kids at Clevedon Marine Lake and I got over to a raft in the middle. When I climbed up, I realised it was missing. I was genuinely gutted.
‘It is just a ring at the end of the day, but it was a few days before our anniversary on August 16. So I had a quick look for it but the lake is massive and it is very muddy water – you can’t see anything. There was no chance I’d find it.’
Walker, who lives nearby in the village of Backwell, got in touch with the Somerset Artifact Seekers metal detecting club. Five enthusiasts volunteered their time to trudge through the thick, wet mud last week in search of his precious ring.
At first, they only unearthed bottle tops, loose change and other bits of metallic junk. But two hours into the search, club member Dave Baker managed to find it.
Walker, who is father to Thomas, 11 and Rosie, ten, said: ‘It was buried about a foot deep in really deep clay-like mud, so it was seriously muddy. It’s amazing that they found it as it’s such an enormous area to search. I was pretty surprised to be honest – I had started to give up hope.’
Walker added: ‘It’s brilliant to have it back – I was very lucky. I bought a lottery ticket that night but unfortunately my luck didn’t stretch that far.’
He also said it was not the first time he’s lost the ring.
It fell off before while he was swimming in a harbour in Cornwall but someone jumped in and managed to find it.
Morley Howard, of Somerset Artifact Seekers, said they started by retracing Walker’s steps and looking in the spots he had swum.
He said: ‘It took a good couple of hours. We were quite surprised to find it. We do go out wanting to find things but we got quite lucky – it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
Howard, whose 14-year-old son suffers from cystic fibrosis, said he did not ask Walker for payment but asked him instead to donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.
Daily Mail