Couple reunited with holiday photos six years after dropping camera in Welsh river
Llion Gerallt launched a search on social media after finding the device with 194 images still intact
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Your support makes all the difference.A couple have been reunited with photos from a camera they lost in a river in Wales almost six years ago thanks to one man’s social media search.
Alice Woods and Rob Davison lost their waterproof Fuji FinePix camera while canyoning with their daughters at Fairy Glen, in Betws-y-Coed, during a holiday in July 2014.
The pair believed the images had been lost forever – until their phones began pinging with messages from friends who had recognised them in photos on the internet.
Llion Gerallt had shared the images on social media after discovering the camera surrounded by pebbles near the River Conwy in Llanrwst on Saturday – about eight miles away from where it disappeared.
After taking the camera home and cleaning and drying the memory card, he was amazed to find 194 pictures still intact.
Within hours of posting the photos on Facebook and Twitter on Sunday, Mr Gerallt received replies from users who recognised the people in the images.
Ms Woods, a speech and language therapist living in Sheffield with her two children, said she first heard the camera had been found after someone saw the post and contacted her daughter.
“I can’t believe it,” she told The Independent. “It’s a long time for the photos to have survived at the bottom of the river – and a random thing for some guy in Wales to recover.
“I remember that day because one of the children was having a strop. I think Rob had given them the camera to cheer them up and they had lost it.
“A lot of people saw the post online and contacted Rob and a friend of mine from work contacted me.
“Neither Rob nor I have social media at all so it makes me laugh.”
The 49-year-old said her daughters Grace and Niamh, who would have been 13 and 11 at the time, have been “freaking out saying there better not be any photos of them on there”.
“It’s really nice news because we are all in our own little worlds at the moment,” she added.
Mr Davison, who lives in Hathersage, Derbyshire, with his daughter Anna, said he remembered the camera going missing after it became detached from one of the girls’ wetsuits.
The 52-year-old builder said he had only downloaded a few photos from the holiday and was now looking forward to seeing the rest.
“It’s slightly bizarre,” he said. “But it was a really nice surprise; something exciting in these times.”
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