West Lothian couple's lost engagement ring found in twist of fate by metal detectorist

A West Lothian couple have thanked a kind man who found their engagement ring six inches under sand at a popular beauty spot.

Sophie Livingston, 26, and Lewis Gillespie, 25, got engaged on Friday, May 10 at Dunbar beach after spending six years as a couple together. However, much to Lewis' dismay, after he popped the question, the couple realised the ring wasn't in the box.

The devastated couple searched the beach for hours and tried to figure out where it could possibly be. Luckily, Lewis filmed the engagement moment, and as the couple watched the footage back, they spotted a shiny item fall into the sand.

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Speaking to Edinburgh Live , Sophie said: "He got down one knee and we realised the box was empty. I said yes at the time but he actually asked me if I would still marry him anyway and of course I said yes.

"We had a wee celebration at the time before I asked him where he last saw it. He said he had it in his jacket pocket before putting in his shirt.

"We checked all our bags, checked the car, searched the beach again and we still couldn’t see it. We then searched the house and it wasn't there either.

"Luckily, he had set up a camera and filmed the moment so we watched the footage and we saw that as he pulled the ring box out, it was open slightly and we just saw something shiny hit the sand and we were like ‘oh my gosh it’s in the sand’.

"I had to get a custom sized ring made because I have quite small hands so because of the combination of the box being slightly open and my ring being really small - it was enough for it to fall out of the box completely".

The couple then returned to the beach the following day, along with Lewis' parents to search for the missing ring in the sand. Many other beach goers were quick to offer their help as soon as they found out what the couple were in search for.

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However, it was one man named David, who came to the rescue and found the ring six inches under the sand through the use of his metal detector on Sunday - leaving Sophie and Lewis delighted.

Sophie said: "Lewis' parents then drove down from Pitlochry to come and help us find it the next day on the Saturday and we searched the beach for maybe three hours or something.

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"My mum then decided to find metal detectors and got added to the metal detectors of Dunbar group. She put a post on there explaining what had happened and loads of them said they would go and have a look.

"One guy called David said he would go out at 5am on the Sunday morning and have a look at the beach before it got busy.

"We sent photos of where we were, and he used the tide as a marker and the rocks and the background in the photos as measurement points and he got it down to a metre square area and after that it took him five minutes with his metal detector and he found it buried six inches down

"It was crazy. He drove through to my work at Livingston, we had champagne and were celebrating and it was wonderful. I can’t believe I got it back

"The ring was perfect too when we found it, you wouldn’t even know what had happened to it. I work in a jewellers so I checked the ring over and there wasn’t a grain of sand in it, you wouldn’t even have known. It was beautiful.

"I couldn’t stop crying, I was so happy. Even when we hadn’t found the ring, the support from family and friends was so lovely".