Video camera is washed up on remote German island after being lost on Yorkshire beach

A camera containing footage of a family day out on a Yorkshire beach has washed up on a remote German island over 500km away.

By The Newsroom Monday, 27th November 2017, 11:34 am Updated Tuesday, 12th December 2017, 2:31 am

A farming couple who are the only inhabitants of Hallig Suderoog, one of a chain of low-lying islands on the North Sea coast known as the Halligs, found the camera and believe it shows a British family visiting Thornwick Bay, near Flamborough, in the summer.

In the retrieved footage, dated September 1, two children can be seen exploring rockpools before the camera, wrapped in waterproof casing, is washed into the sea.

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It was found two months later, on November 2, having travelled across the North Sea to the island, which is now a nature reserve known for its bird life.

The family who live on Hallig Suderoog are organic farmers who also maintain coastal defences and run a Facebook page about life on the isolated coastline.

Their appeal to trace the children and their parents has already been picked by media outlets in Germany.

Suderoog is part of the state of Schleswig-Holstein and has a fascinating history. It has never been home to more than three dwellings, two of which were destroyed in a storm surge in 1634 which also killed 10 inhabitants. The remaining house was washed away in a flood in 1825, but was later rebuilt.

The 150-acre hallig then became the meeting place of an international youth movement, and it was known as the Island of Boys for most of the 20th century. However, the land was always difficult to live on, with poor sanitary conditions and regular storm damage. It suffered badly during the North Sea tidal surge of 1962, and was later sold by the Paulsen family, who had run the youth holiday camps, to the state government in 1971.

The farmers now rent their island home from Schleswig-Holstein, and act as guardians. Access is only possible as part of a guided tour party.