A man has been reunited with a ring he lost while picking fruit over 50 years ago.

It was gifted by his late mother for his 21st birthday, but slipped off his finger as he picked strawberries in 1968.

Retired train engineer Dave Radley spent several distraught hours trying to locate the ring among the rows of bushes.

He was picking strawberries in the field behind a friend's father's house to sell that morning when he suddenly realized the ring was no longer on his finger. He had received the 9 carat gold ring as a present just weeks before, but the fit wasn't quite right.

In a stroke of luck, last month a metal detectorist who received a tip from the land-owner about the lost ring made the discovery.

54 years after the signet ring ran off, Dave got a call from his friend's brother Peter who still owns the land. A metal detectorist working for Peter asked if he could detect in the very same field where the item had been lost, to which Peter agreed and informed him about the missing ring.

It was found seven inches deep in the ground with only one slight scratch ready to be polished out, and Dave went to collect it from Leicestershire later that week.

"The ring might not have changed but its owner has-so it's a fairly tight fit," Radley said.  "I've had to have it changed slightly as I can just about get it on. But none of that matters because I'm so grateful to have it back".

"My family wasn't too well off in those days and I spent hours searching for it on the rows we had been. My mother wasn't upset with me, just more upset because of how distraught I was."

"When I got the call from Peter I couldn't quite believe it-the joy I felt in that moment is indescribable."

Radley said that a jeweler near to his home priced it at £700, which he said demonstrated just how much his mom had gone out of her way to surprise him.

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