The ring I found had me running round in circles

But after 18 months of relentless research, hunting through records, and pounding the streets, Stuart McKenzie finally made the breakthrough - which led to the gardener next door.

Green-fingered Stuart found the initialled wedding ring appropriately under a gooseberry bush in his Inverleith allotment.

The 57-year-old realised once he rubbed the soil off it that it was a special heirloom, and began his dogged attempt to ensure it found its way back to the owner.

Using only initials from the ring - PM and LCS - and the date of the wedding, the retired IT consultant from Haymarket began at the reference library on George IV Bridge, and moved on to the Scottish records office.

He then roped in a friend who does probate research and finally tracked down PM (Peter Milligan) and LCS (Lillian Cockburn Spiers), the son who registered their deaths (who himself died in 2000), and his son Andrew, who was born in 1957.

Eventually, he was able to establish an Airdrie address and telephone number, only to discover that the ring had been left to Andrew's sister Lillias Noble, who has an allotment two plots away from Stuart's in Inverleith.

"It would have been easier and quicker to put a message on the allotment notice board," laughed Stuart.

"Or even just ask in a loud voice if anyone had lost a ring, but perhaps not as much fun as being an heir hunter.

"With each step of digging through old records and microfilm and tracing family trees, we were getting closer and closer. It was quite an adventure.

"I must have seen Lillias at the allotment site several times during the search, never thinking it was hers.

"It took a while and it was just this week that I found her. It's amazing what you can find with a single name and a date."

In a further twist, Andrew discovered that he and Lillias lived in the same street for many years until recently, never realising until the pair met to exchange the ring this week.

He added: "Bizarrely, I never realised we'd lived just doors away but there you go."

For Lillias, getting the ring back after 18 months is nothing short of a miracle.

Lillias, 55, a retired teacher who now works in educational consultancy, said: "I had no idea where I lost it. It's such a little ring, I wore it on my pinkie and it must have flipped off.

"I don't treasure many things but my granny's wedding ring was special."I'm named after her and my mum left it to me when she died two years ago.

"I was so horrified when I lost it, I didn't dare tell the family so Andrew got a shock when Stuart phoned him.

"The chances of finding a ring in an allotment are a million to one - let alone under a gooseberry bush of all things.

"In allotments we don't always know people by their proper names. I only knew Stuart as "Blue Potato Man" as that's his speciality. "It's wonderful that he went to all that trouble with only the initials "PM-LCS" and the date (29/1/16) to go on.

"It's absolutely astonishing to see it again. He's such a good bloke and I'm so glad he tracked me down."

Lillias will be formally presented with her "lost treasure" at Edinburgh's Annual Allotment Show on September 12.